Secret of Monkey Island Restyling

[thebaddie]

hi all

i'm trying to redraw the first monkey island cause is a fantastic game, but poor graphic and i want to revitalize it

here is a first, wip, attempt:




any suggest?

[Galen]

Gif with full colour graphics = Bad.

[fred]

It would be a better idea to re-design 'Escape from Monkey Island' in the style of the prequels, imo

I don't see how your collage style is any kind of improvement either, the use of brushes/patterns makes it look very flat somehow.

[monkey0506]

"the first monkey island" was not "poor graphic". "the first monkey island" was good graphic. Very good. The Secret of Monkey Islandâ,,¢ was designed in a time of very small screen resolutions. 320x200 was all they had to work with back then. But while designing the graphics, they worked very hard to make them seem as realistic as possible (in most cases; sometimes they did more unrealistic graphics for comedic or other effects). We can see this in the close-ups. Trying to represent an entire person in ~1000 pixels is no trivial task.

Though I would object to a proper modern-graphic styling (such as Paco Vink has provided I like his work), your own could definitely be described as "poor graphic". I'm sure you put some time into it, but you should be honest with yourself here. The textures you've used don't mesh together, and overall this just looks poorly done. I'm not saying I could do amazingly better, I pretty well suck at graphics myself. And I get very defensive when I know I've done a horrible job and I deny everything. Just ask, they'll tell you.

My suggestion would be that if you really want to do something like this, to take your time. Put a little more consideration into the art you're trying to produce. Think to yourself about how each little thing contributes to as well as fits in with the rest of the image as a whole.

Oh, and also, check out the PNG format. You'll get a nice, small filesize, no color archiving or dithering (PNG is lossless), and nobody telling you off for using the wrong file format.

[thebaddie]

ok guys you'r all right

i was not happy with this work and now i know it is not good

anyway i used gif format cause i was not sure if the host supports other formats (the original is not a gif)

[bicilotti]

MI is the holy of holies, few are going to approve any "revitalization" whatsoever. I like your pic (The fact that it is "flat" can be a bonus if it is blended with the right, cartoonesque, characters).

Try to use it in a project of your own, it's more fun and you'll get some useful feedback.

[Moresco]

Well it's just that while it looks somewhat similar, you seem to have changed the type of material used for the huts, the ground is different, the tree types have changed and so have the bushes.  Just an observation...I for one would be interested in a revised MI, if it was done right.  Good start, keep at it.

[InCreator]

I suggest dropping the idea.
Infact, I suggest spending time on your drawing skills instead of thinking big yet.
Few pointers:

* The "cartoony" look you're using on geometry, such as door and window shapes, isn't too good.
As all newbies on this style, you're assuming that Day-of-the-tentacle style is made randomly, but actually, it's not. Even though things are tilted and weird in this game, there's a strict way how they are made and tilted and how they should look. So, suggestion number one: Play sam & max. Play DOTT. And try to write down or draw down or simply memorize how tilted geometry is made there. Notice the things that all geometry has in common in their cartoony look. Figure out why these games look so original and why it's so hard to replicate this. This style is FAR from randomly making shapes.

* Shading, shading, shading. Roofs don't have any shading on your image.

* Using cropped photos/textures is and will stay bad idea. Especially with black outlines!!!
Try to draw some of your own.  Look at the hut roofs, do this leaf texture really looks like it belongs there? Don't lumps of grass horribly stick out from your grass texture? Isn't there's something awfully wrong with alignment of wooden plank textures on huts? I think you'll get the picture.

To be honest, I don't think that MI needs "restyling". It's graphics look much better as it is.

And as I said, you should do two things before your next attempt: Determine if you're going for cartoony style, and if yes, learn to do it properly, and second -- spend some more time practising drawing.

I know I sounded quite harsh here, but after some practice and improvement, you won't feel like this anymore and probably agree with me.

[thebaddie]

I suggest dropping the idea.
Infact, I suggest spending time on your drawing skills instead of thinking big yet.
Few pointers:

* The "cartoony" look you're using on geometry, such as door and window shapes, isn't too good.
As all newbies on this style, you're assuming that Day-of-the-tentacle style is made randomly, but actually, it's not. Even though things are tilted and weird in this game, there's a strict way how they are made and tilted and how they should look. So, suggestion number one: Play sam & max. Play DOTT. And try to write down or draw down or simply memorize how tilted geometry is made there. Notice the things that all geometry has in common in their cartoony look. Figure out why these games look so original and why it's so hard to replicate this. This style is FAR from randomly making shapes.

* Shading, shading, shading. Roofs don't have any shading on your image.

* Using cropped photos/textures is and will stay bad idea. Especially with black outlines!!!
Try to draw some of your own.  Look at the hut roofs, do this leaf texture really looks like it belongs there? Don't lumps of grass horribly stick out from your grass texture? Isn't there's something awfully wrong with alignment of wooden plank textures on huts? I think you'll get the picture.

To be honest, I don't think that MI needs "restyling". It's graphics look much better as it is.

And as I said, you should do two things before your next attempt: Determine if you're going for cartoony style, and if yes, learn to do it properly, and second -- spend some more time practising drawing.

I know I sounded quite harsh here, but after some practice and improvement, you won't feel like this anymore and probably agree with me.

what can i say? you're right!

i used this texturized style cause in a project i used it and result was not so bad
this is an example:


but in a cartoonish bg this tecnic fails, so i'm sure that i will drop the MI project

now i'm not sure if start a project in pixel-art or line-art or line-texturized-art (like in the example)

[Galen]

Dott was essentially done in a fish-eye lense effect.

[Evil]

It sort of reminds me of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force backgrounds, just without the whole cut and paste thing.

[radiowaves]

Ugh, people should think about focus... Look at photographs, is everyhting on the same sharpness level? No.

[Khris]

Ugh, not necessarily. Set the aperture to 22 and expose the picture long enough, and everything is crispy clear, from the horizon to a distance of a few meters.

Using a small depth of focus is deliberately done to make something catch the viewers attention; it's not inevitable.

[radiowaves]

Ugh, human eye uses focus in real life 3D. Your smart camera talk does not approve lack of focus. But actually I would like to see such photograph!

Lets put it this way:
Objects should be distinguishable from each other despite their shape and function, no extra logical conclusions should be done.

[Khris]

I was referring to this: "Look at photographs, is everyhting on the same sharpness level? No."
And that's simply not (always) true.
explanation with example pictures
YOU were making an uninformed, wrong claim. So don't talk down to me.

[ThreeOhFour]

I think that if you were to make certain parts of a background out of focus to show depth, it wouldn't be overly realistic, so to say.

Our eyes focus on the thing we are looking at, so if we look at something, it comes into focus. If we made part of the background blurry to show it was some distance away, or closer, it would not come into focus when we look at that part, and that doesn't really, in my opinion, resemble real vision.

This being said, I remember Myst IV: Revelation had things come into focus when you pointed the camera at them, and blurred back out when you moved it away. This seemed to work rather nicely. All this being said, I think backgrounds with everything in focus are probably the best way to proceed.

As for criticism, the first image you posted has grass with smooth, clearly defined areas. I believe they would work better with less defined edges.

[ildu]

Depth focusing is a relatively new "innovation" in modern games. For example, in Call of Duty 4 or Crysis, the camera adjusts to the assumedly correct depth of field depending on where you look. In a way, it is realistic, but not really. Ultimately, the problem is that there is a medium in-between what we see with our own eyes and what is shown, and that is, say it with me children, the monitor screen. As long as we don't have eye-tracking, bigger screens or perhaps even VR, focusing will always seem simulated, because our vision isn't directly in connection with what happens.

As for the debate about images with depth of field, you're both kinda right. The camera, or the eye, always focuses on something. With photography, the difference can be so minuscule that you can't see it, like KhrisMUC explained, but it is still always there, like radiowaves mentioned. The pointlessness of the debate comes from the same lack of connection between the image and the viewer. If an image has a strong variation in depths and certain parts are blurred, we can still see and interpret the blurred areas, which we aren't able to do in real life (you can probably notice it slightly, but once you focus, you focus ). So what is left is the effect depth of field implements. It's more about what it does to an image in terms of effectiveness and intention, rather than what is real.

Usually depth of field is used to emphasize a certain area in an image, or to make an area in focus seem sharper in contrast than it would otherwise appear. Sometimes it's used to make an image more realistic. However, essentially it's just a stylization tool to be used creatively. After all, art is about the interpretation of life, not imitation.

[monkey0506]

I of course didn't mean to sound harsh with my previous post or imply that the whole thing should be scrapped; but that it (in my opinion) was not in fact an improvement over the old graphics. I'm a die-hard MI fan, so I could be a bit biased as to things of this nature, however even if I try to look at the image from a more neutral stand-point, there's still a lot that could be improved upon.

I really agree a lot with what InCreator said. The image would benefit a lot if you avoided textures. In some instances they are acceptable (such as the "other example" you posted); simply in this case they don't mesh well together and the result suffers because of it. Further, the textures aren't actually used in such a way as to bring out the features of the huts and the grass and whatnot which takes away from the overall image even more.

Then we come back to what I said at the end of my last post...just slow down and take your time with it. Think to yourself how everything contributes to the image as a whole.

[Stupot]

There are other ways of drawing attention of the viewer to certain objects and people... deliberate focusing/blurring is not necessary and difficult to pull of successfully.  Few games I've ever played have worried about this.  In fact in adventure games often the background is as interactive and important as the fore therefore blurring it all out is going to ruin that element of gameplay.

Back on topic.
I like your reworking of the screens, but as somebody mentioned before, I think this style would better suit a completely original project, and more people would appreciate it.  Monkey Island should be handled with utmost care and respect, and that normally includes keeping the resolution low.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to stop you from carrying on and if you decide to remake the whole game I wish you all the best of luck and I for one would be keen to play it.

Your collagey effect reminds me slightly of my own backgrounds for my game I'm never going to make.
Check my Signature for the WindowCleaner's Apprentice.

[thebaddie]

"the first monkey island" was not "poor graphic". "the first monkey island" was good graphic. Very good. The Secret of Monkey Islandâ,,¢ was designed in a time of very small screen resolutions. 320x200 was all they had to work with back then. But while designing the graphics, they worked very hard to make them seem as realistic as possible (in most cases; sometimes they did more unrealistic graphics for comedic or other effects). We can see this in the close-ups. Trying to represent an entire person in ~1000 pixels is no trivial task.

i know all of this, i love MI and i played it a lot times, in italian, english, text and graphic inventory...

the right words was "old graphic" and not "poor graphic".

current generation will never plays secret of monkey island cause they hate old graphic, but if they have modern graphic probabily they will play it...

anyway my attemp fails, no excuse

* The "cartoony" look you're using on geometry, such as door and window shapes, isn't too good.
As all newbies on this style, you're assuming that Day-of-the-tentacle style is made randomly, but actually, it's not. Even though things are tilted and weird in this game, there's a strict way how they are made and tilted and how they should look. So, suggestion number one: Play sam & max. Play DOTT. And try to write down or draw down or simply memorize how tilted geometry is made there. Notice the things that all geometry has in common in their cartoony look. Figure out why these games look so original and why it's so hard to replicate this. This style is FAR from randomly making shapes.

following the suggest of "study" dott style, i tried to reproduce the mansion hall in line art, just to understand how it work and how it could looks in line art:


not really so bad... isn't it?