Heh, a few months ago I wanted to submit some news about SNK Playmore launching a site about the "Dot Art" in King of Fighters XII; no good since the site was in Japanese I'm afraid. But lo and behold, now it's in English!
SNK's artist are some of the most talented pixel pushers in the gaming industry when it comes to their games, so it's great to take a look at these awesome High Def sprites. Not only that, but when people browse the site, they can view some of the basic animations FRAME by FRAME.
I think it's neat personally. :P The site also has a nice little page devoted to "dot art" and the crazy process of creating the graphics for the game.
hmmm, to me this feels a bit like combining the limitations of pixel art with the limitations of 3d animation rather than the strangths of either. 2d isn't about looking like a clean rendering and 3d isn't about framecount, so why take those two aspects and leave out what makes either beautiful?
they look to be a mix, which you cant really blame them for since the scene is a huge image that would take ages to get polished. im wondering if theyre animated more than anything.
the characters in the stage background are pixeled for sure tho
I think I've seen them before, but It was fun to read. I think the sprites look pretty good, but could be more pixel finished. Are the stages pixeled? The egypt one looks badass.
i was comparing one of snk's game's art quality to what fool does, i couldnt really say that fool has metal slug quality stuff because im not talking about fools stuff. anyways.
what i meant is metal slug is HAZ OMG AUWSUM DOTZARTZ!!111!!
lol i love how people compare stuff to other stuff and it would be the other way around
"fool has metal slug quality" :p
Dot Art.
I lol every time I see such awesome display of Engrish language.
Let's build dot art for big congratulation!
" ick no I don't like those sprites at all. Maybe it's just that I've never liked SNK's art style but I just find those to be really patchy and ugly."
dont forget theyre the makers of metal slug. which has fool quality stuff
the sprites might not have the greatest detail, but considering the high framerate, resolution and smoothness of these things the quality is superb. not to mention theres 22 characters and probably more with 4 animations which are probably pretty damn long
compare it to the choppy blocky animation of some sf games and its damn nice
the shading style is quite uniqe and nice imo and the prerendering made for some damn nice accurate shadow play on the character
It's not bad, although there's not much to look at when you zoom in. It's not very refined on the pixel level. But, overall, I like it. I think the backgrounds are the most interesting to me. I'm gonna print screen and make some local copies so I can look at them in finer detail. I'm very impressed with how they integrated the pixels with more painterly stuff. I think it's the most successful integration of the two I've seen yet. There's a lot to be learned here for people interested in that sort of thing. The animations are disappointing, though. I'm even noticing a drop in quality with the more recent animations.
They kind of 'oops!'ed on the Stadium:daytime level, as the reflection of the lightposts furthest from the camera don't line up with the posts they are a reflection of. Other than that, I respect their level of detail but it is certainly not as organic as real pixel art.
"Dot Creation 02 - Make a 3D Model of the Concept, Create Suitable Animations"
Totally agree with Wolv and jam
The graphics in this game really are amazing.
In my opinion, though, they probably should have been working at about twice the size they did. I think that would have prevented the "Jaggy" edges everyone's complaining about.
Great. I was looking at the top one, (the pseudo-tutorial thing) and i think i like better him before the last (shading)step...
HOLY SCHITT!! They truly are devoted to the awesome 2D element. And their work, talent, and perserverance is unmatched. The Japanese don't fuk around when it comes to stuff like this. I may find inspiration as well as admiration for SNK.
What I noticed is that they use a ton of hugged buffer shades, especially on pant legs. It's not exactly banding, but it looks... odd. It's the sort of thing I'd tut at someone for.
ick no I don't like those sprites at all. Maybe it's just that I've never liked SNK's art style but I just find those to be really patchy and ugly.
Great site! love to see the process and be able to play with the animations. Thanks.
Hatch: Deffinitely they will...
And well, I seen that, this girl I know posted it on a journal in DA, and I was checking the frames and stuff... I was like WTF at first too since it was in japanese, but then I found the button on the lower right end to turn it around.
It's interesting in my opinion, although at first I was hoping it was a tutorial, not an article.
I find it adorable that they call it "dot art".
Also, I estimate, conservatively, that they would get 16 times more visitors if they included Mai. Frame-by-frame...
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I still prefer Garou Densetsu over KOFXII any time.