I really want us to beat 450 :D

Orchestrally recorded theme FTW!

Not to mention everything else that'll be included :P

Increased my pledge a bit, I really want to be able to support this as much as I can, but then the harsh reality of "you can't afford to offer more, you have lots of expenses" kicks in all the time.

Ok, can someone explain this to me, please, because I was kind of agreeing with shezcrafti...

I know next to nothing about creating graphics, but I figured that 'concept art' is just a still of what the game *will* look like, and not necessarily what the game actually *does* look like.
I also figured they didn't use hand-painted concept art as the actual backgrounds for a game (no matter how high-quality it is) because it's just that: a still. No option for trees blowing in the wind, or grass rustling, or clouds passing, or any other type of movement in the background. Hence why they render all that...
Please correct me if I'm wrong...


^ This.

I guess it would be possible to do a sort of a compromise of the two - a concept art like background which is also animated. I suppose this conversation is mixing the ideas of concept art and hand-drawn (or something like that) backgrounds a bit. Concept art is always concept art, a concept of what the whatever-it's-a-concept-of should approximately look like in the game. But you can have backgrounds that are more hand-drawn/painted (or at least have that look). Like Machinarium, as a clear example.

But as far as I've gathered, their plan is to as much as possible give it that hand-painted look instead of 3D-rendered. Of course hand-drawn can also have animation, just look at, well, animations.

Having worked as a concept artist in the past, I can confirm that you don't use concept art in the actual game. The concept art is a painting or sketch that sets the mood, or shows what a character or a scene in the game is supposed to look like. It can be a beautiful piece of art, but it's not optimized for actual use in a game (no defined edges, for example; in the game you may want a character to be able to walk behind stuff on the screen, and if you used a watercolour painting (for example) as the background you'd run into all sorts of practical problems).

So yeah, TimovieMan - you're pretty much correct. :)

Being a bit Uptimistic there, eh? ;)

Of course I would really love the higher "prices" too but I'm really gonna kick and scream if we don't get that 350k, it's so attainable.

That's semantic (true by definition). Check sites similar to AG (and AG search itself), and you will see that people often use the expression "concept art" in a wide sense (from sketches to rendered scenes, and even completed in-game scenes - without the props and character sprites/3D characters). But definition or usage isn't the issue at all.
TimovieMan clearly states that he knows little about it, and his new posting shows another mistake (backgrounds vs animation), that you seem to make in a similar way as well.
Btw, there are in fact a few games that use scanned watercolors (quiz). Walking around things isn't a problem of course, Sierra solved that already in KQ1 (priority bands). But you can also leave stuff out, use layers etc. (same with the given examples of birds/clouds). Compare also, now I have mentioned Sierra, e.g. Sierra's "concept art/ handpainted backgrounds" for KQ 5 or 6 with the in-game scenes, hardly any difference (couldn't resist mentioning that, sorry). But there are recent examples as well of course (in 2D games).

But after all the point shezcrafti was making wasn't at all about (definitions of) "concept art" of "handpainted backgrounds," but about the "look" of Jane Jensen's new game. That's why I posted my comment in the first place. It was off-topic like this reply, so sorry for that.

$323,130 and 4,348 backers at this moment!


@TimovieMan: this may illustrate it a bit:
http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...0699_small.jpg


http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...r/RES25new.jpg

I think there's not a problem with "hand painted backgrounds cannot be animated" (which is not true, you just break the scene into several areas, then use layers to animate different elements separately). But it's all about money and labor time. It's always easier and less time consuming to do the art in 3D, as opposed to everything draw by hand. I mean, just look at the Monkey Island 3. It was all hand-painted (from backgrounds to characters) and nobody can say that the game looks too static because nothing was moving in the backgrounds. In fact I consider this game still to be visually BEST looking in the AG genre. What I cannot imagine, what big bag of money had LucasArts spent on it. I mean I don't have numbers, but this must have been the most costly adventure game ever produced with thousands of man-hours behind it.

Of course I didn't mean that hand painted art can't be used as the actual game art, or animated. But the fact is, the raw concept art is NOT the same art that's used in the final game, even if the final game happens to have a very hand-painted feel or uses the same scene as can be seen in the concept stage. The concept art just isn't made with "playing" on it in mind; what it does is give direction to the artists who then create the in-game art itself.

In any case, I'm also sure the person who first said they wish you could just use concept art in the game further back in this thread weren't trying to be so literal about it as some people have interpreted it.

@ Lhurgoyf
I was just referring to what others were stating, and pointed out layering already. Glad you like hand-painted backgrounds; hope Jane does as well for some of the games :-)) I think though you underestimate the time it takes to model (and texturize, add effects etc. ) the locations, props and characters. It does cost time and money say to model a character in xx,xxx polygons. I guess I am a bit weird , thinking it would be perhaps a nice feature if an all-round professional wrote something about this issues for AG. There's a lot of info already on the forums, reviews and interviews here, but a general overview of the main aspects would be nice I think.

Theyr really coming up with some awesome design stuff for moebius. The new shirt is great:
http://pinkertonroad.com/wp-content/...s_T_shirt2.jpg

A big improvement over the first one, in my opinion. I'd be happy to wear that around. :)

I like the original Pinkerton Road shirt, but the Moebius one with the puzzle block is more my style.

I think the CSG shirt is the way to go. The block shirt looks like the inspiration for some sort of rotation puzzle, which I hope is not the case. Glad to see the campaign is really ramping up. The last week should be interesting.

I like that the Moebius logo and T-shirt was designed by our very own Eriq. It looks great. :)

I can not be the only one trying to solve that rotational puzzle every time I look at it..

I don't wear t-shirts (I always feel like they strangle me, and besides, boy t-shirts are unflattering on girls) but I do really like the Moebius design.

Yeah, my birthday buddy! :)
Such a talented guy. He doesn't drop by very often nowadays though.

I spent a few minutes in photoshop:

http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/7610/solved.jpg


Aww, I hope he comes back. I think he's Facebook friends with Dasilva, I might pop him a message.

Yay! Now my puzzle twitch is appeased!