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It feels like the VGA version got painted over by a non-artist. Look at the trees in the graveyard scene, the pillow shading is inexcusable. The EGA is still gr

It feels like the VGA version got painted over by a non-artist. Look at the trees in the graveyard scene, the pillow shading is inexcusable. The EGA is still great though. Mark Ferrari's other work is good too, check out http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ Many people think the charm of Loom is due to pixel art, but that's not true. The aesthetic was consciously borrowed from Eyvind Earle's work on Sleeping Beauty, which was very much high res and full color. The main antagonist is based on Maleficent.

JdeBP 6y ago
This hits the nail on the head, I think. Other comments talk about limitations of EGA, but that really isn't the problem exhibited here. The problem here is not drawing things right. The graveyard scene has the trees illuminated from the side opposite to the sunset. The original has them illuminated by the sunset. The scene with the pipes has several of the shadows wrong for the apparent light sources, compared to the original. And where did the birds and the will-o'-the-wisps go?
raldi 6y ago
> Look at the trees in the graveyard scene, the pillow shading is inexcusable. Thanks for introducing me to the term (which led to an explicit definition) for something I've perceived before but never clearly. The tombstones and sunset firmly establish the light source at the horizon. The foreground should be in silhouette (as it was initially) and there's no explanation for why the center of the trunks would receive more light than their edges. (However, both versions of the dock, and the furnace with the angled pipes, are pretty terrible about light sources.)
- StrictDabbler 6y ago
  Literally decades of trying to explain this to people and yet Google suggests that this is very thread is the first significant time that the pixel-art term "pillow shading" has been explicitly linked to the acronym "VGA". That's weird because it's the defining characteristic of the cheap art of the VGA era. Epic Games was big into pillow shading. Jill of the Jungle, Solar Winds, Jazz Jackrabbit... They'd define seven hues, 8 shades of each hue, reserve the last 8 shades for monochrome, and then just paint things in from the side of the object. The pillow-shading aesthetic stuck after we moved on to 16.7 million colors and there was no reason to think about color that way anymore. A frustrating legacy.
Rapzid 6y ago
I agree; it's just uninspired, poor artwork. Preferring the EGA style doesn't make the VGA art not bad. I might go so far as to say it's objectively bad.. You could almost certainly get a consensus on that from a group of talented artists.. I don't think they spent much money on the remaster. There are tons of these though all the way to now. Remasters that fail to capture the original art direction and substitute middling art. Within the past decade there are more and more good remaster examples. Studios seem to be putting more money into them, and better talent is involved.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  Like the remaster of The Day of the Tentace... The original has a vaguely German Expressionist (from 1920s films) look that I like. The artists of the remaster smoothed out many of the harsh edges, apparently assuming that they were only due to technical limitations. Technical limitations, like in the old movies, influenced the style, sure... but it works the way it was initially created and ignorant "improvements" don't do it any good. Have a look at the second image (jail), especially the lamps and the grate. They should be more angular in higher resolution, not less. https://rebell.at/artikel/day-of-the-tentacle-bekommt-ein-remake-screenshots-im-vergleich https://rebell.at/artikel/day-of-the-tentacle-bekommt-ein-re... This kind of modernization can be done right... Jim Burton movies and Babylon Berlin borrowed from German expressionism, especially in certain scenes - often night scenes. Tentacle is somewhere in between - the artists could have taken their inspiration from looking at the Caligari (1920) - Batman (1989) - Babylon Berlin scale and some 30s cartoons. Disclaimer: I cannot art for shit. I can only look and talk about it.
  - ahartmetz 6y ago
    *Tim Burton

JdeBP 6y ago

This hits the nail on the head, I think. Other comments talk about limitations of EGA, but that really isn't the problem exhibited here. The problem here is not drawing things right. The graveyard scene has the trees illuminated from the side opposite to the sunset. The original has them illuminated by the sunset. The scene with the pipes has several of the shadows wrong for the apparent light sources, compared to the original. And where did the birds and the will-o'-the-wisps go?

raldi 6y ago

> Look at the trees in the graveyard scene, the pillow shading is inexcusable. Thanks for introducing me to the term (which led to an explicit definition) for something I've perceived before but never clearly. The tombstones and sunset firmly establish the light source at the horizon. The foreground should be in silhouette (as it was initially) and there's no explanation for why the center of the trunks would receive more light than their edges. (However, both versions of the dock, and the furnace with the angled pipes, are pretty terrible about light sources.)

StrictDabbler 6y ago
Literally decades of trying to explain this to people and yet Google suggests that this is very thread is the first significant time that the pixel-art term "pillow shading" has been explicitly linked to the acronym "VGA". That's weird because it's the defining characteristic of the cheap art of the VGA era. Epic Games was big into pillow shading. Jill of the Jungle, Solar Winds, Jazz Jackrabbit... They'd define seven hues, 8 shades of each hue, reserve the last 8 shades for monochrome, and then just paint things in from the side of the object. The pillow-shading aesthetic stuck after we moved on to 16.7 million colors and there was no reason to think about color that way anymore. A frustrating legacy.

Rapzid 6y ago

I agree; it's just uninspired, poor artwork. Preferring the EGA style doesn't make the VGA art not bad. I might go so far as to say it's objectively bad.. You could almost certainly get a consensus on that from a group of talented artists.. I don't think they spent much money on the remaster. There are tons of these though all the way to now. Remasters that fail to capture the original art direction and substitute middling art. Within the past decade there are more and more good remaster examples. Studios seem to be putting more money into them, and better talent is involved.

ahartmetz 6y ago
Like the remaster of The Day of the Tentace... The original has a vaguely German Expressionist (from 1920s films) look that I like. The artists of the remaster smoothed out many of the harsh edges, apparently assuming that they were only due to technical limitations. Technical limitations, like in the old movies, influenced the style, sure... but it works the way it was initially created and ignorant "improvements" don't do it any good. Have a look at the second image (jail), especially the lamps and the grate. They should be more angular in higher resolution, not less. https://rebell.at/artikel/day-of-the-tentacle-bekommt-ein-remake-screenshots-im-vergleich https://rebell.at/artikel/day-of-the-tentacle-bekommt-ein-re... This kind of modernization can be done right... Jim Burton movies and Babylon Berlin borrowed from German expressionism, especially in certain scenes - often night scenes. Tentacle is somewhere in between - the artists could have taken their inspiration from looking at the Caligari (1920) - Batman (1989) - Babylon Berlin scale and some 30s cartoons. Disclaimer: I cannot art for shit. I can only look and talk about it.
- ahartmetz 6y ago
  *Tim Burton