4 ms·

I agree with your sentiment, I think the author makes some decent points but is pretty biased towards an aesthetic he prefers and the art tools he's most famili

by soup10 11y ago

I agree with your sentiment, I think the author makes some decent points but is pretty biased towards an aesthetic he prefers and the art tools he's most familiar with. The sf4 example is particularly demonstrating of that, people that do 3d modeling know that it's not as easy to get the arbitrary distortion effects you can do with frame by frame animation, that doesn't make it lower quality animation, it's a trade off of the medium. And art is about the overall impression it leaves on the viewer, not the technical specifics about how the pants look odd on 2 frames of a 100 frame motion

the_af 11y ago
How can he be biased, beyond his love of pixel art? He more or less concludes pixel art is not the best choice, and he sides with the public's opinion on this issue. Read the comments. He is not blaming anyone for this "pixel tax". To my eyes, the SF4 Chun Li is infinitely inferior to SF3, and I'm not even an animator. And haven't played either game, so I truly have no preconceptions at all in this case.
- mrob 11y ago
  SF4 has bad animation because it mixes mostly realistic motions with cartoonish anatomy. SF3 consistently uses cartoonish style for both. The only obvious reason somebody might prefer SF4 is if they really hate pixel art. I've played far more SF4 than SF3 and I still prefer the SF3 look.
- JohnBooty 11y ago
  I liked SF4's slightly goofy animation because to me, it looked like children's action figures - specifically, the wrestling figures I spent so much time with as a kid: http://www.thecanadianconnection.biz/images/figures/large/HulkHogan01.jpg http://www.thecanadianconnection.biz/images/figures/large/Hu... To me, SF4 looks like those. Except in motion, with lots of special effects. The way I imagined them as a kid. :)
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  The Chun Li comparison reminds me a lot of the messy transition between 2D and 3D of games like Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat. In Mortal Kombat, the typical shaolin monk character has a typical "shoot fireball" special move. In the latest SNES game, a badass dragon made of fire shoots out of his hand and explodes on contact with the enemy. In the next game, for the PlayStation, it looks like he is flinging a flaming turd at his opponent. Final Fantasy had similar problems in the transition from awesome 2D (FFVI) to awful 3D (FFVII). Both Mortal Kombat and Final Fantasy eventually got 3D high definition graphics right, in my opinion. I hope eventually the artists will be as good and as experienced at making 3D art as they were at making 2D art in the SNES era.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    The thing that set Mortal Kombat apart back in the day -- besides blood and gore -- was its use of digitized video of live actors as its character sprites. This couldn't be done in the 3D era, and up Through Mortal Kombat (2011) the 3D character models looked hella goofy when compared with real people.
egypturnash 11y ago
> people that do 3d modeling know that it's not as easy to get the arbitrary distortion effects you can do with frame by frame animation So who wants to start writing a 3D package designed around making those kinds of things as easy as possible? With a way to easily drop them into a game and fire it off in realtime? Maybe not you, but maybe someone reading the comments here just found a side project. The big tactics 2D cartoonists use to stylize motion are squash and stretch, smears, and multiple images. How can these be represented efficiently in data structures? How can you make it easy for a character to leap into the air and turn into a giant eyeball with arms and legs sticking off of it[1]? And how can you make it easy for a non-techie artist to make it happen? This is probably not a quick weekend hack. Guilty Gear Xrd does a lot of this; can it be done in a game with a lot more characters running around at once? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=clampett's+corneal+catastrophe https://www.google.com/search?q=clampett's+corneal+catastrop...
jdbernard 11y ago
Those arbitrary distortions are very important though: https://vimeo.com/93206523 https://vimeo.com/93206523 And it has been done with 3D animation, Pixar is an easy example: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfdLp0PcSg http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfdLp0PcSg

by soup10 11y ago

the_af 11y ago

How can he be biased, beyond his love of pixel art? He more or less concludes pixel art is not the best choice, and he sides with the public's opinion on this issue. Read the comments. He is not blaming anyone for this "pixel tax". To my eyes, the SF4 Chun Li is infinitely inferior to SF3, and I'm not even an animator. And haven't played either game, so I truly have no preconceptions at all in this case.

mrob 11y ago
SF4 has bad animation because it mixes mostly realistic motions with cartoonish anatomy. SF3 consistently uses cartoonish style for both. The only obvious reason somebody might prefer SF4 is if they really hate pixel art. I've played far more SF4 than SF3 and I still prefer the SF3 look.
JohnBooty 11y ago
I liked SF4's slightly goofy animation because to me, it looked like children's action figures - specifically, the wrestling figures I spent so much time with as a kid: http://www.thecanadianconnection.biz/images/figures/large/HulkHogan01.jpg http://www.thecanadianconnection.biz/images/figures/large/Hu... To me, SF4 looks like those. Except in motion, with lots of special effects. The way I imagined them as a kid. :)
saint_fiasco 11y ago
The Chun Li comparison reminds me a lot of the messy transition between 2D and 3D of games like Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat. In Mortal Kombat, the typical shaolin monk character has a typical "shoot fireball" special move. In the latest SNES game, a badass dragon made of fire shoots out of his hand and explodes on contact with the enemy. In the next game, for the PlayStation, it looks like he is flinging a flaming turd at his opponent. Final Fantasy had similar problems in the transition from awesome 2D (FFVI) to awful 3D (FFVII). Both Mortal Kombat and Final Fantasy eventually got 3D high definition graphics right, in my opinion. I hope eventually the artists will be as good and as experienced at making 3D art as they were at making 2D art in the SNES era.
- bitwize 11y ago
  The thing that set Mortal Kombat apart back in the day -- besides blood and gore -- was its use of digitized video of live actors as its character sprites. This couldn't be done in the 3D era, and up Through Mortal Kombat (2011) the 3D character models looked hella goofy when compared with real people.

egypturnash 11y ago

> people that do 3d modeling know that it's not as easy to get the arbitrary distortion effects you can do with frame by frame animation So who wants to start writing a 3D package designed around making those kinds of things as easy as possible? With a way to easily drop them into a game and fire it off in realtime? Maybe not you, but maybe someone reading the comments here just found a side project. The big tactics 2D cartoonists use to stylize motion are squash and stretch, smears, and multiple images. How can these be represented efficiently in data structures? How can you make it easy for a character to leap into the air and turn into a giant eyeball with arms and legs sticking off of it[1]? And how can you make it easy for a non-techie artist to make it happen? This is probably not a quick weekend hack. Guilty Gear Xrd does a lot of this; can it be done in a game with a lot more characters running around at once? [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=clampett's+corneal+catastrophe https://www.google.com/search?q=clampett's+corneal+catastrop...

jdbernard 11y ago

Those arbitrary distortions are very important though: https://vimeo.com/93206523 https://vimeo.com/93206523 And it has been done with 3D animation, Pixar is an easy example: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfdLp0PcSg http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnfdLp0PcSg