Art Direction Lost in Translation?

[Reek]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarist

I'm not sure having specialists for every subdiscipline is really the answer. Before, in Adeline Software International, we had Didier Chanfray doing both things too, he was this crazy guy all about sketching things on paper all day, in a very similar way as Paulo is today. Yet the games turned out fine. Of course, we had Yaël as the lead artist who'd make the actual assets, too. Nevertheless, it seems this same small team approach isn't working this time.

Why?

you don't need a specialist for every sub-discipline, but at least 1 highly-skilled and highly-experienced 3D artist is a must when making a (3D) game. it's the bare minimum.

Edit: in fact, it's not even just about skill, some of the issues with the remaster come down purely to bad taste.
Such as the use of ugly, over saturated colors in some cases, or the combination of those wonky shaped bricks sticking out of the wall in a scene that's otherwise mostly straight lines.

The shade of green they chose for the wall just makes me think of some depressing, dilapidated hotel, like in barton fink. As for the wooden floor, they could've just downloaded a pre-made material they found online and it'd still look better than what they ended up going with.

I don't know why there aren't proper shadows, or no global illumination, everything looks so flat. I don't know how someone looked at twinsen's running animation and thought it's somehow acceptable. The whole thing is baffling.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by Reek

you don't need a specialist for every sub-discipline, but at least 1 highly-skilled and highly-experienced 3D artist is a must when making a (3D) game. it's the bare minimum.

Edit: in fact, it's not even just about skill, some of the issues with the remaster come down purely to bad taste.
Such as the use of ugly, over saturated colors in some cases, or the combination of those wonky shaped bricks sticking out of the wall in a scene that's otherwise mostly straight lines.

The shade of green they chose for the wall just makes me think of some depressing, dilapidated hotel, like in barton fink. As for the wooden floor, they could've just downloaded a pre-made material they found online and it'd still look better than what they ended up going with.

I don't know why there aren't proper shadows, or no global illumination, everything looks so flat. I don't know how someone looked at twinsen's running animation and thought it's somehow acceptable. The whole thing is baffling.

Solid points.

[Quetch]

I'd like to make 2 points here, which I think are very revealing:

1. Look at the list of people SGK posted on the previous page. Look at their team sizes. They might not look too different, but the originals had 5x programmers, 5x Q&A guys and around 2x-3x guys for most other disciplines. Whereas [2.21] has an exact number of 1x guy per each domain. I don't even understand how they managed to get this far in such a short time, let alone give us a demo next month and the full game next year. Forget about crappy looks, it's impressive considering their current team. But of course, what I'm saying is that they should hire more people and put in more resources. After all, good things take some time...
   
2. Ever thought about the fact that they might have bulk-converted and imported the old assets with some added touch-ups by using the increasingly popular AI approach? I know they did this for GTA: The Definitive Edition, which is one of the reasons why people ended up calling it GTA: The Defective Edition, along the endless swarm of bugs. They used AI to "batch-import-and-modernize" the old assets and it turned out to be a disaster. I say this because seeing those soldiers in the teaser really reminds me of the AI approach in GTA and several other games as well. That's how AI outputs things when it starts getting confused, it messes up, ending with some "wtf am I looking at?" areas next to good/ok areas, creating a mixed feeling of "wtf were they even thinking?". They were not, it was AI doing the work for them, in order to cut some corners in terms of time and effort What do you guys think? The more I look at the teaser, the more it feels like it was heavily relying on AI with some manual work slapped on top of that afterwards.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Originally Posted by Quetch

I'd like to make 2 points here, which I think are very revealing:

1. Look at the list of people SGK posted on the previous page. Look at their team sizes. They might not look too different, but the originals had 5x programmers, 5x Q&A guys and around 2x-3x guys for most other disciplines. Whereas [2.21] has an exact number of 1x guy per each domain. I don't even understand how they managed to get this far in such a short time, let alone give us a demo next month and the full game next year. Forget about crappy looks, it's impressive considering their current team. But of course, what I'm saying is that they should hire more people and put in more resources. After all, good things take some time...
   
2. Ever thought about the fact that they might have bulk-converted and imported the old assets with some added touch-ups by using the increasingly popular AI approach? I know they did this for GTA: The Definitive Edition, which is one of the reasons why people ended up calling it GTA: The Defective Edition, along the endless swarm of bugs. They used AI to "batch-import-and-modernize" the old assets and it turned out to be a disaster. I say this because seeing those soldiers in the teaser really reminds me of the AI approach in GTA and several other games as well. That's how AI outputs things when it starts getting confused, it messes up, ending with some "wtf am I looking at?" areas next to good/ok areas, creating a mixed feeling of "wtf were they even thinking?". They were not, it was AI doing the work for them, in order to cut some corners in terms of time and effort What do you guys think? The more I look at the teaser, the more it feels like it was heavily relying on AI with some manual work slapped on top of that afterwards.

1. I did notice that too, and they do deserve appreciation for that. On the other hand, back then Adeline was an absolute pioneer in what they were doing, creating their engine from scratch, as well as their assets. Even their tools were built from scratch. Absolute heroes. Like, from zero to hero literally. While all 2.21 has to do is slap the ready Unreal engine with whole support from its massive community, and copy the work that's already been done into it. Modernity brought much ease and conveniences to game developing companies of today, compared to the prehistoric rough early days of the 90s.

2. Maybe to an extent. But I think the models were actually modelled. They did import all the animations from the originals, which is exactly why Twinsen looks retarded in TLBAR (well, not the only reason for it thou).

[Battler]

- SpaceGuitarist: And yet, they had LBA 1 done very quickly. The early previews are dated August 1994 and only had the Citadel inside and outside scenes and that rabbibunny's house. By mid October 1994, they basically had the game done.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Absolute legends.

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by Battler

- Polaris: Here in Europe, we tend to call them <Type> Director instea instead of Chief <Type> Officer, while what in the US they call the Board of Directors here is the Management Board (or literally, the Administrative Assembly). At this point, someone needs to make an American-European political and business parlance dictionary, the terminologies used are too different.

Hmmm... Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe both...

Job titles are quite a mess. But in the end, a CxO is the most highly placed person for X. What they do depends on company size, and even from company to company.

In small companies the CEO and CTO are often the founders, with the CTO being the tech person, and the CEO being the business person.

[Neko]

Originally Posted by elmuerte

Hmmm... Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe both...

Job titles are quite a mess. But in the end, a CxO is the most highly placed person for X. What they do depends on company size, and even from company to company.

In small companies the CEO and CTO are often the founders, with the CTO being the tech person, and the CEO being the business person.

Netherlands use ceo cto cdo cfo etc

[Bot13]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarist

I'm not sure having specialists for every subdiscipline is really the answer. Before, in Adeline Software International, we had Didier Chanfray doing both things too

That's what they would call a concept art generalist. I'm saying the answer is to hire more generalist talent, instead of the guy they hired as 'art director' based on character concept art alone.

[Bot13]

Originally Posted by SpaceGuitarist

So, for all you experts in the PC gaming biz, I ask:
What is missing? Who else do we need, what skills do we need and what's the best way to transpose Paulo's vision into reality?

He has obviously already proven his talent in envisioning the ideas themselves and putting them down onto concept art.
Now we need to take those neat sketches, and build it into an interactive 3D world. Lightwing pointed how the irregular quirky cartoon style doesn't match with the rigid straight lines of the levels, for instance. How to tackle such things?

Let's help 2.21

The link between art director and in-game visuals would be handled by hiring a lead artist, but they weren't interested in that.

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by Neko

Netherlands use ceo cto cdo cfo etc

CDO?! Chief Dumb Officer?

[Battler]

Chief Data Officer. Here we call that "Director for the data".

[Neko]

Originally Posted by elmuerte

CDO?! Chief Dumb Officer?

Didnt know that one?

CIO is also there

[Battler]

Yeah, here we call that "Director of the information service". And then there's CISO (Chief Infromation Security Officer) whom we call here there the "Director of information security".