Shenmue Dojo

I sent ShenSun a PM explaining the Dojo side of it, so hopefully it sheds some more light on the issue.

This was all dealt with at lunchtime privately and civilised so why it's mud slinging in public now, I don't know.

500K is a large, busy Facebook group. When news like a Kickstarter update drops, it receives countless duplicate new threads on the subject, by people who can't be bothered to scroll three seconds to find an existing thread to add their opinions to. These duplicates get deleted so as not to annoy other members or spread discussion of the same thing across multiple posts.

James might think his opinions warrant a thread of their own because he expressed them in a video instead of text, but that is where the admins disagree. Nothing to do with his opinions themselves. Crying censorship over Twitter is a little presumptuous toward people who'd offered their help with a charity stream he's trying to organize.

ShenSun wrote:

phpBB [video]

This thumbnail shows perfectly whats wrong with this character design IMO. The completely over exaggerated face features except the nose and ears:

- jaw
- joker mouth
- cheekbones
- whats wrong with the eyes?
- why are the eyelashes missing?
- what about the feminin eyebrows and the curve?

..also the lack of defined textures and the lighting makes the character doesn't look real. He looks like an action figure.
Don't get me wrong: I know Shenmue 1 & 2 had some freaky characters like chai but even they look more natural.
I have just made a few changes to his face in 5minutes and this is how he looks:



Original:


I really hope this is by FAR not the final design because after two years to see this kind of character design is disappointing for me :(

Shenmue_Trilogy wrote:I have just made a few changes to his face in 5minutes and this is how he looks:



Original:


I really hope this is by FAR not the final design because after two years to see this kind of character design is disappointing for me :(

I appreciate your work, but both look just about equally stylized to me... yours just looks a bit more like Lan Di.

Well, its not about the style its about the natural look or lets say realistisc look. The eyes, eye brows and mouth makes him look way more natural. Change the lighting and add some more textures and the look is even better.

Maybe so, but your character displays a completely different personality and attitude. The "official" character looks perhaps smug, overconfident, at ease, gangsta if you will, while yours looks more intense, focused and angry. But in any case I think we should all acknowledge that we're discussing rather subjective aspects... when it comes to matters of taste there's really only opinions.

Photoshopped one does look a lot more 'Shenmue'.

Here is the older version of this guy with higher forehead. This is just a paint job in 30sec....

But will his face no have motion capture applied once full body testing has been done? Also, voicework added with lip sync? We can only judge on UE stock at the moment, once this character is given better skin shading, detail, facial animations and a voice we will see him truly come to life.

Centrale wrote: Maybe so, but your character displays a completely different personality and attitude. The "official" character looks perhaps smug, overconfident, at ease, gangsta if you will, while yours looks more intense, focused and angry.

I know what you mean but its not the style which makes my character looks more natural. Its just the unnatural look how the original character was designed. here is the gangster version of him designed by me in 1min:




Lets see how the character will be in the final..

Even though the most recent character model was "meh" at best. We'll really know where the game stands when we see the character models of the more pivotal characters.

Waiting to see Ren and Lan Di. Hopefully they get those right.

I think they just need to nail the skin shader, and that's kinda it.

Let's Get Sweaty wrote: Okay ShenSun, you've had your rant, good for you.

Now did it occur to you at any point to get 500K's side of the story?

Thanks Peter. Much appreciated. It provides a lot of context to the situation.

Let's Get Sweaty wrote: Okay ShenSun, you've had your rant, good for you.

Now did it occur to you at any point to get 500K's side of the story?

Its not good for me, its good for the community to address all issues that affect its members. I've spoken to many people on 500k, Dojo, FB, Twitter, Youtube to hear all sides and there's a lot more to it then a post being deleted, both in this case and others.

I understand the community sites perspective but I can also see why certain members feel they need to step away for a bit. I'm sure everyone will come back together again sooner or later once we have proper gameplay footage.

Let's have no more drama, especially over updates and no shows of the game. Hell, even me still speaking of the issue is adding to that drama, but out of respect, i thought it was right to respond to your question.

Moving on to where the thread naturally progressed to.

Kiske wrote:

The color balance does make a nice difference. Those environments look so damn nice.





Loving the character mods you guys are making.

In my opinion, the modeling of this new character is incredible, much better than the last version of Ryo that we saw in March. Which makes me think that when they show the definitive model of Ryo will impress us.

This character has an incredible amount of detail, far superior to the Shenmue passport. And all this still unfinished and without animations. The artist who is doing this really knows what he is doing.

You may or may not like the style of the character, but you can not deny what a good job. I really want to see characters like Ren or Xiuying.

On the other hand, if they definitely delay the game, I hope they show a video that leaves us with our mouths open and with a bit of luck we can have the demo this year.