Topic: Harmony of Despair (The next Castlevania game?)

[Dremn]

Richter's artwork looks AWESOME, SOOOOOO glad they used his original design. That was always my favorite design of Richter.

It would be awesome to see Kojima's take on of all the original designs of the Belmonts and other characters, like John Morris and Eric Lecarde.

[Profbeanburrito]

Richter's artwork looks AWESOME, SOOOOOO glad they used his original design. That was always my favorite design of Richter.

It would be awesome to see Kojima's take on of all the original designs of the Belmonts and other characters, like John Morris and Eric Lecarde.

Yeah it would be awesome to see her take on classic characters. I would love to see her design for CV 3 Trevor, Grant, Sypha and Alucard and some official art for Christopher and Soliyu/ Soleil

[Dremn]

If Simon is even considered I can see them using his Super Castlevania IV sprites. It already has everything he needs, the rest of his animations they can easily edit and make themselves with little effort. His sprite is already roughly the same size as the other characters so it would work perfectly.

[X]

Simon's character sprite is actually taller then Richter.

-X

[thernz]

Then again, Simon is Simon.
Even if his sprite is also drastically out of style.

[affinity]

Richter's artwork looks AWESOME, SOOOOOO glad they used his original design. That was always my favorite design of Richter.

agreed!   

[corneliab]

Richter's gameplay looks janky as hell. Just like PoR.

[Valtiel]

Richter's artwork looks AWESOME, SOOOOOO glad they used his original design. That was always my favorite design of Richter.

It would be awesome to see Kojima's take on of all the original designs of the Belmonts and other characters, like John Morris and Eric Lecarde.

It's just meh to me. It's miles better than her take on Simon for sure, but it's still knee deep in girly-men land. He does not look like a freak like Simon did, and he's at least somewhat similar to the Rondo design.

However, this perfectly highlights my issues with Kojima. Her style is awesome, but she's about as flexible as a titanium bar, and I still think she should adapt to the game instead of bending the game around her style. She apparently can't draw short hair, so Richter's design has to be changed. Meh.

[thernz]

I don't know. There aren't really any feminine facial features on him, if any at all. The most you could argue are the eyes, which is mostly just because of the stylistic rendering of eyelashes and here it's toned down and probably even absent. He still has a pretty prominent cheek structure that suggests he's all man and a chin that juts out a bit and is sharp and the bottom of his skull seems very angular. He has more of a boyish look that was shared in Rondo than a girly-man. Richter's sprite also had long hair. She's hardly bending the game around her style. If anything, that art is truer to the sprite than Rondo's original art ever was, not only because of the hair but also because of the removal of red from the design and changing the dark blue trimming to white like the sprite. Any of the inconsistencies with the sprite seem borrowed from the Rondo art too.

Well, actually his hair is too short for his sprite even in Ayami's art. Oops. No wait, it's long enough. I can't decide welp.

[Dominus]

I love how Yoko and Richter designs were made more european looking

[Gunlord]

She can draw short hair, Valtiel...didn't Richter have short hair in Dracula X Chronicles?

[Koutei]

http://www.konami.jp/products/dl_xbox_dracula_hd/index.html
Richter

[affinity]

http://www.konami.jp/products/dl_xbox_dracula_hd/index.html
Richter

yay! they updated it!  Best art! 

[Valtiel]

She can draw short hair, Valtiel...didn't Richter have short hair in Dracula X Chronicles?

This:



isn't short hair.


Thernz, I would say making any kind of judgement on Richter's sprite would be jumping the gun - it was tiny, and the detail was extremely low. Besides, sprites are never really consistent with artwork in CV (and when they try the result is terrible, see SotN on the Saturn).

Besides:




My first reaction is thinking they're girls. Heck, Johnatan is particularly flabbergasting. Look at his chest - it's... breasts? If I didn't know the character that inspired this version, I would think it's a girl. And Richter is the same - pouty-face aside, the pose is the biggest problem, in all of Kojima's "men". It's absolutely mindblowing.

I mean look at:



Look at him. Ignore the leotard, the leather, the makeup. Look at how he's standing.
He's striking this pose:



This stuff is so bad it's almost mesmerizing. And I still think Kojima is bored to death of CV. The HoD material looks straight out of a sketchbook. They look like the old Suikoden artworks. If you look at her non-CV work, it looks like a poor imitation of the real artist. Outside of CV she's doing this:

[thernz]

Well, the Saturn sprites were just done by bad sprite artists so that's a pretty bad example. SoTN Alucard despite how well-crafted it is, suffers from sacrificing and replacing elements from the design. Though this is mostly the fault with Ayami's designs being too complicated and uncertain though. This is seen especially in Alucard's and Simon's design, but Richter's original design is really really low enough to detail to express at such a size. His hair is clearly longer. It's shoulder length long hair in the sprite. It's completely possible for Richter's sprite to have short hair but it didn't. I mean, considering your argument about the sprites lacking in detail, it really should make no difference anyway if the designs were bent to her style anyway.

And those are clearly not a female's breast. Those are muscled pecs that don't have the shape of a female breast at all. The way gravity affects clearly shows it's muscle and not fat. Their necks are also far too distinctly masculine and their bodies too lacking in curves that I'm not sure how you could even mistake them for women. I mean, what you could argue is that Jonathan looks to have a heart shaped face.

The HoDespair stuff is pretty uninspired for the most part though. It also incorporates new elements into her style so I could see how it can be seen as imitation. Most of them are anatomical improvements though so uh. Most of the differences are just in how things are rounder and the way they're colored seems to be digital rather than painted here. The posing in HoDespair's stuff is technically better. The symmetrical and contorted poses Ayami used to do just have more flavor than these more accurate but boring poses. It's also not unusual for poses to have the weight shifted onto one leg. It's seen often in male statues. So Julius's pose isn't all that feminine either. His face is chiseled and stern, his brows are furrowed, and the gripping in his pose is far more tight and rigid than loose and playful as the picture you compared it with. Gripping is also pretty masculine too. He stands rather straight as well. Only the coat may deceive someone into thinking his body is swaying at the torso. But the way it seems the curvature is very minimal and just because one leg is pushing up on it. And his chest is only angled because of how his arm is posed. There's really no effort on Julius's part to show any hip.