Author Topic: Harmony of Despair (The next Castlevania game?) (Read 897669 times)

Valtiel · « **Reply #1230 on:** December 01, 2010, 01:53:30 PM »

Mmh, I don't know how much gym practice you have, but it's easy to see how JohnnyBoy's pecs are way too elongated and pronounced. If those are pecs, they're Schwarzenegger's pecs on the body of a guy of average muscolar tone. And the pose doesn't help. I agree that it's an optical illusion, but if you told me that character is a girl, I wouldn't have flinched.

In fact, when I opened that page I went "that's some wildly inaccurate version of Sonia an... oh snap". I swear. It's clearly a case of Kojima going overboard and making a character that stops being a feminine man and becomes a masculine girl.

On Julius, I think he looks freakish. It's the beard. He looks like his face (which, aside from the eye design, is markedly masculine) is pasted onto the body. Once again, his pose and proportions are in the "masculine girl" field, the pose is absolutely feminine and the dressing (that scarf, oh that scarf) is wtf material, but the face... it's so odd. I can't exactly point my finger at the issue. It looks like a woman till the nose, then he's got this mouth and beard and those are markedly masculine.
I think I understand why Kojima doesn't draw "masculine" man, because if this is what would come out, it's absolutely freak-ish. And once again, she has her style and it's fine and she's pretty much phenomenal when she does her thing, but it just falls flat on CV in my opinion (except the SotN stuff, but that works for obvious reasons - Alucard IS a feminine guy and it's absolutely justified being so).

And I don't think the real issue is heart-shaped faces - that's so common in japanese art that identifying it with females is possibly also a limit of my western eyes. It's just that Kojima seems to be either influenced by Riyoko Ikeda for most of her visage designs, or by pre-raphaelite art. Seriously. Look at Richter and Maria's face and then at

She's definitely drawing something from there, but does it fit CV in any shape or form? Not for me, but YMMV.

CristopherLee · « **Reply #1231 on:** December 01, 2010, 02:06:56 PM »

I remember myself playing "Bloodlines" and thinking that the only actor that could portray the awesome Jonathan Morris was the 70s Stallone... and look at the character now!! He is a skinny gay nerd!!

thernz · « **Reply #1232 on:** December 01, 2010, 02:19:50 PM »

Well, yeah I'll agree that the pecs are too pronounced compared to the rest of his torso but they still aren't in the right shape to allude to a female shape. It's like calling a oversized bicep feminine.

I still don't see how Julius's pose is feminine at all either. It's relaxed yet also very stiff. There's very little to suggest feminine movement. There's nothing in the hips at all. The dressing itself isn't really feminine either. They're all masculine articles of clothing besides the scarf but even then, the scarf is a pretty unisex article of clothing. Leotard patterns are just plain gaudy rather than referring to any gender. Richter's face is more pronounced than either of those faces too.

Plus, yeah the heart shaped face issue only really applies to Jonathan. It's not a flaw in general with her style.

X · « **Reply #1233 on:** December 01, 2010, 05:09:08 PM »

Well, the Saturn sprites were just done by bad sprite artists so that's a pretty bad example.

The saturn's version of SotN was bad due to the screen ratio being stretched. While from top to bottom, it was like the PSX SoTN, but the width of the screen was doubbled, giving the graphics an unattractive look to it. And yes the system could not due transparancies so the water graphics look as though they belong on the Genesis.

-X

Sumac · « **Reply #1234 on:** December 01, 2010, 06:14:53 PM »

Quote

Red Richter has existed from way back in the Castlevania Bloodletting 32X Sega Prototype.

That was a bit different. It was redrawn Richter's sprite, not Richter with different palette.

thernz · « **Reply #1235 on:** December 01, 2010, 07:25:55 PM »

Quote from: X on December 01, 2010, 05:09:08 PM

Well, the Saturn sprites were just done by bad sprite artists so that's a pretty bad example.

The saturn's version of SotN was bad due to the screen ratio being stretched. While from top to bottom, it was like the PSX SoTN, but the width of the screen was doubbled, giving the graphics an unattractive look to it. And yes the system could not due transparancies so the water graphics look as though they belong on the Genesis.

-X

Well, no. The animations for the new NiTM sprites were leagues below SoTN. They were not fluent, choppy, and rife with wonky errors. ughgughghg Maria. The shading was also inferior. This is pretty apparent on the NiTM Richter sprite too which was a really shoddy edit and it still didn't adhere to Ayami's design. It seems like for the most part, they just edited his arms and a collar. Screen ratio did nothing to the issue of detail here. The sprite themselves were just plain done badly.

Dominus · « **Reply #1236 on:** December 01, 2010, 09:59:09 PM »

Quote from: Valtiel on December 01, 2010, 12:35:24 PM

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: