The thing is they don’t understand animation itself. to be specific what modern animation is.
Exaggeration, Stretching and Squashing are parts of modern day animation principles.
This is the problem of HD REMIX sprites why it doesn’t look well in motion regardless of the detail it had.
Because it was done frame by frame exact to SF2 and those animation techniques wasn’t used much in the original SF2 in-between sprites.
Overwatch vibe is very much a far more polished version of what Capcom was attempting to achieve with SFV. They failed on that front and art direction in general is too aimless.
Akiman said Overwatch bears the torch of Street Fighter’s design and renewed his passion. And he is right Overwatch’s artstyle was heavily influenced by Street Fighter and Pixar.
Overwatch is better at what does than SFV is at what does
That’s for sure
Overwatch is a vaguely animeish still full western style and do it’s own job far more professionally
Still it’s not what SF should be, with all respect to Akiman’s opinion lol
SF never needed any Pixar vibe to be better than SFV
Trying to westernize SF is for more money not for better art style
Most don’t understand stylization either, wich is why everybody seem to jizz in theyr pants at a SF by Shinkiro, it’s something that everybody seem too easily recognize as “right” and good looking
Wich i don’t disagree with, a SF by Shinkiro WILL be good looking… but also imho boring and empty
Murata did an EPIC SF style as soon they asked him to do SF stuff, and he’s not even a vg artist
Straight great understanding and interpretation of SF chars, SO loyal to theyr spirit
Sure, there was lot of Murata too, but it just mixed so well
When Shinkiro does SF is just Shinkiro (wearing for 5 minutes a red headband) doing Shinkiro stuff
SFV is already a deviation, mostly because evolution of SF style is not same direction of follow marketing winds
SF4 had better spirit, just poor tech and execution
I mean he has improved since CFE and used more artistic techniques but he’s still far from most of the other artists and not quite past the “boring character standing with 1 arm raised” style that plagued his SNK art.
As for SF4, as much as it looks ugly, there’s no denying that there is the core SF identity. Trust me, SFV trend-driven look is going to age VERY quickly when SF6 comes out. I’ll admit some of SFV’s stuff makes me cringe so much.
I also fail to see how SF4+V look anything like Pixar.
No. The problem with HD Remix is that Udon had no experience with animation. They created frames as if they were singular pin-up pieces that existed in a vacuum, without any concern given to how frames would flow together. Further, seemingly none of the artists at Udon could keep any measure of consistency between pieces. Some even failed at basic anatomy. And IMO the Udon art wasn’t even that good (and I say that as someone who liked some of their comic book work). Some of the art was downright sloppy.
Then they decided to try to force SFA-style character designs into SF2’s body volumes.
They didn’t even seem to understand the poses that some of the frames depicted. For example, an artist accidentally changed Sagat’s leg length by several inches because he confused Sagat’s ankle and foot wraps during one of Sagat’s kicks.
Then they just copy-pasted SF Revival head onto their HD sprites, even when the original art didn’t match the head pose of the sprite.
That is why HD Remix’s sprites looked bad in motion. It was even worse during the beta, when people referred to Ryu’s animation as Ryu suffering a seizure. These problems were known pretty much from the beginning. The moment early art work was posted online, people started listing all the issues with it, and the problems that would (and did) eventually arise, but the project stubbornly soldiered on and resisted fixing such issues.
It was a project that, due to constant mismanagement and inexperience, was pretty much doomed from the start. It never even reached the point where you could judge whether you actually could get decent hi-res sprite animation out of SF2 body shapes.
Just to note, ASW used Unreal Engine 3 for Xrd Sign. They did modify the engine to allow bone scaling, which wasn’t natively supported. Not that the engine itself is some critical factor. Just look at Team Ninja, using the Dynasty Warriors 9 engine to build Dead or Alive 6…
Pretty much everything about ASW’s process has been made publicly available for years, and can be replicated by anyone willing to put in the work. Even one of the more time-consuming parts, the manual tweaking of normals, was done with off-the-shelf software.
Of course if Capcom copied ASW’s style, then they’d still just be viewed as blatantly imitating the art style of their competition. The only way to avoid the negative hit on their reputation would be to come up with some visual twist or spin to make it their process, or to just outdo ASW by leaps and bounds. Either approach would require addition work, expense, and risk, without any guarantee that 6-12 months later they wouldn’t have to admit they failed.
That’s assuming that Capcom even wanted to take that approach in the first place, which they apparently didn’t. Though I guess you could say that we haven’t seen enough yet to be sure that Capcom won’t try to go that route, since SFV was already aimed at a different style while MvCI was aimed at looking like an MCU product.
So I was fortunate to come across this rare beauty:
A Vampire Saviour calendar poster by Hideki Ishikawa (known for his work as lead artist+designer for the 1996-2002 Megaman games and character designer for Alpha 3 an other late 90’s Capcom fighting games)
There isn’t a higher quality image available and this appears to the only image of this art on the internet so this is as rare as it gets. On a side note, while H.Ishikawa’s Giant Robo/Astro Boy inspired look is great for MM, it’s not great for SF IMO.
Yes mostly were true but to clarify that point it wasn’t JUST because Udon has no experience, in fact they hired a studio but with Udon’s art direction to be used as a style guide.
Yes it was true that Udon art direction is change is the body] physique /volume of the sprites to look it more modern SF but _it’s direct sprite by sprite copy of the original in motion so like the original SF2 with minor changes in body physique of the characters. In other words what UDON do is just mostly SKINNED the sprite with hi-resolution art.
The problems is that Udon is just skinning the whole thing ST dreamcast game, they need to keep the frame counts as is to be almost the same to position of the body parts from the original SF2 sprites.
Why they need to keep it? This is the answer because the intentions was an update of the game which we all know that uses frames.
And also another thing to consider is they might be restricted in using the ST engine that was dated.
This one is the proto which animates more fluid than the finalized result
But it cannot be used because it might had required different frame counts for as it would progress to other movement
and that’s what the technique I’m talking about exactly Animation Principles.
Even a decent modern day studio whatever you would think would require to used the animation principles nowadays to make it look better, but the problem is they would be limited to be just skinning the ST sprites in exact body parts position.
Agree because that’s what a better artist can do have his style but without making the character look like a different person/altering the visual structure or making it person that cosplays the character.
In visual standpoint is not just clothes, color and body physique that symbolize the character but also the most important is the facial structure which many modern day artist intentionally disregard even they knew they can keep the face because they just want to imprint their own preference.
I remember 90s editorial caricature in tabloids which everyone is required to be drawn in a deformed proportion in black and white that the character is required to change clothes with the face as the strong significance to identity the character every issues.
I like artist that can draw Ryu art in casual clothes not in red and white colors, without also the headband, but still looks like Ryu.
Actually Arcsys guys have the Dirty Berret team which are part of DS dev. I have no problem future SF becoming cellshaded, My point is it’s not that easy with the current Capcom. Current Capcom is not the Capcom we used to know.
Actually it’s not that easy as it seems, like I said Namco Bandai instead did a partnership in DBFZ case rather than develop of their own. It’s a custom engine which based on GDC was made for a long time it was even scrapped before but restored again for XRD.
They may explain it how it works but it doesn’t exactly explain how it was made.
Companies had strick policies regarding asset in those thing like source code or logic. They cmay openly talk in public about the process in a non-technical jargon but not in how the were construct in a more technical detail. There are complication looking in the structure when implementing those.
SF couldnt exist using the same technique used by ASW. Alternate costumes are a big part of modern SF.
Maybe a smaller scale game like a prequel with young Gouken and pre Satsui Gouki (Street Fighter Legends) could get away with it.
How I wish Capcom can make a consistent Ryu that can wear casual clothes in alt but still Ryu. Very Ryu in facial structure rather than just color and clothing. Something like Goku and Superman(80s-90s) that has more defined facial features that standout.
Yes, the original intention was to use Udon to create a few key frames for various characters, and then outsource the bulk of the work to an overseas studio.
But here again is where Udon’s lack of experience and lack of consistency reared its ugly head. The work Udon created was useless for that purpose. I believe it was David Sirlin that tried to spin it as Udon’s work was simply too highly detailed for the overseas studio to handle. But that was pure PR spin. A lot of the art had already been released publicly, and it was clearly just too inconsistent to be usable as guides. How do you draw Ken when one frame has granted him a brand new muscle group between his bicep and tricep? How do you draw Guile’s camo pattern when you have two guide images that have different patterns?
I’m not even referring to adding additional detail between existing SF2 sprites. I mean that Udon didn’t even bother to be consistent between the images that they created. Even SF2’s limited sprites flow into each other. If your task is to redraw the existing sprites, then you need to keep that in mind throughout the process. But Udon ignored that flow; Udon created frames as if they were stand-alone art.
Which, again, is why the animation was so much worse in the beta. Ryu’s new sprites had been drawn without concern for how they’d animate. After the animation was met with heavy ridicule, they went back and adjusted the art work so that it flowed better. But again that should have been in their minds from the very beginning of the project, even before the outsourcing fell through, not something they only learned after holding a beta test.
And really, that Ryu sprite honestly isn’t that impressive. It is something of a waste of the resolution. I don’t know how others feel, but it really stands out to me that the head was drawn by a different (better) artist and simply pasted (or lightboxed) onto the sprite with newly animated hair. Ryu’s right hand also seems to be in a really uncomfortable position; it isn’t rotated that far in the original SF2 sprites.
X-Kira saying that all characters will be getting a second character story chapter added. I actually find this more plausible than a second General Story.
It would make sense in the context of Capcom recently reducing FM reward. These stories could also directly or indirectly lead into the SF6 plot.
Then again, it seems like a lot of work. How will they add them all? SSFV?
The GDC talk gave enough information to recreate the effect, though you’d either have to use an engine that supported bone scaling or add that yourself. If you’ve already got bone scaling support, it doesn’t seem terrible difficult to code for the rest. Other interviews covered other aspects, such as how stages were designed.
That, however, is only part of the equation. The other part is the art and experience of creating the actual characters. Even if ASW flat out gave you all of their tools, you’d still be starting from scratch when it came to actually creating content. You’d have to learn to create concept art around the strengths and weaknesses of the system. You’d have to learn to create meshes designed to work with how the UV/texturing system works. You’d have to learn how to tweak the lighting normals to produce your desired results. Etc. None of that is impossible, but it is going to take time, and time is money.
In the long run, it is simply easier to hire ASW to do it all themselves. Which is what Namco Bandai did. Why spend all that time and money learning to do what someone else with more experience already does better, faster, and cheaper than you? Particularly when it is a process that is built around the idea of being used in a 1v1 2D fighting game, and likely won’t translate as well (if at all) to other genres.
As for Capcom, they outsourced SFV’s model work. Either Capcom did so to save money or save time/work, if not both. Those two things are pretty much the opposite of what you’d need to copy ASW’s process.
The problem is SF6 can possibly change style (as many find lot of SFV models ugly) while cancelling also important stuff that make SF art SF art, then you lose it
This is SFV plague almost everytime some char looks ugly or off
But again, that happen when you take somebody as style (and talent if we want to be harsh) so far from SF, as soon he took a minimal artistic freedom, it stands out like a crap in chocolate box
Call Ikeno and tell him to do them all in a day.
For further savings, use a single narrator for them all.
Slap ads and product placement in the stories.
Then charge players FM for playing them.
