Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I've got an announcement to make!
No, we're not quitting.
Up to this point we've been working on making textures with the goal of making them more "Nintendo-esque," meaning reducing their designs to a more simple approach. From this point onward though, we'll be changing our project goal from "Nintendoise" to "Modernise" and focus on bringing the Smash 4 visual style to Brawl. I'll explain in detail why we've made this choice in a bit, but what does this mean for you guys? More consistent textures, as we'll actually have an established visual style to work off of. Maybe even faster releases because we'll have reference material as well.
As we've made progress, we've received feedback on a few characters that they just didn't look right (namely Ganondorf and Roy) while other characters were well recieved even though they were developed the same way. We've thought about this for a bit,and realized that though the "Nintendoise" approach works well for more simple characters, it doesn't translate well to more complex characters like Ganondorf. To illustrate this, I'll be using charcters from both extremes: Toon Link and Ganondorf.
Here's Toon Link as we have him currently. His design has a clear inspiration from his Wind Waker appearance.
Then, we have Ganondorf. We tried to imagine him as he would look between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, a bit like how people described Skyward Sword initially.
Though they look consistent, there's just something that doesn't feel right with Ganondorf because his design called for more realistic textures.
To test this theory, we tried giving Ganondorf more realistic textures:
He looks much more fitting with darker and more detailed textures. The difference is most noticable in the hair.
But then put him beside Toon Link, and the difference in their styles is huge. They just don't look consistent, and don't look like they're part of the same game at all.
We then realized that Smash 4 is visually doing what would make sense for us to do next, so we chose to create a Smash 4-esque texture for Toon Link:
Much better! Ganondorf gets to keep his more detailed textures, and Toon Link still fits in. Keep in mind that these textures are both still WIPs, and are subject to change.
As you could probably tell, we were already drawing inspiration from Smash 4, but now to keep consistent we'll take as much as we can from Smash 4. We don't aim to replicate Smash 4 1:1, as some things can't be done as they are in Smash 4. That said, this is still a visual overhaul of Brawl rather than a complete mod.
We won't be adding Smash 4 characters.
We won't be reworking the gameplay to match Smash 4.
We won't be adding Young Link.
We will still be called Smash 3 though. We've come up with a new logo to go with our new project goal as well!
We hope to roll out these updates as soon as we can, and thank you all for your continued support!
We've also added a FAQ to the OP, you'll be happy if you read it.
