It’s such a damn shame, too. Destiny 2 was some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming over the last decade. Absolutely jaw-dropping environments at times, clever encounter designs, the gunplay, so many things to love. And I have no doubt Marathon will be a hell of a thing from what I’ve seen. These people can design a game.
But GODDAMN stop stealing art from people. Upper management has got to be atrocious with all the bullshit they’ve pulled over the years. And you know that bullshit starts at C-suite and rolls downhill.
It’s surprising how few people at the top you need to change in order to change a company culture. One of the companies that I regularly work with has gone from being a nightmare because we could never get information out of them, to a nightmare because of how whiny and demanding they’ve become. That was the result of the CEO changing, that’s it one person and it results in a totally different corporate personality.
Is it only the management though? You mean to tell me absolutely none of the artists knew about this, or that literally ONLY ONE “ex-employee” artist knew this was going on among the art team? Do Bungie only have one artist making art assets for textures across various objects, as well as assets they use on their website and in their trailers?
“Ex-employee” is a scapegoat, but I guarantee you there was more than one artist, entirely unrelated to management, that knew this was going on and will happily blame the scapegoat to absolve themselves of their involvement.
Is it far fetched to say their art team could be large, but also underpaid and ignored it so the work was done? Not right but sums up my work experience in an entirely unrelated and uncreative field.
Really just devil’s advocate, im curious for any corporate artist opinion
Laser scanning is possible, 6-axis milling machines exist and on a subminiature scale.
Why is there no 6-axis painting machine? I understand there are 3D printers that can do this, but 3D printing costs more than just making a die (or reusing a similar die from another model) at a certain scale.
Money. 6-axis isn’t cheap to run or maintain, especially at this scale with the desired precision. Add in the inherent issues of working with a variety of paint colors (especially aerosolized), subtract the ability to mask features from over spray. Their prices would have to make Warhammer look bargain bin in order to recoup the costs of the machine, maintenance and consumables.
Archon Studios recently introduced a mayor new technology into the hobby with Prismcast. This “printer” basically paints curved 2,5 D surfaces which you glue together to make a fully 3D model. AFAIK there is no way to make this technology in 3D
Painting them yourself is easier than ever though! Contrast paints and washes alone can accomplish amazing things. Trust me, if you’ve thought about trying, do it. You can absolutely do a better job than that in no time.
NGL, it seems really practical that it was intended to be placeholder concept art that someone forgot to go in and replace.
That said, this artist they took so much inspiration from definitely deserves a place in the game’s credits at this point. Whether they actually use his art in game or not.
Placeholder doesn’t need to be anything more than basic featureless textures on cubes, and you should own them completely. If you made your placeholder to look like it fits, you’re asking for it to be forgotten and left in place. Which might not be too bad if it’s finally not too out of place and it’s yours.
Especially in a professional studio, they should know better than using stuff they just “found” as placeholder. To me it’s either terrible incompetence… or worse, they thought nobody would care anyway.
Didn’t they get caught doing this with destiny as well? It makes me wonder if it’s a studio culture thing. You’re 200% right in what they should be doing, but I still am inclined to think this is more likely an incompetence thing than malice.
I will say, placeholder SHOULD be more than basic featureless textures on cubes so it can’t make it to a playtest without knowing about it. You know, like this. Placeholder kittens are always distinct, in my book. Plus if something subtly gets through, players will think it’s a hilarious easter egg
I’ve been in and out of games for my entire career. Every place I’ve been has had strict policies on outside art assets. I’ve even seen every new art asset to require a monthly license review to prevent any chance of outside art having slipped in somehow, including any usage of Blender’s example model Suzanne.
But I really wonder about the stuff at bungie being “just” incompetence, because their defence is “weren’t aware of this, just used assets left by a former Bungie employee that’s not here anymore”… And yet the art director had been following the plagiarized artist on twitter this whole time.
And they have an history of “just taking” when they think they can get away with it, as they’ve done with fanart. So, shitty studio culture sounds a definite possibility at that point.
If not for this, I would've chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it'd be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.
It's a shame, because he's a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.
That’s what I don’t get. Presumably there is some lore behind this game (unless they really are that lazy) so why don’t they just use one of the companies that they definitely have for the game
If you think that’s “abstract enough”, I’m guessing you’re either a plagiarist or an “AI artist”. Or do you want to admit that you didn’t really look at the comparison images?
More pics are coming out. One of them has the artist’s handle in it. Original art is the yellow to the right. Whoever added it to the game intentionally smudged the name, but left enough of it to be readabale.
(Judero is actually an amazing game and a work of art. Go play it, if you like the idea of a game made fully in clay + spare pieces laying around the creator’s house)
The only one that actually looks bad is the one at the top of the article. The others look fine.
The one of the red woman (I haven’t played the game so no idea who is who, edit: karlach, the tiefling) looks like it might be bad, but the pictures are also terrible so it’s impossible to say.
As someone who has had to paint mini faces before, this isn’t aweful, not great by any means but could have been much worse. They definitely need to thin their paints, probably use a smaller brush, and go slower. But in the person would painted this’ defense, faces are so hard to do well, and even harder to fix if you fuck it up.
This has got to be machine printed right? They’re no worse than Wizard’s usual minis, but yeah they always suck. The biggest problem IMO is the sculpt, they look like they’re made out of mud. I assume it has to do with the rubber they use. I don’t know, I’m way too spoiled by printing my own to consider buying something that looks this bad.
Their plastic/resin is garbage, and you’re right that the sculpts are flawed, especially in the finder details. I bet if they tried this in metal it would have worked out better.
Well that sucks. I was really liking this game but I’m not supporting trash people with my money. Sucks for the developers working there. Refund requested and review with reasoning posted.
I was unaware that Thomas Mahler was such a goon, bad boss, and puts out misleading press to bolster sales. I have requested a refund and will not be supporting anything he is involved in going forward.
After saying negative reviews ‘might just cause our death’ and ‘we’ve got a few months left in the oven’, No Rest for the Wicked CEO claims he never said they were in ‘immediate financial danger’ - pcgamer.com/…/after-saying-negative-reviews-might…
pcgamer.com
Gorące