He is so awesome, thanks for the reference!
Hey, so, as I've been fleshing out the head of my scorpion, I got to thinkin'

. I wanted to finish the scorpion with a smooth pixel art shading in line with what I've created so far. However, if I were to do that, all battle sprites would really need to have that kind of shading if there is to be a professional look to the game (as Jetryl pointed out earlier, and I agree: uniformity amongst the sprite styles is a good thing).
I know I do not have the time to pixel a game full of monsters in the style I have started so far (with my spider, skeleton, slime, scorpion). And by the looks of it, no one else is really up to doing it that way, either, which I would guess is why Brett's style was more digitally-drawn/painted and not as pixelized. It is a very ambitious goal to pixel such large sprites.
So, even if I finished the Goliath Scorpion, I won't continue beyond that in that style because of the time consumption, and if no one else comes along to donate their time, then I've wasted my time and you're still going to be stuck spriteless!
I propose this: Toon-shaded battle sprites. I see we've encountered this before on this very topic around pages 13-14, and I myself was opposed to it as well:
Roots wrote:"Cool design, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of the cartoon shading though. While it definitely would work well for some games, I don't think it would for Allacrost. That serpant looks very un-threatening because he has so many bright and bubbly colors. I dunno, I can't think of what I want to say exactly right now, but I just don't think that style fits with the type of game we've been creating (re-read the prologue and I think you'll agree).
If you can draft up monsters really quick in flash, then do the shading and other details by hand, do you think that would be feasible? I know the cartoon style is probably a lot easier/quicker to do, and I want us to be able to produce art as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I don't want to sacrifice quality/style in doing so, you know?

"
Let's imagine the pros and cons:
Cons:
- Artistically it will not have the same "near-paint-quality" gradation of values from color to color, so in a sense it will be less "adult," I suppose, as you indicated is less fit for this game (whether it is less visually appealing will be a matter of taste, or a matter of the "environment").
- It definitely will have a more present-gaming-age feel to it rather than what the old nostalgic FF style conjures up (however, the digitally-painted portraits and backdrops also do not bring to mind the old FF style).
- I imagine that in the battle scenes, if the portraits and backdrops are digitally painted, the characters pixeled old FF style, and the enemies toon-shaded, it will
potentially provide a clumsy smorgasbord of art styles packed into a scene (not that professional game developers haven't done this in the past - Xenogears comes to mind).
Pros:
+ Battle sprites will be created MUCH faster, due to a smaller amount of colors necessary. Heck, I'd even feel more encouraged to spend time at night to plug away at these myself! However I am not much of a concept artist, so that might be my downfall there.
+ All current sprites can easily be rendered into toon-shaded versions using a vector-based art program (such as Flash, which I have), and in case it becomes necessary to "go back" to heavily-pixeled sprites, all finished toon-shaded sprites can easily be "pixel-shaded" by an avid pixel artist if such a person is really, really, interested in doing all that pixeling, and has the time!
What do you Tyler (or anyone) think so far?
As for your critique on the old red serpent I designed (is that thing still around by the way?), I do believe there is a way to toon shade which does not involve using such bright kiddy colors!
Meanwhile, I will be taking that concept art up there and color it toon style. It may come out to in fact look fantastic, and I think we can all benefit from seeing it before our eyes before we discard the toon shade idea!
-[Sylon Shanings]-, A Servant of Allacrost.
I owe my allegiance to Roots and only Roots! Hail to the dictator!
"DAD GUMMIT I NEEDA GET MY TORUS DOWN." - Sylon's art jabber