So elemental has been taking flak from every direction now, but one part that has been mentioned in countless reviews, but not really taken life in a discussion here: the artwork.
This entails models, textures, animations, particle effects, ui, and most importantly, the general art direction of the whole game.
I'll be starting about characters, and will add this paintover of Procipinee I did:
Relias:
Why was the direction chosen to have the texture be added on with an alpha on an existing color, wouldn't have both been easier and look better if a full character texture was hue-colorized according to the alpha instead.
Faces seem to be lacking some proper interesting shapes, and noses especially seems to be suffering.
Lips/mouth is mostly tightly shut and there's no hint of underlying musculature around it, which makes them look applied rather than a part of the face.
While I like the eye selection, they are lacking some handpainted reflection to really help sell them as living eyes.
Eyebrows are way more important then what the game makes them be, they should be a part of and as varied as the eye selection.
The hair has wig-like qualities and mostly look like coloured blobs on the heads,
The textures could benefit a bit more from hand painted occlusion under nose, head, and other such areas.
ps, I'm starting this much with the same reason everyone else starts gameplay threads: I really want this game to be good.
This does look alot better, they should take your advice.
Good work here, the face actually has a lot more 'character' now
eldrone, you did a good job, it is definitely better than the original. The original somehow looks washed out. I don't know if this is due to particular style, or just result of trying to get art done as fast as possible.
On the other hand, maybe the original is a closer match to customizable character appearance in game.
^ bump
Looking forward to seeing where this thread goes.
So basically you think your art looks better than their art? Um. Yeah. The both look about the same to me and what these kind of portraits look like has to be the least of anyone's concerns except maybe an artist who thinks their stuff looks better.
Wow, that is a major improvement over the game's default art. The problem is, how do I apply this to my custom characters? lol, I'm not too great of an artist.
But seriously, looks very good. How long did it take you to do her?
"How long did it take you to do her?"
Be carefull; this may be taken out of context
On a more serious note: I hope they take your advice and "brush" things up a little.
I agree, as I would have much preferred the character cards to all be done with the illustrated look, as opposed to the rendered 3D model. I'm not entirely sure why, but the illustrated cards just look so much better to me. A bit more epic in feel I think.
Looks way better than the original. Good job! As it is, the models in game look very inorganic and unnatural. Hopefully there will be a graphics and art style overhaul with later expansions after the game play has been brought up to par with the conceptual intent.
Because the majority of the time, you're not going to be close enough to the models to notice? Even in tactical, you're not often going to be zooming in close enough to see eyeshine. Does it look better? Maybe. But it's not getting much bang for buck outside of the large character portraits.
While i really like the art in the game i have to say that the example that is given here is a vast improvement. i would love to see the art take this direction.
It was just a 15 minutes or so, just a quick paintover on a screenshot.
As to those wondering what the point would be, well, first of all, the cart and character portraits, any just about any time you do zoom in., but it's more than that, it's about getting way more out of the same worktime and hardware-budget that the game uses now.And at the same time, any changes to general silhuette and colour values will be visible until the units vanish into the clothmap.
This style is very much possible to achieve in game even though this is a paintover.
I would also very much like to prove my point with some real world example too, by creating a custom head and texture when the exporter tools are released.
That. Looks. Amazing.
Porcipinee looks like a real woman now instead of a blow-up doll
Do you want Stardock to email you a hand-drawn portrait every time you create a custom character?
Yeah, they are pretty shitty looking, but your version is impractical. How do you make a portrait look like that and still make it customizable?
look alot better
I prefer the left portrait to the right one.
am i the only one who actually quite likes the way the game looks right now? i mean, the interface is horrible (tiny menu buttons, huge screen eating unorganised spellbook), but most of the ingame stuff looks great as far as i can see. getting the game to run smoothly with those settings is another matter however.
As I said, I'm going to create a new ingame head model along with textures once the model exporting tools are released, to prove that this is functional and nothing out of the ordinary.
Edit: added in a male face comparison
I actually prefer the default portraits. I thought one thing elemental does extremely well is achieving a very original aesthetic unity.
But to the OP: you should make a reskin mod! I'm sure people would love it!
Ah, I see. Well, then I'm looking forward to it (if I re-purchase the game a couple months from now when it is polished).
I'm not affiliated with our art department in any way, but I really like what you've done with these paint overs. I think what really makes them more attractive than the in game render is the small details like facial expressions. The only sort of facial animation we have at the moment is blinking, and I think it shows if you ever get a zoomed in look at a character, like in the unit cards. Thanks again for the feedback.
Also the side by sides are much like those misleading cosmetic before and after shots. The entire image in your photoshopped items are more saturated and lighter, not just the faces were changed. That leads to the overall image looking better but again does not provide a fair comparison if we're supposed to be looking for differences in the faces.
Those are really good looking! I sincerely hope you can prove you're right and we all soon get a chance to download your model, I would love those portraits in my game!
Can you please explain what you mean by 'wouldn't have both been easier and look better if a full character texture was hue-colorized according to the alpha instead.'
As it stands we can colour the underlying model so I thought the alpha worked quite well allowing us to use the same texture on multiple models - each having the capacity for different tones underneath.
No A whole new body texture wouldn't take 15 minutes, that's true, it would probably be closer to a few hours but would look way better than this 15 minute scribble, and it's only going to be a diffuse, no extra passes or more expensive things.
The better colours could be misleading, but it's something I'm also doing in realtime and IN GAME with just with some extra shader instructions, wouldn't I be doing this I would still saturate the heck out of the texture anyway.
Would the game be adjusted with these colours from the start I wouldn't have to do this in the shader to start with.
Thanks, I probably wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the fact that I'm getting passionate for this game for some reason.
The art team has done some great things, but some things have taken some really strange direction which really doesn't show all those assets in their best., like a really painterly world, but suddenly desaturated and green when it would look much better with more colour, and massive use of post effects that burn out the image which could be toned down a bit.
Instead of picking colour by overlaying the texture on a colour with alpha deciding transparency, the shader would tint the end result using the alpha as a mask, it might make things easier, but I'm not completely decided on that yet.
Same result, but some interesting things like hue-changes would be possible.
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