Maniac Mansion characters in DOTT style

[cobra79]

Wow, they really look awful!

Did you mean awesome? I fail to see how someone could consider them awful.

[Mould Cheeze]

Did you mean awesome?

Yes, sorry. Of course I meant AWESOME!

@ProgZmax Wow, they look great but I think Sandy looks too innocent. I liked the previous Version more it was more bitch-like.

[Misj']

I've never been to fond of paintovers, and pixel-art was never my forte...

But based on ProgZmax's version of Sandy (while not in the original game, I like the idea of them both wearing the same school-colours) I decided to give pixelart a go.

(and to give the same kind of list as ProgZ alway does )

1. Altered her stance to make it more feminine.

2. Altered her cloths to show a little more skin (had to make her breasts a little smaller too).

3. Changed her haircut a little...to make her look a few years older (or just because I wanted to...you choose)

4. Placed her arm behind her back to emphasize her stance (or because I didn't feel like thinking about what to do with her arms)

Technically it's not a paintover

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Misj'

[Mould Cheeze]

I like that version of Sandy more but the arms... she is a cheerleader, hidding her arms like that wouldnt fit her character imho.

[Snarky]

You're definitely on the right track here, but the main thing you're forgetting is consistency between the characters.  Syd for example looks like a giant compared to the others, and in DoTT Bernard is actually one of the tallest characters (taller than Laverne, Hoagie, Ben Franklin, George Washington and Dr. Fred, for instance).  I did an edit of just a few of them to give you some ideas of making their proportions similar.

How do you figure? It's quite normal for people to vary in height by well over a head, and although this cartoon style features gigantic heads, it also invites exaggerating differences (like Asterix vs. Obelix), does it not?

[Mister L]

...This is really all I'm going to do since this thread is about helping someone's art look like DoTT style, not to actually do it all for them .

Thanks a lot! You've done more than I could hope for! 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

How do you figure? It's quite normal for people to vary in height by well over a head, and although this cartoon style features gigantic heads, it also invites exaggerating differences (like Asterix vs. Obelix), does it not?

Not really.  Ed Edison (and his duplicate in the future) is the only massive character in the entire game, and the maniac mansion kids (aside from the new additions in DoTT) were all supposed to be pretty normal.  That's probably one of the reasons why they didn't use them in DoTT, really.  There can be some height variance, but when you're working from one of the tallest characters in the actual game (Bernard in this case) you have to consider that there's a reason why they made him so tall in comparison...because he's tall.

[djres]

Man, this was always my favorite thread from back in the day.  I'm really glad to see you came back to it!  The new versions look terrific.  My only gripe is that they don't jive 100% with the DOTT style.  Their stances are a bit too rigid, their feet are a little too small, etc.  It's really very minor.  As far as height goes, wasn't Laverne taller than Bernard?

[Mister L]

Laverne was a bit taller than Bernard. And if you take a look at the original packshot, you can see that Bernard and Jeff are quite short while Syd is really a tall guy.
And Dave has got to wear his 'Lucasfilm-Games'-shirt!  8)

I think they wanted the dott-cast to look kinda ugly. And Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie don't have much sexappeal, don't they...? 

The new versions from ProgZmax may have a bit to much detail for dott-style, but (imho) they are by far the best. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yeah, the truth of it is that unless Larry Ahern and Peter Chan were to draw these characters someone would always say the style was different, and maybe they'd be right.  You can only try to match the color selection, linework and general design, and anything after that is your own artistic input.  For instance, I look at the Jeff I made and the only inconsistency I can find is that it looks a bit cleaner (fewer jagged/blocky lines).  All the characters in DoTT didn't have extreme poses, either.  I think too much expectation is placed on mimicking the design of Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie rather than the characters and style overall.  Once you realize that the people doing this aren't Larry Ahern or Peter Chan and accept that I think you can get past any stylistic variations you perceive to exist.  For all we know they could've drawn Dave as a short, skinny Michael J. Fox lookalike to cash in on the whole Back to the Future thing!

Doc!  I'm back...from the future!

[Mr Flibble]

Anyone else think that the Bernard sprite is looking a little rough compared to these newer ones? 

[Misj']

Anyone else think that the Bernard sprite is looking a little rough compared to these newer ones? 

Yeah well...we can solve that by cheating

I know we consider Bernard et al. to be the Golden Rule...but what if they're not perfect yet? - And yes, I know, some will consider this way too radical, but we might adapt Bernard to the 'fake-DOTT'-style.

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I very much doubt that anyone playing a DOTTified Maniac Mansion would feel the 'new' Bernard to be out of style. But as I said: it's cheating. 

Misj'

Ps. By the way, I still think Syd, Razor, and Jeff need some tweaking.

[Misj']

Ps. By the way, I still think Syd, Razor, and Jeff need some tweaking.

As I said, I'm still a little unhappy with Syd, so rather than spending my time in a usefull manner, I decided to become a member of the look-I-DOTTified-a-Maniac-Mansion-character-Club. So why Syd? - Well, I always imagined him to be stylish and cool(ish)... but ProgZmax's Syd looks a bit too 'baggy' and sloppy for my taste (not the drawing, but his clothing).

So these were my design choises:
1. Make Syd stand tall: he's proud, cool and stylish
2. Emphasize the sunglasses
3. Give him a nice cleft in his chin (it adds to his coolness and it's manly (according to some))
4. Change his hair (they did it for Bernard, so I could do it for Syd  ), but stick to the feeling (kinda).

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From left to right: version MM-Box-Art, version Maniac-Mansion-Mania, version Mister L, version ProgZmax, version Misj'

Misj'

Ps. One minor remark: my version feels a little older than ProgZ's version (partly due to the big chin)...I can defend this by claiming that some years have past between MM and DOTT (Bernard also looks a little older for example). Just consider it a weak excuse if you don't like it 

Pps. Share your thoughts.

[Rocco]

and here we have raymans version:



this version fits syds character best in my opinion, which is cool, well humored and well dressed.

the version from misterL is to devious, progMax version looks a bit dishonorable (mobguy),
end the last version from Misj looks like larry laffer, an old narcistic cock ;-) 

[steve-o-mat]

I know we consider Bernard et al. to be the Golden Rule...but what if they're not perfect yet? - And yes, I know, some will consider this way too radical, but we might adapt Bernard to the 'fake-DOTT'-style.

In fact, we discuss this thing in our forum too.
That's why I created a new version of Bernard in 'fake-DOTT'.  It might be radical, but he looks better between the others than the old one. At least this is my opinion. But have a look at it:


I used progZmax Wendy as a basis, as you can see. I just wanted to show our forum-members how Bernard could look like in an 'fake-DOTT-style".

Here is also a version, linus added yesterday in our forum:



His version of Bernard pays a bit more tribute to dott-style than mine, I think. But to my mind he looks really nice. So what do you think about that?

[Ghost]

Steve, your version wins. While linus' has some more resemblance to the "original", yours is the overall better-looking one. A perfect fake-dott-re-dottet-remastered Bernhard. I love the fly. That's the sort of small, fine detail I love to see. Also, the leaning pose and the poised pen and pad fit the overall character.
Thumbs up from this ghost!

[Misj']

end the last version from Misj looks like larry laffer, an old narcistic cock ;-) 

Funny, I don't see the resemblance

The truth is, he was inspired by Bruce Campbell (hence the chin) 



Misj'

[Mister L]

Ha, that's funny.
We even have a 'Ash'-character for our Manaic-Mansion-Mania project in germany. 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Again, note that the opinions of what looks the 'best' are as varied as the design styles.    I'm probably going to lock this thread since it's become less about getting help with a particular sample of art and more about different people supplying their own versions of what they think DoTT style should look like, and that's not what the CL is about.