*bump*
The official blog has been updated with
two new sprites, of Cammy and Vega (Bison).
I think Cammy looks very decent compared to some of the earlier sprites shown, but the sprite is certainly not without its faults. Her face kind of bugs me, her knees look like kneepits, and the whole hips/abs area is a complete mess. Her arms look kind of correct though, so I guess that's a start! I think Dictator looks good too. The lighting is perhaps a little dubious but given the nature of the sprite I have really no problems forgiving it. It is interesting to note that he seems to look alot stockier than he did in SF2 though - a change I don't particularly agree with, but I guess you can't really tell how drastic a change it will be until we've seen more sprites.
Generally I am very torn about this project. Super Street Fighter II Turbo is probably my favourite game of all time, for many reasons. So while I am very happy that I will get a version to download for my PS3 and/or 360, it does pain me terribly that it - so far - looks so bad. It's just plain depressing to see this "professional" art for a 2007 (2008?) game look so much worse than sprites that were created in 1991, even if you completely disregard the difference in resolution (though of course that does make it all the more embarrassing). In my eyes, the art fails on many levels; yes the anatomy is terrible, the tracing is done poorly, they are adding faults that weren't there originally - but on top of all that I'm quite unhappy with most sprites stylistically. I do enjoy UDON's comic and their art, but basing a game on it feels kind of like shoehorning fanart into a game in place of actual official art. The situation is certainly not improved by the fact that we essentially have second-rate artists
poorly emulating UDON's style (except for when they haphazardly insert parts traced from Cacpom art) instead of actual UDON art. For what it's worth I think the portraits, ending pictures and the like that have been showed all look vastly superior to the ingame graphics.
I'm not saying the characters need to look exactly like they did in SF2, or SF3, Alpha or any other game for that matter. I just feel that these sprites are sorely lacking a distinct Capcom sensibility, and because of that the visuals of the game suffer greatly. I can't help but feel that if Akiman, Bengus, Edayan or Nishimura Kinu was in charge of the design, this game would be my dream come true. But as it stands it's a game I'm looking forward to play although I'm almost afraid to look at it.
Helm: That Sagat looks beautiful!
Needless to say that doesn't necessarily scream Capcom either, but that doesn't change the fact that it is by far the best "HD SF2" sprite I've seen. The amount of detail puts the official sprites to shame (though to be fair I guess it makes sense to keep detail down for animating's sake), and I'm impressed that you managed to stick so close to SF2 proportions and anatomy yet make it look so good! One thing I feel compelled to mention though - you seem to have missed the fact that CPS games are drawn in a non-4:3 resolution (384x224 to be exact) and thus should not be scaled proportionally when drawn for a 4:3 display. Scale the width to 78% and it's closer to what it would actually look like in the game.
