[Poll] Sonic Transitions: Here's the thing...

[PM13]

TL;DR:
At a crossroads when it comes to art direction. The style below may be faster. Conventional sprites have a certain charm to them, but would take ages for me to complete.

So, I'm gearing up for SAGE 2020. I really wanted to have some elements of the story finished by then, but that is just not feasible.
One aspect that seemed to be sinking the most of my time was the art. While I'm getting better, I am no pixel artist. So, I decided to experiment.
I wanted to see if I could make some hand drawn stills in the SatAM style. It took some fiddling, but I think I got it.
This may be better in the long run, since there are several aspects of the story that have no existing sprite assets.

Case and point: the Doomsday Device.
As I was unable to find a sprite, I drew this, scanned it in, and attempted to make it look somewhat decent.

​

This would be the style for the cutscenes planned. I could try to make a more conventional sprite, but it would take an incredibly long time.

What do you think?

 

[Sotaknuck]

Well, as a personal preference I'd use sprites. I like when the cutscene looks and feels "part of the rest" like it was in 3k.

Other than that, I think you should first try to make a cutscene with your art and see how it looks once completed. If you're satisfied with it, it means that it's the way to go for your project. That's what I do when I'm undecided.

 

[NixiePixie]

I think art would work well, personally. A lot of the advance era games used drawn-image-slide cutscenes, so it's not like it'd be out of place in a sonic game, and it opens the possibility of imitating the cartoon's art style for them- which would be super cool.

In the meantime, there's no shame in using what you already have as a placeholder!

 

[SoggyDoggy]

I'm sure you are too far gone going down this direction for SAGE 2020 either way at this point, but I think hand drawn can definitely work since it's a "cut scene". Imo, it can even work for backgrounds, given that SatAM itself is hand drawn. Happy to see you working on a SAGE 2020 release!