General Screenshot/Movie Thread

Howdy folks! After so many years of inactivity on Sonic hacking (although I regularly browse here just to observe other hacks in progress), I'm back in my element again, playing around with special stages... I wanted to put a modern artistic spin on S1...

Results screen (Failure)
"SPECIAL STAGE" just looked a little too plain to me


Results screen (Collected emerald)
The letters are in gold to indicate success

However, this same result pops up when you fail a stage with a Chaos Emerald currently in possession... What can I do to get it to load "SPECIAL STAGE" when failing at any time, even with emeralds in possession?


Results screen (All emeralds collected)
The letters are in gold to indicate success

The title cards are a little spaced, but I can fix that... And I really want to get rid of that oval...

New special stage art (I may scrap the background and replace it with something entirely new)


What do y'all think of my art, especially the Chaos Emeralds?

 

HOLY! that is stunning like a cup of tea.
keep up the good work mate.

 

Little Tile edit In GHZ for ya.

 

Doesn't look very pleasant. Especially with the original tile set mixed there.

 

Yea I'm not very good at tile editing as you can tell, its already been finished :/
I've also got other tile differences like in marble zone.

 

it (for me at least) feels hard to see the difference in the fg and bg, make the bg a bit darker and It would already be better

 

yea that's what I did (also I agree with you)

 

what do you think of this title screen background I created in Paint.net?

EDIT: also, I used it for the next release of Sonic Unlimited Refreshed.

 

Not really my cup of tea per se, since it just looks like an MS Paint doodle to me with how some shapes are haphazardly formed and a general lack of detail. What I'm a bit worried about about is the potential clashing of styles with other graphics in the game. Sonic's regular sprite, for instance, would not suit well with that background at all and would stick out like a sore thumb.

 

I'm not very good at art as you can tell.
EDIT: But hey at least I've got someone to review something at least.

 

So, I guess I'm critiquing this. The general idea with the look is fine but the trees look pretty bad,the mountains need some normal ground without grass, and there is an overall lack of detail. Like Devon said, it doesn't match well with the other art at all. There trees are also too small to be seen on the genesis and wouldn't look good in a level with slightly modified green hill graphics nor with the normal sonic.
The design could work with some better trees and mountains, more detail, and a better use of colors.

 

Wow, that looks laughably bad!

But in all seriousness, I am with all the others in this topic. It looks really plain, simple and basic, especially when you compare it to the original level arts in Sonic 1. There’s hardly any detailed work made to the background with little to no shading, and overall it looks very simplistic in design. It doesn’t give that much depth and detail, especially when paired with detailed, shaded sprites overlaid on top of each other (e.g. the title screen foreground graphics with the Sonic sprite would clash heavily with the plain, basic background graphics you’ve made).

Other than that, I would say improve the background some more if you can to make it look more pleasing to the eye and with a bit more detail to it, maybe even add some additional things to it like more clouds, additional trees, and everything else you have in mind.

 

V3.0 Sneak peek 1 screenshot (title screen)

 

That title screen looks nicer that the previous one, but the logo could use some work to make it stand out from the bg

 

work granted

 

slightly improved GHZ Art.


EDIT: even MORE Improved art of GHZ

 

This title screen looks incredibly messy, to the point where I would be inclined to say it looks like a set of random strings of text placed haphazardly over a space background. The amount of separation between the two halves of your hack's name are the worst offender, especially considering the text placed inbetween. Speaking of, I'm also not particularly fond of the font choice for the credit banners (in reference to the SEGA 1991, DISCOVERY'S 2023 banners), as well as the color choice (blue text over blue background can be hard to read).

I'm not 100% sure of what's the direction you're trying to take here. I like the idea of pipe-like structures placed on the foreground, but I do not particularly like the color scheme used for the checkerboard's brighter tiles. I'd suggest adding a little more blue to it, might make them blend in better. Although, even with that color scheme, I'm not fond of it combined with the GHZ grass, I'd suggest you recolor/redesign that too.

 

that will be improved on.
(I'm just working on adding the spindash right know tbh)

 

is this title screen a little bit better? by the way, ignore the blackness in the *UNLIMITED* Text. Also ignore the TM.

this is what it supposed to like.

 

I think it needs some fixes in the colors (mostly in the UNLIMITED REFRESHED part) but looks like a good title screen for a newcomer.