Even Yuji Naka didnt want a cutesy funny Sonic

[Marco9966]

1 minute ago, Tracker_TD said:

Yeah. I do digital paintings and all that fun stuff too. Kind of what I said, innit.

I still highly doubt you are incredibly well-trained in those fields on the basis of a hobby. At the risk of veering even further off topic, if you've got some examples I'd be glad to be proven wrong, but it seems more like you want to sound smart in the name of suiting your bias than anything. I don't see how non-descriptive Photoshop skills are relevant to the critique of LW's lighting and modelling, either.

I mean I'm not Feng Zhu either, but it's a passion.

But do you want to talk about lost world colors's lack of nuance and saturation to the extreme?

[superman43]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

I mean I'm not Feng Zhu either, but it's a passion.

But do you want to talk about lost world colors's lack of nuance and saturation to the extreme?

Given how they built Colors environment for the Wii, I still wonder how they could suck with Lost World on Wii U. Maybe the "success" of Generations was the point ? By "success" I mean success in the respective era.

[Tracker_TD]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

I mean I'm not Feng Zhu either, but it's a passion.

But do you want to talk about lost world colors's lack of nuance and saturation to the extreme?

I'm so glad I've lived to see "graphic design is my passion" invoked unironically.

...anyway, no. Because to be honest the colour palette was pretty consistent with what I'd expect from a Sonic game. It was the geometry that threw me off, if anything. 

It's bright and colourful. Like a sizeable amount of Sonic games tend to be.

[Marco9966]

2 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

I'm so glad I've lived to see "graphic design is my passion" invoked unironically.

...anyway, no. Because to be honest the colour palette was pretty consistent with what I'd expect from a Sonic game. It was the geometry that threw me off, if anything. 

It's bright and colourful. Like a sizeable amount of Sonic games tend to be.

Sonic Colors is better for a 3D game.

[superman43]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

Sonic Colors is better.

No one takes that from you. The environment is, for the large part of it.

[Tracker_TD]

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

Sonic Colors is better.

I agree. But I still don't think Lost World's palette is particularly out of line. 

[Marco9966]

Just now, Tracker_TD said:

I agree. But I still don't think Lost World's palette is particularly out of line. 

Yeah palette is good, I guess for a better wording I should be talking about rendering or color variations.

[superman43]

1 minute ago, Tracker_TD said:

I agree. But I still don't think Lost World's palette is particularly out of line. 

It´s not. Just the overall appearance makes the LW environment dull. 

[Indigo Rush]

14 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

I mean I'm not Feng Zhu either, but it's a passion.

But do you want to talk about lost world colors's lack of nuance and saturation to the extreme?

You're kinda sidestepping the original discussion, though. I thought we were talking about how the Deadly Six were somehow intrinsically worse than monsters like Iblis.

My opinion, by the way, is that both aren't very interesting, but Iblis is far less interesting to me than the Deadly Six, and I hate the Deadly Six. They have relatively simple designs and color schemes (matching the pastel inclinations of general Sonic design traits), defining (albeit flat) personalities and motivations (they want to get back at Eggman for imprisoning them), and play a consistent role in the story.

Iblis is a spiky wad of lava with eyes and a very basic backstory with no personality, no motivation, and only exists to burn things. Shows up once or twice I think. You lob rocks at him and he goes away maybe. His character design might be detailed, but it isn't recognizable in a silhouette apart from any other generic kaiju monster whereas characters like Sonic, Eggman and even the Deadly Six are easy to pick out. 

If your only argument for superiority is that characters like Iblis have more intricate details in their design, and nothing else, then I have to flatly disagree with what you want out of the series. It's perfectly possible to have a good balance of light and dark themes in a game series about a cartoon character like Sonic, and it doesn't need to rely on an abundance of grotesque B movie monsters to pull it off. Subtlety in presentation via gameplay can present a good, thoughtful story without a word of dialogue and can elicit an emotional response just as well; it can create tension and fear without using generic edgy monsters or demonic elder gods.

So to answer the original question you presented (with an image macro, no less), I prefer the colorful anthros on the left to the chewed up spicy gum wad on the right.

[Marco9966]

My point is about the rendering and color variations, not palette and hue choice per say.

Here's an example of progress by the artist Ross Tran. Both have good color palettes, but notice in the second more care has been taken for shadow and light and rendering

 

Like Sonic Lost World vs the other modern games.

[Wraith]

If anything Sonic Colors looked a little washed out to me a lot of the time.

I'm not against moody stuff in Sonic(I tend to like those levels the most) but Sonic Colors feels like a game that should pop but doesn't. It's a little weird. 

 

DISCLAIMER I know nothing about color theory.

[Tracker_TD]

Just now, Josh said:

If anything Sonic Colors looked a little washed out to me a lot of the time.

I'm not against moody stuff in Sonic(I tend to like those levels the most) but Sonic Colors feels like a game that should pop but doesn't. It's a little weird. 

 

DISCLAIMER I know nothing about color theory.

Yeah, I can actually agree with this. Part of me wonders if it's the Wii making things look muddy due to its limitations, but then I remember games that really pop like Galaxy and it feels kinda odd. 

I'd actually completely forgotten about this until you pointed it out, good shout. 

[Diogenes]

Y'know I'm not going to claim to be an expert on these things but comparing Windy Hill to Forces GHZ, in spite of the flak the former gets for being too "simple" or minimalist, the latter looks more sterile and fake to me.

Forces GHZ may be more realistically rendered, but that only highlights how fake it looks. The grass is all the same length with the same repeating stripes, the checkers are all equally sized and plastered across whole blocks, it looks like astroturf stapled on cardboard boxes. Windy Hill has more variation in its patterns, with various solid and checkered blocks legoed or tetrised together to make up larger blocks and the grass having a similar patchwork look in terms of color plus the square wave edges. It's more heavily stylized, but in a coherent way, where Forces GHZ is sort of falling into the uncanny valley, as much as that can apply to locations.

I'd also say Windy Hill seems to have more foreground detail objects, but Forces GHZ has more far background objects, and it's debatable which is providing more benefit.

e: and for comparison, Generations' GHZ:

Which I think is a lot more successful take on a "realistic" GHZ with more organic shapes helping to vary up the patterns and a lot of (maybe too much?) detail but personally I'm still more of a fan of Lost World's heavy stylization, deliberately surreal geometric designs, and highly saturated colors.

[SBR2]

26 minutes ago, superman43 said:

It´s not. Just the overall appearance makes the LW environment dull. 

Everyone always says things like this but honestly LW doesn't look any different than any other game to me.

[Wraith]

I don't like that both hills look really fake and lifeless.

Generations was before both of these games and it did a better job making the place look organic despite how crazy it is as a concept. All the ledges and ridges feel handcrafted and randomly jagged and not like Sonic Team just went through with a paste tool to create some perfectly rounded squares. 

 

That's kind of the key. If something looks too clean and organized, it looks manmade and artificial. Making things look more organic takes more effort because you have to tweak everything to make the player feel like they aren't passing the same pieces of geometry over and over, but it's worth it.

it also just looks a lot more lively in Generations despite the other games coming later. It feels like I'm actually looking at a classic game.

DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about environmental design.

[Marco9966]

7 minutes ago, Josh said:

I don't like that both hills look really fake and lifeless.

Generations was before both of these games and it did a better job making the place look organic despite how crazy it is as a concept. All the ledges and ridges feel handcrafted and randomly jagged and not like Sonic Team just went through with a paste tool to create some perfectly rounded squares. 

 

That's kind of the key. If something looks too clean and organized, it looks manmade and artificial. Making things look more organic takes more effort because you have to tweak everything to make the player feel like they aren't passing the same pieces of geometry over and over, but it's worth it.

it also just looks a lot more lively in Generations despite the other games coming later. It feels like I'm actually looking at a classic game.



DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about environmental design.

You're right it looks AWESOME compared to the other too.

[StaticMania]

Compared to the others...

You didn't really need to put down the others  again...

[Marco9966]

7 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Compared to the others...

You didn't really need to put down the others  again...

I didn't put them down, I just said that this version looks better than the others.

[superman43]

3 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

I didn't put them down, I just said that this version looks better than the others.

That exactly I see as a problem in the franchise. There are just people that have some regards to the games (be it classics or Adventure or Unleashed, Colors, LW, Forces) that when you say something like this... that it was done right in there, the people just talk about you letting down everything else.

People should regard games where it´s due, that´s why I don´t hate any Sonic game that much, but man, Generations did a hell lot of good job to think of Sonic in a really 3D environment. Not the gameplay, but the touches for the surroundings are astonishing.

And everyone is letting down 06. Not Lost World. I take all that 06 done wrong (or that it was still WIP, thus done wrong) but it still has some, even if little, spirit. That´s the end of my poetical speech. Good night.

[Marco9966]

4 minutes ago, superman43 said:

That exactly I see as a problem in the franchise. There are just people that have some regards to the games (be it classics or Adventure or Unleashed, Colors, LW, Forces) that when you say something like this... that it was done right in there, the people just talk about you letting down everything else.

People should regard games where it´s due, that´s why I don´t hate any Sonic game that much, but man, Generations did a hell lot of good job to think of Sonic in a really 3D environment. Not the gameplay, but the touches for the surroundings are astonishing.

And everyone is letting down 06. Not Lost World. I take all that 06 done wrong (or that it was still WIP, thus done wrong) but it still has some, even if little, spirit. That´s the end of my poetical speech. Good night.

Yeah the generations versions is the best. (despite me disagreeing with its story premise)

And as far as I read, everybody let down both.

[Badnik Mechanic]

3 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

Lost World 

Looks like a PS1 game.

The following are PS1 games of the same genre within a similar environment.

They look like a PS1 game in that they are set in a green stage. 

 

Is that what you meant?

[Marco9966]

1 minute ago, Mayor D said:

The following are PS1 games of the same genre within a similar environment.

They look like a PS1 game in that they are set in a green stage. 

 

Is that what you meant?

Not that, just the lazy graphics. (of course in PS1 it was good for the time)

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 hour ago, Marco9966 said:

lazy graphics

I'm a third year computer science student who has studied 2D graphics and 3D graphics.

I have no clue what the term 'lazy graphics' means.

Edit: I just googled it... nobody has ever used it, even google scholar is stumped.

[Marco9966]

Just now, Mayor D said:

I'm a third year computer science student who has studied 2D graphics and 3D graphics.

I have no clue what the term 'lazy graphics' means.

Colors was released on an older console and it looked better.

[StaticMania]

Just now, Mayor D said:

I have no clue what the term 'lazy graphics' means.

I think it means..."I don't like it"...just guessing.