Skullgirls Preview: Peacock

By: Derek Yu

On: June 6th, 2011

In a new series of videos, artist Alex Ahad and programmer Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont describe a previously unrevealed character from Skullgirls, their upcoming 2d fighting game:

  • Haberdasher

    looks fun enough, and the art direction is really cool

    too bad I suck at fighting games

  • http://profiles.google.com/gabriel.verdon Gabriel Verdon

    Dude, that guy talks in a another language

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2729953 Vincent Jonathan Toups

    Dead TIGSource,  

    A game trailer is, essentially, an advertisement.  That is, each of these videos is meant to stir up desire in the viewers to ultimately purchase Skullgirls.  That is fine, such as it is.  The fact that I have to watch another Ad BEFORE the ad which I am here to voluntarily watch is really offensive to my sensibilities.  This isn't really your fault, since you are linking to Gametrailers, but I still absolutely hate it.  The fact that I have to watch the same add three times before each tiny clip, is extremely depressing.  In short, please stop using gametrailers.com – they suck.

  • Zecks

    the only thing here that's offensive is how useless and dumb your shitty comment is.

    i don't think that max. 30 seconds is gonna be out from anything remotely important.

  • Tiganon

    Anyone else getting a weird disconnect caused by the cutesy pixel characters and the hey-look-early-90's-CGI backgrounds?  I think they'd do a lot better to switch backgrounds so that it matches the character style.  Don't throw pretty 2d sprites into an episode of Reboot and call it a day.

  • http://profiles.google.com/branewalker Sean Choate

    Look again. Those are flat-color 2D sprites that are layered to add depth. The shading may be a little too harsh, though, which I suppose could give the backgrounds a visual character not unlike early 3D animation.

  • SupWhats

    Those are illustrated backgrounds.  At best, 3D was used to lay parts them out, but from I've seen in prior demos, most of the backgrounds began a paintsketches.  In any case, what you see there is not a 3D render.

    I like the BGs so far, but they do look a bit unfinished.  It looks like they laid out the color flats, but are still waiting on a few extra details and color adjustments.  Most of their small art team is probably focused on animation now, so they might be leaving the BG's on the backburner, much like some of the HUD elements have been.  

    I highly anticipate that this will not be ready by end of summer 2011, but we'll see.  There's a lot of good work going into this, so I hope it has a great release. Hopefully it inspires other developers to explore other options than CG too. Street Fighter X Tekken is really bumming me out the more I see it. 

    However, the timeline for this game is a good reminder why people shouldn't expect HD spritework for every 2D game that gets released today.  Putting together animations this detailed takes a LOT of hard work.  At least with most pixel art you don't have to worry about things like lineweights, and smoothing out brushed curves for every frame.

    On that note, if they HAD chosen to use pre-rendered 3D backdrops, I wouldn't have blamed them for that decision at all!

  • http://twitter.com/celluloseman Evan Balster

    The fellow has the right to speak his mind, and a decent point to make for that matter.  It's pretty awesome that TIGS is virtually ad-free.  :)

  • Consumatopia

    The backgrounds may not be CG, but I do agree that there's a mismatch between the characters and this background.  It's kind of frustrating–I really like those characters, and I rather like that background too, but seeing those characters on that background makes me uncomfortable–the styles are too different.

  • http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

    I try to avoid video players other than YouTube or Vimeo, but in this case only GT was available for all three clips (AFAIK).

  • Dan

    just a heads up, skullgirls being published by Konami now:

    http://www.konami.com/games/sk

    still a great looking game, not so independent anymore though :(