Dragon's Lair addendum
Check out the interesting comment on my previous post about Dragon's Lair and the possibility of recreating the fully animated look in a game that doesn't suck. (I haven't played the Guilty Gear games, but I imagine they're pretty similar to the most recent Street Fighters and Marvel vs. Capcom games. Neat to look at, but still a very different think from full-on animation)
But I think I have a slightly different question than what the commenter tries to answer: not if it's possible to have a game that can render "what would appear to be traditionally drawn art" (emphasis added), but if it's possible to have a game that can render actual traditionally drawn art.
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace are so cool to watch because they're actual cartoons. I wonder if that can be done: not a clever technical workaround that looks a lot like a cartoon but an actual playable cartoon. I'm thinking that even if the technology is there now, it might not make sense -- with games as big as they are, it would probably take an unbelievable amount of work to hand-draw a complete game. Plus so much animation is done on computers now that maybe the whole question is moot. Still, it seems like a real cartoon game could be a big hit despite the dominance of 3-D games -- just because we've never seen one before.
But I think I have a slightly different question than what the commenter tries to answer: not if it's possible to have a game that can render "what would appear to be traditionally drawn art" (emphasis added), but if it's possible to have a game that can render actual traditionally drawn art.
Dragon's Lair and Space Ace are so cool to watch because they're actual cartoons. I wonder if that can be done: not a clever technical workaround that looks a lot like a cartoon but an actual playable cartoon. I'm thinking that even if the technology is there now, it might not make sense -- with games as big as they are, it would probably take an unbelievable amount of work to hand-draw a complete game. Plus so much animation is done on computers now that maybe the whole question is moot. Still, it seems like a real cartoon game could be a big hit despite the dominance of 3-D games -- just because we've never seen one before.
3 Comments:
At 14:44, T.S.W. said…
The closest thing i could think of to a "playable cartoon" would be Legend of Zelda : Wind Waker. It had some awesome animations, facial expressions and all. It's more Cel-shaded or (like the developers like to call it" "Toon-shaded".
At 20:31, Long time reader, first time poster said…
That's why I mentioned Guilty Gear yesterday. Although the character animations were converted to the appropriate sprite sizes, it is still very much based on a hand drawn anime style of art.
I'd say, because hand drawn art is 2D in nature, the kind of game you are looking for will have to be some sort of 2D game. Fighter, platformer, adventure, or even something like the Mario & Luigi series. There's a game that has tons of animation (although I suspect only a small amount of its animations were actually hand drawn). 3D games generally let you run around a world map that is in 3D demensions; by contrast, having a 2D drawn character, even with tons of animation, would be hell to create into a 3D world.
Look at Mario Kart 64. The characters were all 2D sprites rendered at a rediculous amount of angles. Alhough this did lead to a very smooth frame rate, some sprites just looked wrong at some angles (think of when a character was passing you, or just ahead of you to the side). This is pretty much the reason cel shading is used for the toony effect. Because the character can be rendered at any angle, giving much more freedom to the animators. This would be one of the main reason why I would think that what you're asking for is a little out of the scope of most developers budgets or even desires. Capcom have pretty much given up on making the 2D fighter (much to their hardcore fans dismay), and with most of the more recent offerings in the genre its not hard to see why (Capcom were notorious for re-using a lot of sprites from older games; in all fairness, why re-invent he wheel?).
The Space Ace & Dragon's Lair games (I believe there was a Street Fighter 2: the Animated Movie the Game too on PS1 or 3DO or Saturn or something) are more like simple "press button at right time to execute move" kind of games, and are hardly emersive like Wind Waker.
I'm guessing too that the kind of art style you'd like to see would be the Don Bluth style, as opposed to the Anime stylings of the Guilty Gear series?
Maybe this should be looked at another angle. Animation has changed from hand drawn 2D to computer generated 3D in recent times (you mentioned Disney), so maybe games should be trying to recreate the magic that is in some good 3D cartoons and put that into games. Pixar have made some amazing movies recently (they can practically print money the way they are going), so maybe if you want visuals in games to stir up emotions in you like great cartoons could, maybe Pixar should start making games ;).
The technology used to create 3D movies and games are extremely similar in nature. If games are going to learn anything from cartoons, I would say that it would be 3D toons, and specifically Pixar at that, who would do the teaching.
Because the development of 2D hand drawn (or painted or whatever) art is so far removed from the development of games now, its a much harder process to learn from. Or rather, its harder to apply what you can learn from those genres into games directly. Let alone actually use in a way to envoke the same emotion responses.
Back to examples of good art in games though, I remember seeing Flash Back for the first time on an Amiga 500 and was floored by how smooth the character animated. It felt very real. It was no where near as immersive a game as Wind Waker (not many games were in those days), but it was probably the start of something new back then. That was a good enough feeling to have too: knowing your seeing the beginning of something new. Almost like being the first person on your street back in the 50s (or when ever it was) who had a Television set.
Sorry, I still didn't really answer your question. Hope this fuels some good thoughts though...
At 02:08, Long time reader, first time poster said…
Oh, and 2 words: Alien Hominid.
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