One of the major tasks I've set for myself prior to the release of episode one is establishing artistic consistency from screen to screen and within environments as a whole.
Thus, a lot of game areas that were initially conceived and painted as standalone 800x600 game screens are being converted into more organic scrolling environments that give the whole game a more modern, unified feel.
Another issue I'm addressing is consistency of painting styles between the different artists who contributed to episode one. For example, in some screens the underlying pencil work is really obvious, i.e. the colorist allowed all of the pencil shading to show through. In other screens, the colorist totally painted over the pencil strokes and the end result is much different, to the point where you can barely tell it was originally conceived as a paper-and-pencil drawing that was later scanned and painted.
And because that's a lot of text, here's some visuals to help explain. This is what the old version of a scene (two unique screens at 800x600 each) looked like:
And here's that scene reimagined to take advantage of the AGS engine's scrolling functions and painted over to establish consistent color treatments throughout:
This also gives me the chance to make some tiny little corrections and additions that I've wanted to do for a while. For example, when I designed this crossroads screen I hadn't yet come up with a design for the town off in the distance. Thus, the town appears very generic in the original screen, whereas in the new screen it actually matches the look and layout of the town, which you'll get to explore in episode two.
Another little detail: The cactus that now appears at the bottom of the crossroads scene is based on an actual cactus I came across while hiking in the Grand Canyon a few years ago:
Although making all of these changes may push back the release of episode one a little, I think you'll agree it will be well worth the wait.
