The Game will be in 3d, but not look like Escape from monkey Island. By the way EMI could have looked a lot better and still be in 3d, just look at Grim Fandango. But the problem was the lack of experience in the Art Director, who is great guy and very, very good animator- one of the best I have seen. But Peter Chan, Bill Eakan and I are all very experienced illustrators so that is why all the previous Lucas Adventure Games looked so good. The EMI Art director was an animator so things like color and lighting were not his specialty. But there were plenty of good artist in that team, especially Kathy Hseih, and Eddie Del Rio.
So AVS will be in 3d BUT,,,,not the way you think. I am a big fan of the early Disney movies, and one Oscar winning short in particular really influenced me. It was called The Old Mill.
http://disney.go.com/vault/archives/...l/oldmill.html It was mood film, meaning it didn’t really have plot, but for good reason. It wasa test film for a new technique called multiplane camera. So we are going to do is make a virtual multiplane camera using your PC’s 3d card. The backgrounds will be painted in 2d but placed on 3d planes. This will allows us to keep the backgrounds looking 2d and hand painted, but we get to vreate the illusion of depth and perspective. It wil be really nice. I have already doen test, that isn’t ready to show but it looks good. I want to polish the test up and bit an dthen I will post it in the gallery section.
The characters will be 3d however, and there are so many good reasons to do this. First, 3d models save on animation time, though the time modeling the characters probably negates this benefit. Mona is an asymmetrical- meaning she isn’t even on both sides- character which would have been cost prohibitive to do in 2d. With 3d models it is easy to zoom in an do close ups during cut scenes and dialogue. This will allow us to do more subtle acting with her facial expressions, though, as I have been taught by Joe Ranft, never rely solely on facial expression when doing acting.
Also we want to make changes to her outfits during the game. If we did this in 2d we’d have to redo all her animations- at least two months worth of work! In 3D we just change the model and use the same animations. With 3d models we get use dynamic lighting, which will darken and light the models correctly based on where they stand, and the light can vary in value like a torch flame or a flashing light. We can also use a lot great 3D effects that would have been expensive in 2d such as rain, snow, water, moving clouds and real time light blooming.
3d characters and animation is just so powerful we can’t not do it. And those of you who are a bit cynical and think we are doing 3D animation to increase sale- well in some ways your right, we do want adventure games to reach as many people as possible, and if 3d helps do that, great, but it is absolutely not the main reason at all. I have just been doing 3d animated games since 1997 (Indy Infernal Machine, Bounty Hunter, Full Throttle II, The Two Towers, The Suffering, LA Rush) and it is the medium I am used to. Going back to purely 2d animation is too confining and time consuming. Don't get me wrong. i love 2d animtion like my friends Gendy Tartikovsky, Brain Andrews and Paul Ruddish did on Samuri Jack and Clone Wars. But for us, in games, 3d is such a great tool.
But rest assured the backgrounds will look very 2D, hand painted by me, MAria Bowen and Bill Eaken. It should look great. This I am not worried about. What I worry about is the length of the game and if it is funny enough. Those are the two things that keep me up at night. But art doesn’t.
I will probably devote a page about this subject on the AME web site soon, probably make a video. I get asked this question all the time so I figure I should just do a video and send people the link.
