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DOTTiges / Night of the Meteor kids - my personal take
« am: 17. Oktober 2025, 17:58:52 »
Hi! It's been a while since I posted anything here. I tried redesigning the kids once in the DotT style but I thought it was too stressful as I didn't know what to properly exaggerate. I decided to try it again with more experience and research on the style.
Before I get into what I think, I just want to say it's just my honest opinion at the end of the day and my redesigns aren't perfect, either. If you like the NotM designs or created some of them yourself, that's great! You do you.
The reason I wanted to redesign them is because, don't take it the wrong way but I just don't think they match the DotT style well. Before anybody gets mad at me, I want to clarify that they're still nice designs and I do like them but they don't really seem to fit that well with the cartoony, exaggerated world of DotT (at least in my eyes).
The design for Bernard in DotT is reused in NotM which I think makes it look off-putting due to the rest of the kids looking more "normal" in comparison and Bernard looking like an alien skin walker with his lack of chin, big ears, poor posture and odd-looking haircut. I redesigned Bernard to look more like the other kids in NotM as well as his Maniac Mansion design so that he wouldn't look as out-of-place. I also redesigned the kids to be more exxagerated and have the types of noses, squirrel cheeks and bulgy eyes you'd find in DotT by artist Larry Ahern.
I think my biggest critique with the NotM designs is how similar the silhouettes of the characters are except for Bernard. I understand art styles are subjective but I think they look too similar to each other. If you don't know what I mean, silhouettes are a common rule in character design by decreasing the brightness of the character until they're pure black and seeing if you can still make out the character by that alone. Day of the Tentacle does this really well with Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie with their haircuts, poses and body shapes whereas Night of the Meteor isn't as strong in comparison.
If I put myself in the artist's shoes, I do understand that having to make a pose and body shape for each character can be hard to do, especially when it comes to walk cycles, and the people behind NotM obviously don't have the same technology as LucasArts which is understandable. In some cases, I'd like to think that Night of the Meteor likes to do it's own art style inspired by DotT, 'cause the characters aren't bad, they're still really nice to look at, as well as the custom backgrounds by Jan-Hendrik who's really talented!
But one more thing I want to say is no, these are not for Night of the Meteor. Hans-Christian already programmed all the existing animations into the game and some of the animations that are already in the final game are really well animated (my personal favourite being Syd using the paint thinner). Hans-Christian and the other artists behind the game have already stressed out enough with what they can do and my redesigns are just personal goofy art I made because I was bored, and I will say my redesigns aren't brilliant either, some people would say that the NotM designs fit their personalities more and they may be right.
Before I get into what I think, I just want to say it's just my honest opinion at the end of the day and my redesigns aren't perfect, either. If you like the NotM designs or created some of them yourself, that's great! You do you.
The reason I wanted to redesign them is because, don't take it the wrong way but I just don't think they match the DotT style well. Before anybody gets mad at me, I want to clarify that they're still nice designs and I do like them but they don't really seem to fit that well with the cartoony, exaggerated world of DotT (at least in my eyes).
The design for Bernard in DotT is reused in NotM which I think makes it look off-putting due to the rest of the kids looking more "normal" in comparison and Bernard looking like an alien skin walker with his lack of chin, big ears, poor posture and odd-looking haircut. I redesigned Bernard to look more like the other kids in NotM as well as his Maniac Mansion design so that he wouldn't look as out-of-place. I also redesigned the kids to be more exxagerated and have the types of noses, squirrel cheeks and bulgy eyes you'd find in DotT by artist Larry Ahern.
I think my biggest critique with the NotM designs is how similar the silhouettes of the characters are except for Bernard. I understand art styles are subjective but I think they look too similar to each other. If you don't know what I mean, silhouettes are a common rule in character design by decreasing the brightness of the character until they're pure black and seeing if you can still make out the character by that alone. Day of the Tentacle does this really well with Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie with their haircuts, poses and body shapes whereas Night of the Meteor isn't as strong in comparison.
If I put myself in the artist's shoes, I do understand that having to make a pose and body shape for each character can be hard to do, especially when it comes to walk cycles, and the people behind NotM obviously don't have the same technology as LucasArts which is understandable. In some cases, I'd like to think that Night of the Meteor likes to do it's own art style inspired by DotT, 'cause the characters aren't bad, they're still really nice to look at, as well as the custom backgrounds by Jan-Hendrik who's really talented!
But one more thing I want to say is no, these are not for Night of the Meteor. Hans-Christian already programmed all the existing animations into the game and some of the animations that are already in the final game are really well animated (my personal favourite being Syd using the paint thinner). Hans-Christian and the other artists behind the game have already stressed out enough with what they can do and my redesigns are just personal goofy art I made because I was bored, and I will say my redesigns aren't brilliant either, some people would say that the NotM designs fit their personalities more and they may be right.