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Have to agree with BB here.  It's nearly brutally clubbing someone over the head with the concept.  Of course, assuming this isn't a negative, the picture still doesn't convey a snap so much as somebody trying to make a shadow puppet.  I think if the image is done right, it can convey everything necessary (with "Snapshot Studios" in smaller, more somber writing, like a footnote).  Maybe a picture of hands "framing" a shot of somebody making a kind of hipster snapping motion (for some reason thinking of a visual example, all I got was Cowboy Bebop cover art and pretty much 1/2 of Six-String Samurai).

Mr. C's isn't a bad idea, but the layout would have to ride the balance between confusing and overly obvious, also requiring a demonstratively kinetic person. 

so, nothing like this:

I like the ship... It's long conveying a massive impending feeling. The only thing that really turned me off is the spacestation. It look as if stars are shining through the station! I'm sure you only intended this to be the space stations lights but it is a little confusing.

I figured the dots on the station were meant to be reflected starfield, but station lights make more sense as an objective. 

If they are reflections, it'd sell the image better having them follow the curvature as well as changing size/shape somewhat according to surface curvature. 

If they're station lights, you might invest the extra pixels to make them a bit square-ish.  The yellow does make them stand out from the white stars, but it still does give that transparent impression.  Maybe a rough grid of "windows" with those not lit grayed out?  Even a pattern following the shape of the station (a curved line) instead of the random arrangement.  As soon as a recognizable pattern is shown, it'll be assumed that it's not a natural phenomenon. 

Da.  And there you've got 1/6th of my Russian vocabulary.  I figured you were Russian after seeing Disco spelled correctly in cyrillic on your BG.   Does nobody use CIS v. USSR still?

If you're bound and determined to do this on a first outing, have you considered first-person?  No characters to animate and might even engross a person in the storyline more.  A portrait change in the GUI and - voila!

It seems more practical to either divide up the storyline into short games.  Granted, that would make for 16 games, but you'd be able to recycle backgrounds, learn & improve graphics & puzzles as you went.  Or, there's always the focus on one person, use cutscenes for the others.

It looks like more depth and passable shading comes from hand-shading key areas rather than the lens-flare approach.  It'd be an alright job if not for the lens-flare dapples across the thing. 

Since your line-style has its own shading through hatching and varying line thickness, I'd rather see the same basic style for the energy ball (even if it doesn't turn out "smooth).  Since you're playing with lines for shading, try to think of the gray (hopefully lighter) as a color rather than a shading resource, so that when all is said and done it's only a tri-tone pic.   

I'm already far outta my league on this picture, but have to second Ikari's mention of her mid-section.  Either the lower extreme of her abdomen should be visible (which might require stretching of the torso), or the crotch of the pants should be lower.  Imagine the distance there between the belly-button and naughty bits and it immediately seems awkward.

Those would definitely make for more interesting game puzzles than mine:

1) Locked out of house (by roommate), key inside, roommate is home (sleeping).
2) Check front and side doors / all windows
3) Pound on door in hopes of waking roommate
4) Pound on window in hopes of waking roommate (to no avail, he'd sleep through armageddon)
5) Return to garage.
6) Sleep
7) Roommate wakes 3 hours later.  Enter house.  Sleep comfortably.

That's what I get for having fairly secure locks and windows.

Medieval=KQ Rip off?  I dug the Kyrandia games because they were a little more adult-geared.  When the storyline got into its darkest bits, it was rarely rivaled by KQ's climaxes.  The puzzles tended to be mostly of the fetch-and-carry sort, but the game had enough humor and visual beauty to keep it interesting. 

I liked the first one well enough, loved Hand of Fate and liked Malcom's Revenge (less for the over-bright pre-rendered everything and more for Malcolm).  That's not to say I'm downplaying KQ, but I liked KQ for different reasons. 

[A Traveler]

A Traveler;

It was awfully kind of them to squish it down to an easily portable size like that.  Excellent likeness.

There's so much detail on the shelves that they distract from the overall image.  I might drape a cloth over his nether-regions, less for obscuring the penis The Penis and more to add interesting details.  His limbs are at very stiff/straight angles and that makes him look more fake than skin tones or other small problems. 

I'd also expect that unless that's where he's been laid to rest, there might be manacles or leather straps holding him in place.  A blood gutter also seems appropriate under the circumstances.  For the painting on the ceiling, I'd rather see vague/blurry details than something that looks fairly cartoony (mostly the demon/dragon's expression, the people seem alright). 

I think the dragon could be fixed by removing the pupil and putting some structure lines around the eye to give it shape, there's just something about the wide-eyed expression that makes it comical.

It's good work, makes me wish it were for a game rather than an album cover, but *shrug* 

Never children *and* puppies, but children *or* puppies?  Really, your qualifiers for morality get tiresome.

Edit: Sorry  :'( Please, on with the Dumb Quest

It's really not so far removed from idea used by VGCats.  The difference (aside from drawing his own pictures) comes from making a well-known observation of a game's trends and exaggerating it.  The strips at VG don't always require knowledge of a series, but quite often.  The most recent FF7 strip, for example, felt very familiar because it mimicked the process I go through when playing (letting everybody get beat to hell because I'm saving cash and don't want to put up for a healing potion or two). 

Simply describing it isn't funny, but establishing the basis for the punchline and developing it is a skill that takes some practice.  I didn't understand the pokemon one until the talk=fight with explanation later, but if the last screen had something to clarify it, it'd be a bit more understandable [e.g. option box with Run / Fight / What? I just needed a potion! (or something)]

That was the only portion that confused me.  The game has excellent pixelling, enough to make to drool a bit while looking at "Coming Soon!" screenshots.  Now, if it were an old SCI game, I could understand some bewilderment.

wait a moment, i was rereading old posts here um why was i called a DG and what the hell does that mean!?

DG [Dee-Jee] n. - 1.) A contemptible person with less fiber to his morals than the amount of fiber found in the average Gummi Bear (TM)
- 2.) A person exhibiting the same characteristics as a DG.

Bronze Statue Crotch Lasers!

There's a lot to like about these.  They establish a mood, seem ripe for tossing in RoomEdit and would seem like they belonged with some sprites and MIDI in there.

I'm very fond of the moon you've got in the first BG, for one.  The only problem seems to be a mixture of Warm & Cool colors that throws me off a bit.  The moon is more yellow-ish in your picture, yet the foreground has mostly "Cool" Gray colors (Blue-skewed). Some of the background portions seem to have a red-gray or brown-gray color so it doesn't make everything blend smoothly.  (Preceding paragraph utterly opinionated and probably artistically incorrect)

The Bridge seems a bit narrow, or rather since that seems to be the idea, I should say it seems a bit two-dimensional.  The spacing of the posts seems too little to establish any foreshortening and doesn't give the same good illusion of depth that the ropes' planks do.  If nothing else, the perspective seems to be visually placing the sides less in alignment while this effect essentially ends at the left-side posts.

The first background layer of gray distracts me.  It seems too bright so that I have to fight with my eyes to keep it in the background, of course this crappy overbright monitor might be to blame.

For the door frame, it seems like a gold frame placed around an already-functional entrance.  Normally, I'd assume decoration would be carved in or placed onto an previously shaped structure.  I think if you envision the door set back into a flat panel, followed by decorative plating or carving for the finished surface, it might look a little bit less tacked-on.  Gilbot's perspective mention is also good.  You've given us an approach from the left and made it appear that the vanishing point comes from [Gilbot's Kickass Crotch Lasers] the indicated point.  I think it has something to do with the fairly orthographic style you've got that puts everything lining up to a central point. 

The style's not bad and works very well for adventure games, but the lack of perspective is probably what's making it stand out to you.  If you do put in a real line of perspective, be sure to change the statue on the right, since according to the indicated angle of the left one, it should be facing roughly left-center instead of far right. 

One coloring idea that would bond everything together better is to give them a similar base color.  It's too dark outside for everything to be so saturated and such a unique color, but with a similar amount of yellowish hue (to go with the moon) in the grays, browns and especially highlights, it'd have more tendancy for everything to seem it belonged. 

*Sigh*  The word "you" without any quotation to suggest otherwise leads me to believe that was directed at my last post.  I am well aware of the novelty of proving one's innocence after they've already gone through the innocent-until-proven-guilty tapdance.  The usage of the "prove their innocence" term is directed in refutation of those who state that people may be executed before they can prove an incorrect guilty verdict.  We're talking about the 1% (or whatnot) that are found guilty but proven later to be innocent of their crimes. 

It would seem that your stance, pcj, is for the death penalty.  While I can see merit in both sides of the argument, executing someone based upon terms like "usually" and "fairly concrete evidence" seems both reckless and callous.  Arguing for capital punishment ought to include more absolutes since the punishment is the most absolute possible for that person.

It is difficult to find statistics about the ubiquity of guns in US households.  However, while living in three states, spending most of my life in an urban area (that of San Francisco), I haven't seen a civilian gun, only those carried by military personnel and peace officers.  None of my relatives or friends own a firearm, nor do they desire one.  Granted, I travel in, let's say, comparitively liberal social circles, but firearm ownership seems far from "armed to the teeth." 

I'd also like to add that among those who've primarily argued against the death penalty, at least two are also US citizens.  So, it's not universal that Americans support it. 

From the beginning, the US has had large investors under many banners.  The plutocrats, aristocrats, mafia and drug cartels have all had a share in building America's commerce as well as ensuring their supply lines' permanence and that their interests are upheld by legislation. 

Drugs, firearms, incarceration and execution aren't likely to go away any time soon without some massive break in the cycle.  Since the death penalty hasn't been a deterrent in the last couple of hundred years, it's unlikely to be so now.  No one item on the list of the US' woes can be pointed at for blaming purposes, it goes a bit deeper than that.

One other repetition that seems based upon incorrect presumptions is that an innocent person could easily be executed before they've had the chance to prove their innocence.  While I haven't researched this in some time, the shortest timespans from sentencing to execution have been 5 years, with the longest being 35 years.  On average, 7-9 years can be expected in most states before an execution is carried out.  The exception to this is Texas which seems rather more efficient with its executions.  I would think that, after 5 years, one is unlikely to be able to prove their innocence despite attorneys, family and friends dedicated to this purpose.  Two specific cases that illustrate this lengthy time before execution are that of Stanley Williams (25 years) and Richard Ramirez (7 years as of 1996, I'm uncertain beyond that, convicted in 1989 of 16 murders, a high-profile case). 

Very quick research: In California, minimum average time before actual execution - 16 years.  In California (Where Stanley Williams was executed), there have been 11 executions since 1978. 

Perhaps because people, in their finite wisdom, haven't figured out a better solution?  Should we be disgusted any less by loss of life due to this person's disregard for it?  Is the only alternative incarceration?  Is this more merciful?  How many years of jailtime is a human life worth? One? Ten?  Do murders have to spend 100 years in prison for killing ten people or do they get a discounted group rate?

Don't get me wrong, I'm disgusted by this morbid fascination with execution and the parading that occurs during the event.  I don't see how anybody can cheer when the hour comes and a man's life has been taken.  Even if I were for capital punishment, I couldn't help but think of it as a grave necessity and not a cause worthy of celebration. 

It's an embarassment that California still does this, and doesn't seem fitting of a nation that bills itself as being progressive lovers of freedom. 

However, other countries quickly point their collective fingers and voice their disgust while offering no viable alternative.  Other countries don't have the same issues with gun violence and wonder why the United States citizenry doesn't just rise up and toss the collective mass of weaponry into a kiln.  It's apparently in our nature to beget violence, and I haven't heard a reasonable solution that's likely to deter a potential killer. 

Maybe it is more humane to lock someone away for the rest of their lives (or at least until they're no longer deemed a danger) so that they can't take any more.  Vengeance accomplishes nothing except to vent some of the victims' relatives' rage and thirst for blood.  Since capital punishment doesn't seem to be the answer either (since people are still frequently killing people), it seems time to at least try something a little less final.

Oh great then. Castrati singers will take over the world! :o

My reaction exactly.  News Headline: "Eunuch's Murdering Rampage, is Nut-Kicking Punishment Effective?"

The only opinion I've found that I can stand behind is Kinoko's.  Of course, since her opinion is undecided that doesn't put me on very stable ground. 

It feels morally wrong to execute a man 25 years after the crime.  If he'd been "reduced" to a life-sentence, I wouldn't feel it unfair to society at large. 

I can't argue for the extinguishing of any human life, but also have no suggestion as to how we can deal with people who have no regard for it.  The only way I could support the death penalty would be under a re-definition of what murder entails: 

If humanity is distinguished from the rest of the animal kingdom by our capacity to analyze abstract concepts like mercy, compassion, empathy and forgiveness, then does a lack of these things remove the qualifier of "human"?  If a being is not human, is this murder?  We (at least a large portion of society) do not refer to the butchering of cattle as murder, or "putting down" a rabid dog.   Williams, under this recategorization, would've been an animal that had attacked and killed people - at least as long as he was in a state that caused him to have a disregard for human life.  Since I value human life above that of an animal's, it's an easy decision to make.  However, since his incarceration, he seems to have reacquainted himself with humanity and at this point his execution returns to being a state of murder.   

Since I have difficulty assigning an animal label to a human-being regardless my dislike for them, I can't justify their execution.  However, doesn't this make those who have a capacity for execution and seemingly arbitrary rules for behavior quite a lot more powerful than a peaceful citizen?  At work, I'm fairly accessible and defenseless should somebody with a gun approach me.  Knowing that I don't condone murder or violence and my opponent is someone who doesn't sweat either act, the odds against my surviving that encounter are rather high. 

How then, do we dissuade people from committing murder? How can we treat human life as a sacred thing without a severe punishment for those who willingly violate it? 

In case I wasn't clear before, I was stating the the typical interpretation of Christians quoting the law was contrary to Jesus's statement and that people that used it as a justification for retribution didn't understand the original context (as reinforced in Leviticus).  Further interpretation gave way to proportional needs and losses with a starving person in need might receive less punishment than a wealthy thief (thus making the amount paid back more proportionally similar instead of absolutely).