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Author Topic: Creeping Graphical Sameyness  (Read 40304 times)

Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #60 on: March 24, 2015, 02:45:11 AM »
Why do you want a cartoon character to have distinguishable hairs on his face anyway? That would be creepy as hell.
I don't.  I like my Mario cartoony.  I'm saying they shouldn't have photorealistic fabric textures if they're not willing to follow through.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

« Reply #61 on: March 25, 2015, 12:54:06 PM »
Mario Kart 8 is full-stop gorgeous if you ask me. I want that art team on every Nintendo project. Their take on Hyrule is fantastic, their take on Mute City is spectacular, every other track in the game is breathtaking, I love it.

So much this. That game looks incredible!
Relics.

Boo Dudley

  • This is not a secret page hint
« Reply #62 on: April 01, 2015, 03:42:57 PM »
I think this an excellent case-in-point for the importance for fresh IPs. M&L1's character designs were fresh but the game wasn't a Marioverse game in the first place, so it's likely they were altered just so so they'd mesh with whatever predominate aesthetic was already in situ.

I adore the game; it is to date the most Charlie Nozawa-ish Mario game. But as time draws on, I wish it remained Tomato Adventure 2 and allowed to build its own 'verse. Instead it's just footnote to a bloated franchise.

Of course it wouldn't have sold nearly as well, but that'd been our fault.

The Chef

  • Super
« Reply #63 on: April 01, 2015, 04:37:39 PM »
Er, who said it was ever Tomato Adventure 2?

Boo Dudley

  • This is not a secret page hint
« Reply #64 on: April 01, 2015, 06:02:27 PM »
My senesence, apparently! Don't argue with it!

Regardless, M&L does share a style, closer than what was directed towards Yoichi Kotabe's later on.

Even if it wasn't a rebrand, it's telling that Alpha Dream never did a follow-up to Tomato Adventure, but four M&Ls. The latter has entirely supplemented the former. Maybe they don't care one way or the other, maybe they had no intention of continuing TA,  but an idiosyncratic vision wouldn't have vanished if there wasn't a precedent to diverge from.

The Chef

  • Super
« Reply #65 on: April 01, 2015, 06:05:42 PM »
....senesence?

Sqrt2

  • 1.41421356
« Reply #66 on: June 11, 2015, 06:18:01 PM »
I don't see what the issue is, to be quite honest. I think keeping the designs the same is a good thing in terms of recognisability, rather than a bad one.
AA fanboy and proud!

Turtlekid1

  • Tortuga
« Reply #67 on: June 12, 2015, 11:56:58 AM »
At the same time, I don't think the changes in character sprites between the early games had people scratching their heads as to who this new guy on screen was.
"It'll say life is sacred and so is death
but death is life and so we move on"

WarpRattler

  • Paid by the word
« Reply #68 on: June 12, 2015, 12:02:43 PM »
There's a good bit of truth to what Sqrt2 says. From a game design standpoint, recognizable and consistent silhouettes are more important than the sort of "uniqueness" discussed in this thread. This is a big part of why alternate outfits in games like Street Fighter IV are a bad thing for competitive players; when you have costumes that completely change a character's silhouette and muddy up otherwise distinctive animations, it becomes much harder to visually read a character.

That said, there's no problem with having distinct designs within different Mario sub-series, especially since significantly different designs can function in different ways (compare biped and quadruped varieties of Dry Bones).

BP

  • Beside Pacific
« Reply #69 on: June 12, 2015, 02:10:42 PM »
In Paper Mario and M&L's cases it's the same thing as when, say, you have an artist who draws a pokémon so on-model that at first glance you don't know it's not a Ken Sugimori original



versus, when you have somebody following the example but doing their own thing,







which carries a bit of personality. In an entire game's case, it conveys a tone. Paper Mario looks like it wants to get you invested, but not be taken TOO seriously. M&L:SS looks like it wants you to laugh.
All your dreeeeeeams begiiin to shatterrrrrr~
It's YOUR problem!

CrossEyed7

  • i can make this whatever i want; you're not my dad
« Reply #70 on: June 12, 2015, 08:26:57 PM »
Yeah, when characters always look exactly the same from game to game, there's no real art direction for individual games. Everything kinda just looks like New Super Mario Bros. Less Mario & Sonic Olympicses, more Mario Strikerses.

(One reason I don't like the idea of "Smash Kart" is that Mario Kart has been around for so long that they're almost forced to come up with their own original ideas for locations to fill out an entire set of courses, whereas if it was just a crossover kart racing game from the beginning, there'd just be a couple of generic Mario courses with a couple of nods to recent games. Smash Kart would never have places like Neo Bowser City, Wild Woods, or Super Bell Subway.)
"Oh man, I wish being a part of a Mario fan community was the most embarrassing thing about my life." - Super-Jesse

BP

  • Beside Pacific
« Reply #71 on: June 12, 2015, 10:42:28 PM »
Hmm... now that I think about it... I still think the above is true, but consider: Luigi's voice was never nailed down until 16 years in, in Luigi's Mansion. I didn't even realize Spikes were a recurring thing until NSMBU, because they looked so different in Super Mario 3, Yoshi's Island, Yoshi's Story and NSMBDS, they weren't called Spikes in Paper Mario and didn't do the same thing they usually do, and it was not mentioned that Tolstar was a Spike in Mario & Luigi: SS and he looked a little different. Something as simple as Yoshi's body type has varied and varied and varied and varied. Maybe the real problem is that Mario simply took forever to reach a point that it started to be consistent at all. And maybe now that it has, it's just that there's no way everything can settle on the designs that any one person liked the most.
All your dreeeeeeams begiiin to shatterrrrrr~
It's YOUR problem!

The Chef

  • Super
« Reply #72 on: June 13, 2015, 03:19:11 AM »
They looked different enough in Yoshi's Island that Nintendo Power misnamed them "Mace Penguins", which is pretty funny in retrospect.

« Reply #73 on: December 18, 2015, 12:02:33 PM »
A trend towards graphical sameyness is also noticable when comparing Super Mario 64 N64 to Super Mario 64 DS. I'm posting a comparison of Bowser's appearance and the Boos and Boss Basses were changed to their usual looks in the DS version.




The Chef

  • Super
« Reply #74 on: December 18, 2015, 06:28:54 PM »
While you're definitely right about the trend evident in that particular game, I have some additional information that I'd like to clarify.

Firstly, it is important to remember that Boss Bass is named Kyodai Pukupuku (巨大プクプク) in Japan.

The enemy you see there is actually not Boss Bass, but a similar one named Bakubaku (バクバク) in Japan and "Bubba" by Nintendo Power.

"Bubba" would indeed later be redesigned to look like a carbon copy of Boss Bass in SM64DS, making his redundancy all the more evident. However, he'd later reappear in New Super Mario Bros. where they gave him a more distinct purple color. Granted, it's not as distinct as the yellow fish with glasses but at least he doesn't look like a generic Cheep-Cheep anymore. Nintendo Power must've thought he was a new enemy or something, because they ended up renaming him "Cheep-Chomp" in this game.

Speaking of Cheep-Cheeps, their appearances on the N64 is the most unique they've ever looked, being yellow with bright orange fins and goggles (like a Blurp). They looked unique enough that Nintendo Power apparently thought they were a new enemy entirely and named them "Bub". It took until Mario Party 3 for NoA to get their name right. Naturally, in SM64DS they appear with their bog standard red-with-white fins design, which is kind of a bummer.

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