http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%202D/TestCharacters006_zpsb02c415c.gif http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%202D/TestCharacters005_zpse3d09d54.png

Deadline:
Oct 1, 2013.

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Project Goals and Scope
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***Using the Unity game engine (or Flash), create a non-profit, single level, 2D sidescroller within the Shenmue universe where the player controls Ryo. The 'game' element is to be decided, but I'm really only shooting for a recreation of that level and some minor interactions. The same type of 'detective' gameplay may be implemented, such as when Ryo has to find out more about the three blades or sailors. This is where I can be a little bit more creative, but I don't really have many concrete ideas at the moment. I'm focusing on the social interactions Ryo has with the NPCs and not fighting or QTEs, despite both not being out of the question. It really depends on time and my programming abilities, which are not up to par yet.

***Create Dobuita from Shenmue with modifications to suit the 2D perspective. The goal is to make it large enough to have the same sort of traversal time as in the original game, ie., if Ryo were to walk from Sakurgoaka Park to the bus stop, it'd probably take a couple of minutes, from what I remember anyway. That's the kind of size I'm aiming for.

***NPCs will include as many of the 'main' secondary characters as possible. For now, Nozomi and Tom along with most of the shopkeepers are locked in for creation, while others like Noriko, Eri, Ichiro, Naoyuki, and Honey are secondary priorities. This may change depending on what I feel is best during development.

***Some of the more important interiors of buildings will be created, namely, You Arcade, Liu's Barber Shop, Tomato Convenience Store, Ajiichi Chinese Restaurant, Lapis Fortune Teller, and Aida Flower Shop.

***The artistic style may be the same as the animated GIF above or something more simplified or just simply different. Pixel art or painterly. I have to experiment more to find the right kind that suits my artistic ability, which is somewhat lacking.

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Summation and Notes
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I'm looking to spend every day on this and complete it as much as I can. This is my attempt at an interactive 2D game, which will give me experience to move on to other for-profit games I'm going to design in the future.

As is the case though, things can get derailed internally or externally. In that event, I may have to cancel the project at any time. Hopefully, that doesn't happen.

About the GIF though, the palette and style was my attempt at drawing Ryo in the King of Fighters 13 style, which relies on nearly 5 tints of a single colour to create gradients/shadows. I recall it being rather tedious drawing pixel art (having only vaguely done it before as a child) and it took about a while to do, even to its incomplete state (which was due to personal reasons). I'm not a person that just draws for the fun. I draw only to complete an objective. In that sense, my artistic abilities are lacking, and yet it allows me to pick and choose styles to emulate or modify. We'll just have to see what I come up with. I'm probably still going to do pixel art though. Can't ignore the charm of it.

Hopefully, a cease and desist doesn't come my way. I'd consider this complex fan art that's 'transformative', but you never know.

I'll update as frequently as I can.

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%202D/002RyoHazuki003_zpse5cc698a.jpg
http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%202D/002RyoHazuki004cropped_zpsf1b16612-1.jpg

A couple of tests. I've decided to go for a more cel-shaded look than the pixel art style because it's simply easier to do and allows for a little more expression/detail in the faces. You can see I had wrinkles in the first concept on the left, but decided to leave them out in the second. I think still looks decent enough. We'll see how it looks when I do the walk cycle, but I doubt anyone is going to miss my crappy renderings of folds.

Also, the first concept's face looks entirely different than the second concept. While the first one looks 'cuter' (with it's own charm, which I like), the second matches Ryo's 3D model's proportions a lot better. He does look a little angrier, which might have to change a little. It's somewhat tedious how a few pixels can change facial expression at this pixel density.

About the style, it's slightly painterly on the lines and a bit more rough. I could replace them with pen tooled lines, but that takes a long time and the result would not be that dissimilar to what I have now.

Background plate was done with 3DS Max many months ago. The backgrounds will be in 2D though and will not have angular perspective. It'll only have parallaxing backgrounds, the same as in Super Mario World or Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

The game will be in 1920x1080.

A walk and run cycle are next.

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%202D/TestRyoWalkCycle002Stationary_zps57d26361.gif

This might seem like a small update, but it took me a while to figure out a work flow that was within the confines of my abilities. It's funny. It's a similar process I used with the pixel art rendering I did before, but I was still having trouble wrapping my head around things.

A friend tells me he looks a bit angry, so the hands will be more relaxed in the final renderings.

Anyway, now that I have a more specific process of drawing animation frames, character animation should be a little faster and updates should be more frequent.

I'm glad I got this out of the way though and now I can start drawing details and then eventually move on to the environmental artwork, which includes the NPCs.

My current idea is to skip the run cycle for now, fully render this walk cycle, and then move on to the unique buildings of Shenmue's Dobuita. We'll see.

I've been fairly busy with other things, but still making progress, just in another way.

New change to the project: I''ve been attempting to force myself to make my artwork and potential games in 2D for various reasons, but I think it's better for me to focus more on 3D. I have much more experience in 3D, albeit more in environmental work, but I've also done character creation, rigging, and animation as well.

As such, I've decided to make this in 3D. It's going to take much longer, but if I'm going to do this, I think it's in my best interests to attempt a 3D 'game' for a Shenmue remake. The games themselves were all about simulating life (Japan/China) and I've come to terms with the fact that 2D simply just doesn't do it well enough. One wants to look and walk around environments in all dimensions, reach out and grab things, and talk face to face with interesting characters.

New Project Outline:
-Attempt to match today's standards of graphics while considering the original Shenmue style.
-Create Ryo Hazuki in 3D, rig, and animate him so that he's able to traverse the environments in a relatively realistic and controllable manner.
-Create Dobuita and a few important interiors.
-Create a few characters he can interact with on the street or elsewhere. Not sure about this one, but we'll see. Each character will take several weeks, which is an insane amount of work, so I might just leave them out.

A lighting system will be out of the question as I don't have Unity Pro. Environmental shadows will be baked into textures within 3DS Max and therefore static in the 'game'.

There's a lot of new things I need to learn, so this will take much longer for me, but I think it's about time I work on my strengths instead of forcing myself into overly difficult and tedious territory.

Ryo Hazuki Orthographic Rendering:

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%20UpRes/RyoHazuki-Orthos003_zps62f3c845.jpg

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%20UpRes/RyoHazuki-Orthos004_zps06e90189.jpg http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%20UpRes/RyoHazuki-Orthos005_zps1dba9af0.jpg

I've made this using several pieces of reference, specifically the front/back promo renderings that are available of Ryo. His proportions are pretty strange, but I think I've got something decent enough to move on. There aren't any details like folds or creases for a reason: I'm going to learn how to make folds in Mudbox, a sculpting program, and attempt to make him more realistic. If it's not working out, I'll add the fold 'manually' in Max.

Since I'm pretty happy with the faces, I'm going to start modeling his head. Should be fun going back into 3D after a long hiatus for me. Time to shake the rust off.

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%20UpRes/Head-010edited_zpsb7364f99.jpg

Doesn't look like Ryo just yet, but I'm continually tweaking it.

-Ears, eyes, eyebrows, and hair are all placeholders for now. Looks fairly cartoony at the moment.
-Skin is just a basic material.
-Hair was generated using Max's Hair and Fur modifier. Each 'slice' of hair will be modeled individually later and should look a lot better. If you study how he's actually modeled in the games, his hair is actually part of the same mesh as his face, which allows the texture artist to just paint in the roots on top of the skin. It's a neat way of 'solving' certain things. I might do the same type of procedure.
-Certain things were Photoshopped on top include the roots of hair, his sideburns, as well as the lining around his eyes.

You're absolutely right. Thanks for the input and reference.

http://i1360.photobucket.com/albums/r643/YCCTH/Shenmue%20UpRes/Body-006_zps70ba3153.jpg

Getting used to Mudbox, though the folds will hopefully change for the better as I get more experience with it.

The face has been tweaked several times to what you see now, but it obviously doesn't look like in-game Ryo. His face is strange. I can't figure out why mine is different. Reference material doesn't help that much, when his face keeps changing from image to image. Scratching my head quite a bit. It could just be my 'interpretation' of Ryo, but I would rather get his face correct.

Anyway, a friend has suggested I begin texturing his face, so I think that's probably the best way to go for now. Hopefully more of his likeness comes through, especially when I also replace the hair with his 'real' hair.

If anyone has some decent reference for his face though...namely front and profile shots of his 'in-game' version, it would be amazing if anyone could send them to me.

P.S. The crappy white pixel edging is due to some setting with the hair plugin. It's not a concern since his hair will be replaced.