@ Hantei
I don't know man. I think that in comparison to the original concept art that the new sprite is pretty much exactly how he was suposed to look. Sure the upper part of his body is a bit deformed however he's a character possesed by the Dark Hadou so I'm sure all that power has deformed him over the years, just like his face which if you watch the Street Fighter: Alpha Generations movie Gouki looked very little like Akuma until he became possesed.

Are you honest-to-God trying to use game canon to explain away bad art? The artist messed up and drew him a little deformed, nothing more, nothing less.

http://www.brokenfrontier.com/img/20...KUMAposter.jpg

http://www.freewebs.com/raijin-akuma...apcom_cvs2.jpg

How many do I need to post? The dude's F'ed up, nothing more to add. Plus he's always looked the same in all the SF and VS games, it's not like he looks all that different in this one. Unless SF2 is the ONLY SF game you've played, his looks are nothing new or different.

Who knows, maybe it's all the SF1, SF2, and SF Legends Sakura comics of Udon's I read...

Akuma's not really possessed though, right? He's just been fucking around too long with the Street Fighter variant of the Dark side. It's the reason he's always poking at Ryu to try the style out. Shungokusatsu or however the fuck that style goes.

Shungokusatsu is the Dark Hadou ultimate 15hit super technique.

And yes Akuma is always trying to corrupt Ryu to become like himelf because unlike Star Wars the Dark Hadou IS stonger then the Light Hadou could ever be, making it all that more tempting. However only people of certain bloodlines can use the Dark. This amongst other clues has always hinted at Ryu being Akuma's son, however never flat out told to the player.

Pretty much. He looks like shit. The only way I could dread this release more is if the backgrounds were 3D.

I thought it was made 'more' fact in the alpha generations movie.

I dont like the way akuma looks, infact i no longer like the art direction, if they released some backgrounds maybe that will help.

I would of much preffered them to create all the characters so they matched the look of the portraits. Except akuma obviously since his was just blackedout .

http://www.sfgalleries.net/art/ssf2x/series1/sagat.gif http://www.sfgalleries.net/art/ssf2x/series1/ryu.gif http://www.sfgalleries.net/art/ssf2x/series1/chunli.gif

I don't know, I guess I need someone to explain why the Ken and Akuma sprites are "bad". They're exactly what they should be like design wise. Perhaps the art style is a bit underwhelming however it makes sense because if the game looked better then 3Strike then that wouldn't make much sense.

I don't know. I REALLY just don't get it. I've been playing 2D fighters all my life and they are my #1 genre, so perhaps my expectations just arn't as high as all you 3D fans, lol.

JK, I'm a graphics whore when it comes to my 3D games ^^;

I'm going to have to agree on wishing they were like the SSF2T portraits, but I wont say they're bad at all. I like the Akuma sprite, but Ken's face is a little bit of a departure from what I'd expect. It's still very early so these don't have to be the final products.

I'm really waiting to see the non-shotos. Guile's number 1 on my list as he's my favorite character. I'm very interested to see how they'll do Blanka and Zangief. If you look at Zangief over the years his look has gone from fighting Ruskie to insane rapist. I want to see what they do with him. Hell all of them should be a sight to see.

Knowing Capcom if this is successful I'm expecting them to do all of their major releases like this. The coding on this can be done with a skeleton crew as it's just overlaying hitboxes. I wouldn't be suprised to see them try and move to Alpha next. If that's successful they may even try Darkstalkers. Hell I wouldn't wouldn't put it past them to try and makeover Mega Man.

...actually I would love for that to happen.

I guess cause this is Capcom (and Street Fighter 2), I was expecting some decent art. Plus, Capcom had some of the best sprite artists in the business. I'm not sure on what terms Akiman left Capcom, but the man is a genius, possibly the most talented and skillful artist to ever work in the games industry.

When I heard Udon was doing the sprite work for it, I went from "super enthousiastic" to "cautiously optimistic", since Udon's work is mostly fucking shite, but I figured they could probably trace sprites.

But then I saw the first spritesheet with Ryu. I didn't think it looked that good, but I figured they were unfinished, plus the picture was hard to see, a photo of a slide on a screen. The Ken sprite sealed it for me. Proportions are ridiculous, character designs are mangled, muscle lines are absolutely terrible. And Ken looks pretty dumb, but Akuma looks like a fucking joke.

I'm just really disappointed in Capcom. They've made almost consistently poor decisions when it comes to 2D fighting games the past 5 years, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was hoping this signaled a change, like they would take 2D fighters seriously again. But this actually shows to me like they think people who play 2D fighters will settle for anything, no matter how shit it is.

Anyway, to each their own. I don't want to convince you that it sucks or anything, just trying to explain why I feel the way I do! :D

EDIT: Also I wanted to add that the only image you posted that actually looks like those sprites (the poster) was drawn by the Udon guys. And I think it looks awful. :333:

Haha, oops, guess that was the Raging Demon I mentioned. Though I never knew anything about the whole "Ryu is Akuma's son" theory. Sound's pretty cool, especially if it's just a vague implication. Though I do remember that by the time of SFIII Ryu had gotten sufficiently powerful (but not as) to show Akuma that there were other ways... I didn't know it was a bloodline thing either, I really need to freshen up on my SF canon. And, technically, the Dark side is stronger than the light in SW, just not in the extreme long run.

Hotobu: I can see where you're coming from. I thought the same thing about ken's face. But considering how small it's going to be on my TV and the effect of the Hadouken I dought I'll ever notive the crazy killer face in the final version.

Loved your description of Zangief

Surasshu: I still don't get it. Have you EVER played a SF or VS game other then SF2 because Akuma here looks the exact same as he did in;
Marvel VS Capcom 2
Capcom VS SNK 2
Capcom SVC Chaos
Marvel VS Street Fighter
etc...

It was pretty much ONLY SF2 where Akuma ever had any proportion to him. lol. Hell watch the SF movies where Akuma's as fucked up as hell.

Anyhow you're allowed to your opinion as long as I'm allowed to mine, ok? ;)

Your opinion, to be blunt, is shit. Akuma has been a sprite copy of Ken and Ryu (and Dan) in every single game he has ever been in. All they ever do is change out the heads, and in a couple cases give him sandals.

While you could certainly write that off to artist (or programmer) laziness, Akuma was scarier when he was mostly human-looking. It was the subtle touches and unexpected air fireballs that made him frightening. Turning him into a misshapen Todd McFarlane caricature just makes him look silly.

Actually, come to think of it, that's what's bothering me about that sample Ken sprite, too. They all look grotesquely muscular. They're supposed to look strong, but not like musclebound olympic weightlifters. That's Zangief's schtick. I'm kind of afraid to see what they're going to do to Dhalsim and Chun Li now.

All I know is that this is going to look infinately better then the original and because I'm a gamer and not an artist that's all I care about.

Hell, can't wait!

I'm going to have to agree with both camps on this. The argument that Akuma has gotten bigger over the years in the games is false. As was said he's always been Ken/Ryu with a different head and a few different animations.

However I just spent half an hour looking at (official) Street Fighter artwork on the net, and Slayer is absolutely right on that point. Akuma without question is more top-heavy than Ryu and Ken.

Still the pose where he has his back to the camera is just a tad on the ridiculous side. The others are fine, but that one could use some toning down.

And on a final note, has anyone taken a close look at Ken's thumbs?

Kens thumbs are fine, his just has more flexible joints

I've never seen an olympic weightlifter that looks any where close to the mucles boundness of the SF charaters, they all look like they live off mince pies.

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200408/r28120_70009.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...mund_Honda.jpg

Thank you. I didn't think this was necessary to even mention, but I guess there are some people who really didn't notice. I'm not sure about SF3 since that never appeared in our arcade before it was closed ( :( ) but up to SFA3, Akuma = Ryu.

I totally agree with this, and Udon's art has always been ridiculous, which is why I hate them. You can do super muscular without making it look retarded, but Udon doesn't seem to get it. They also fail at basic human anatomy (check out Ken's arms, for example).

Slayer X, you may think this is gonna look "infinitely better", but I think there's more to a game's art than what fucking resolution it runs on.

Finishing off the Akuma sprite arguement here's an excellent page with ones from SF3

The only case you could use for Akuma being bulkier in the game was his SFA3 standing animation. Here he does look pretty big.

Going off of official art and Capcom's laziness I think Akuma probably is supposed to be bigger than Ryu and Ken, but it saves a helluva lot of work just swaping out bodies.

There's something slightly ironic about that statement coming from a man with Bruce Lee in his avatar. Olympic Weightlifters are a pretty bad example as they've never been known for a chiseled physique. Honestly if you saw that man in the street would you think of him as being "well built"? I'm thinking no. Olympic Weightlifter's routines are such that they don't get the chiseled look. I'll admit that the artistic culture of comic books is to draw over-the-top tits and muscles, but when you look at someone like, well, Bruce Lee you get a good understanding of what "ripped" truly is.

The more I check out Street Fighter 2 sprites and artwork of that time period the more I'm inclined to agree with you. The muscle tone was very well done then. Udon's art better reflects the sprites of the alpha series.

Haha, wow that's interesting, they didn't even really try their best on Akuma's sandals, the straps aren't even shaded or anything. How lazy is that! :tpg: Anyway, thanks for that link. The SF3 sprite art looks really good to me right about now!

Hotobu I only made that remark as a previous post compared the characters to olympic weightlifters, which was incorrect. Anyway stupid post I was feeling rather childish in the morning. :eagletear:

Well, you also posted a picture of an Olympic lifter (looks like the Iran champ) from the heaviest possible weight class. People in small classes, like anywhere between 200-250 pounds, look a ton better than that... Though I wouldn't go as far as to say they look like VG characters.

Whatever, the analogy was bad and that's all that Furious was pointing out, doesn't matter weight class it was supposed to be or yatta-yatta, it was bad.

Just one thing that I find funny about some people here is their talk about human anatomy and what not. And then continue on to say how SF2 was right but "Remix" is wrong. Capcom has TOTAL control over Udon's depictions of characters and everything, so you really can't totally blame Udon (if anyone). But at the same time all the art is what the characters were ALWAYS meant to look like. Just because Akuma was a Ryu sprite originally or their arms may have been smaller, that was all due to technical limitations. Akuma was never supposed to be a recycled character and the characters were always supposed to be crazy strong and what not (Look at Ryu in the SF2 Championship opening).

Also I like a comment that was made earlier along the lines, "You're trying to use story canon to explain bad art" well first it's actually good art because it makes Akuma what he was supposed to be. Secondly what the hell are you trying to say? That the story ISN'T supposed to have anything to do with the game. Well if you want that go back to Halo.

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to force anyone to like anything. I'm just saying that the art direction is what it was always supposed to be (minus the odd thing that you will NEVER notice once you have it on your TV in 1/4 the size) and that Capcom has total control over everything Udon does so it's definatly not like Udon is going rogue with their art or anything.

Call this one bad if you want, but that means that it's 2 similar drawings by 2 different artists. Making this idea the original design. Not some Ryu sprite rip.
http://www.animetion.co.uk/linkspics/Akuma.jpg

I haven't seen any art that really looks as shitty as the sprites we've seen so far, aside from the Udon-drawn material, but okay.

But I totally agree that Capcom's to blame. I mean, I'm blaming Udon here in part (cause they suck), but Capcom is clearly the main culprit for hiring a shitty group of artists in the first place. Doesn't take away from the fact that they fucked up Street Fighter since they got the license, and now continue to do so even though all they have to do is trace sprites.

Honestly, I think Capcom just doesn't care. And that is what's really pissing me off.

Anyway I shouldn't post here anymore, I feel like I'm just trolling. I won't look at this game anymore as it's obviously not going the direction I want it to.

>_<

Guile pics have surfaced, cant say im too impressed, looks more like fan art than anything else.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1359/...32b12c46_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1075/...06a462b4_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1241/...6fe31d1e53.jpg
I like this shot though

Okay... so Capcom sucks for simply making an older 2D game look better. "I'd have rather them not have done this at all." Considering the target audience, the very idea they're being lazy is fucking laughable. But, hey, way to go victim complex. This is probably the best one could expect from Capcom, considering that most of the people who made their games so competent in the 2D fighting scene have left the company.

Personally, I'm still excited about this. You rarely get a fresh coat of paint of this type, artist preferences be damned. Thanks to this handy work firewall, I can't see that Guile picture, though. Akuma and Ken, look about what I'd expected from Udon, sans Ken's thumb problem. I see Ken's short arm problem is still in effect, though I guess it's because they need to keep the hit boxes the same to retain faithfulness to the original.