Unfortunately, Scarlet Deer Inn goes through massive effort to create visuals that end up appearing to either be a simple shader effect or a weird hand-drawn texture. I didn't even realize it was meant to be embroidery. Whether due to image processing or due to using too low a resolution, almost all the embroidery detail is lost. The digitally added black outlines not only do not match the embroidery texture, they hide the natural embroidery edges, making the whole thing look "fake". Perhaps due to those black outlines, the non-embroidered backgrounds also make the embroidered characters look, well, not embroidered. The added shading also doesn't help. For the effort they'd already put into the process, I'm surprised they didn't embroider the shading itself.

TO be honest, the raw embroidered characters look way better than the modified ones. They put in all that effort and then ruined it by drawing on top of the scanned embroidery and now the game just looks like hand drawn sprites with a weird post process effect added.

I'm surprised you didn't mention claymation games, like Clayfighter or Neverhood, since the idea of a 'crafts game' reminds me the most of them.

After all that processing, the embroidered texture ends up looking like a simple shader that could have been done digitally in my opinion.

From a pragmatic point of view, I... would have to say that "embroidered sprites" really are a "waste of time" that used effort where it wasn't needed, especially since arguably wouldn't be that much more noticeable if it was all just done digitally in the first place. However, I get it. Somtimes, you just have to do it for the art of it. "Because you can" and because it really is something unique, even if you barely see it in the end product.

i feel like the embroidered artstyle would be better if it didnt have the outlines and shaders effect. now it looks like only a noise filter is on the characters.

This last style is cool, but It really misses mentions to Yoshi Woolly World and stylized Kirby games

"Fluidity and nuance" aren the last things that come to mind when looking at Mortal Kombat's animations, especially as they've maintained the jank to this day.

The Kyle Hyde games (Hotel Dusk and Last Window) used rotoscoping really well. They managed to use it in a way that doesn't look uncanny, but still kept the expressiveness of the models gestures and facial animations. There's a Behind the Scenes video for Last Window that goes into more detail about it.

Great video! Makes me wonder why Tomb Raider was the winning thumbnail though, maybe something from MK (or Prince of Persia) would have been more contextually relevant. But yeah, good stuff, nice trip down memory lane 👍

I always thought a scanner darkly was some early-days filter they put over the original footage

i remember when the devs posted about Scarlet Deer Inn and every comment was "why did you go through all this effort? It's not noticeable at all." unlike with Cuphead, this style could easily be replicated within the engine or animation software. feels like they just did it to have bragging rights lol.

If you guys are going to talk about game animations, talk about old cartoon animations that *INSPIRED* game styles and animations we now see today. For example, *Wakfu*, you really should talk about it. For being a 2008 series and having handpainted textures with a nice of stylization for both characters and the environmment, it should be featured in this channel

I must be jaded, as I was expecting some really weird techniques. I mean, except for the Titanic example, the other techniques were fairly run of the mill. Even something simple as pallette swapping to make waterfalls feel way more out of the box than simple digitized video and rotoscoping. Or at least it would be interesting to hear of how they managed to cram the needed frames into the miniscule memory budgets of the day.

Missed opportunity to talk about Donkey Kong Country in this video when it comes to animation.

Wow, that Titanic game feels like looking at an IRL Phoenix Wright, with the little microchanges of the portraits + a bigger change when that one guy smokes a pipe.

I'm waiting for a stop motion game. Say a Wallace and Gromit game that 3D scanned every part of every film puppet and animate the in game characters by swapping out different assets.

Lol, the last style is like ordering food from the best restaurant in the city and covering it all with ketchup.

3:30 NEVER TURN ON INTERPOLATION

Tomb Raider (TR1-TR5) was also very well animated.

did you just lure me in with big bazonkers? God dammit it worked...

"weird" is not a fitting word here. It's problem solving and innovation.

There must have been a monetary reason like funding for them to do it this way... With all your other examples they chose the mediums they used because they were not artists or it was easier for them to create the games they wanted. This is not that. There is an easier way to do what they did (digital) and they actually get to that point but add the unnecessary other steps.. so it's not to save money, time or man power... It actually doubles or triples the man power... It's not even noticable that they are actually scans of real embroidery....

For the past few months, I have believed your channel name was "stylized stallion." I never questioned it, everyone has a crazy youtube name. But station makes more sense.

LOL, physically embroidering each character frame just to get yarn lines. They could scan that yarn texture once, fill the characters with it and you'd never see a difference.

if you want to, you could say mortal kombat is "photorealism". And this makes me thinking, Counter Strike 1.6 for example, its too isnt it? I dont think that the textures in this game are hand painted or digital painted. They are probably photos too, just downscaled a lot. passion and all, but the stiched effect doesnt really pop at all, i'd say they did not do a good job on that tbh

the technique they used in LA Noira is pretty insane, they created a 3d model of the head for each frame. it has to be something like photogrammetry. thats why the game is locked to 30 fps btw. they really were ahead of their time.

That's a hell of a good video. Congrats

Omfg you could easily put a filter over the frames of that game or texture them and put in a flicker that creates a similar effect. Outlandish to put that much effort in. Perfect. You’ll have people arguing for the purity of the affirm and others saying that’s over the top. Controversy generator. Brilliant.

5:37 *its But anyways, GREAT video lmao

This is basically just sprite animation with extra steps and a somewhat generic shader.

Great video! All of this was very interesting. I do hope the developers of Scarlet Deer Inn removes the outlines and shadows however... I mean what's the point if you can't see the embroidery?

This is a much better episode that usual

Sonic's old animations were Ạ̶̛̥̱̱̜̞̐͜A̷͙̙̟̱̿́́̇̉Ȇ̵͔̥͇̆͂̈́̕͠A̵̤͐͆͆͊͛̐̕̕͝͝E̶̬̫̖͍̤̰͙̤̘͂̿͑͗̃̊̅̑̄͘ͅÃ̴̘E̶̬̜͋͑̉̈̾̑̅̃̈̚Ę̸̨͈̤̲͔͂̓́Ų̷͓̗͕͖̦̙͈̂̿̈́̅̊̽̕͜͝͠U̶͙̦̱̬̻̦̿̂͝G̴̟̰͕̹̘̜̙̠͊̓̀̀̽H̴͓͕̺̠̬͗̆́͂H̴̤̥͖͖̜̹̗͋̄͂̀̂Ģ̵̅̆H̵͍̟̙̝̭͍̺̱͂͜H̷̩͍̄̋̔̂̑͗̓̽͘͝Ḧ̷̡̧̙̘̼̬̲͉̏͗̿͒̔̎͘H̷̱̳̣́̇́̊̉̔͆̋̕

No wonder a scanner darkly looked hideous and confusing to my 7yr old brain.

the embroidery step is not for game development its just a bragging rights

was wondering if we could get a video on artstyles good for beginners/solo devs. was thinking of that new shooter game thats really getting popular battle bit remastered and was thinking how the whole "block game" style is probably a pretty easy one and was wondering what other types of styles would be good for beginner/solo game devs

could have mentioned Doom 1993- they used clay models and then photographed them in different animation poses from various angles then re-touched them digitally.

If you like Scarlet Deer Inn, you should try *Forgotton Anne* too that game is something else

I clicked on this video because of Lara Croft being literally the only thing in the thumbnail and yet there is zero mention of her or Tomb Raider.

I always thought prince’s movement was too real & freaking hard to control… I know why now.

Great video :D i`d mention Tomb Raider too and other games using same tecnique where it uses different eye experssions from texture and replace it in key frame :D

I was expecting to see mention of the stuff they used for Doom...

It's funny how people here think the pair behind Scarlet Deer didn't think about doing this stuff digitally 😂It's all embroidered because they love the craft and it gave them publicity making their game bigger than it ever would've been if they did it digitally. I also think that they overdone the digital altering after the fact but still it's something unique and it put the game in a spotlight so i don't see any reason why people should care about them doing stuff their way. Great video!

Why is lara in the thumbnail? No lara on the video,or i did miss it? No mention of vertex animation not low poly?

TITANIC ADVENTURE OUT OF TIME!! I loved that game as a kid!!!

11:00 tbh it's looks like a waste of time, since the "effect" is so subtle in the animation. xd

Just adds to the charm

The line art is ruining the fact that it is embroidery, I didn't even notice it, honestly the game would look way better without that thick dark outline

It would become perfect if the boundaries were embroidered too. Or just leave as is without post-processing.

Got to shout out the neverhood here. The game is literally sculpted in clay and then photographed

I wonder how the animations in "Neighbours from Hell" were made. I mean, the characters are obviously made to look like clay figures, but i wonder if they really are claymation, because in the HD remaster i'm seeing film grain.

I remember playing that Titanic game. I'm pretty sure one of the characters looked a hell of a lot like (if it wasn't actually him) Carey Elwes

I just want to know what's that last, funky track on the background. That's some delicious groove!

wow that Titanic game is crazy

Good video. Nothing weird about these techniques though

This is an Amazing information 😮 Thank You for Illuminating us in the Art of 2D Animations, Master 💯👌🏻🎮🙏🏻

If you look closely enough and you don't have potatoes for eyes, you might notice that Mortal Kombat uses photographs as sprites. So much weirder than you remember!

When can I finally play Titanic Combat? Where you fight to the death to get on a rescue boat on the Titanic.

Brilliant stuff

I just gotta point out that although highly influential, MK wasn't the first fighting game with digitized sprites. Also, with regards to facial capture let's not forget Queen: the Eye.

incredibly inspirational

Ahhh... I see. So this is how they pulled off Unraveled and all Nintendo yarn based games. I appreciate this explanation.

I don't understand why they didn't just add an embroidered effect to their sprites. I don't think anybody can tell the difference. It feels too gimmicky to go through all that trouble.

The embroidery software creates basically the same look as the final product so why even do this

Surprised you didn't mention Doom's clay figures

So much work on the Scarlet Deer Inn to just look like a cheap photoshop effect. I am really saddened that they are using digital post processing to "enhance" the visuals, but instead totally killing the whole embroidery effect. As a Czech I am sad that something that would look absolutely unique and awesome will be totally forgotten because of the artist choice of digitally editing the edges and shadows in.

Early 2000's games also kinda had weird techniques. Like Niko Bellic's tounge moving in a 360° angle in GTA IV. (or was it 180°?) This is of course not as weird as most on the list here, but I think more modern "digital" animation can also look / work very weird.

People love to talk about the mythical uncanny valley, or express how unsettling some kinds of animation is, but the truth is, it's not like that. People never get scared or unsettled, you watch A Scanner Darkly or normal rotoscope movies and you don't feel anything like that.

Games always looked embodied to me

It seems out-of-place to frame L.A. Noire like it was an innovator here. Motion-captured videogames were around way, WAY earlier, such as Metal Gear Solid 2 and even Sonic Adventure 2!

which better building the world in unity or blender 3d ?

To talk about games with weird animation and not talk about one of the weirdest games is at least weird. The Neverhood

Scarlet deer does not have the same motivations for its animation design choices, mainly, limitation. As others have stated, applying a line over the embroidery, took away from what could have been a unique look. I’d argue that even without the line, it just would have looked like a blobs of colors. This really does seem a case of making something the harder way for the sake of making it difficult and not because of a technical limitation. Working harder, not smarter. It makes it hard to appreciate the effort because it would have been easier to build it completely in software, missing the point of technical limitations.

9:00 it's cool bro, not uncanny at all. the uncanny part of it is today's video games you can see clearly in some major AAA games aswell, people talking "Realistic" it's just worst.

I feel like they could have just used the software embroid textures instead, they drew over it and looks like its just wavy lines.

Pretty sure Pit Fighter did digitised fighter graphics before MK.

9:41 I'ts kind of crazy to me, that at one point, *Lego Island* was doing better numbers in sales than MFing DIABLO.

It's like I want to appreciate the embroidery thing but I don't really see how it makes the game better.

Production wise, this video is an awesome effort. Great stuff everywhere. Concept wise for the game your are creating the whole argument for? Not so much. The reason Boon pioneered rotoscoping and key work for live action into a game, is because there WAS NO other way to get the same results. Today, you could mask everyone of those sprites and add whatever texture you wanted. You could make them all out of glass and receive a similar result in a tenth of the time. What SDI is lacking is "pioneering" they aren't doing anything like our fore-gamer-fathers had once upon a time. Great piece regardless though. Truly enjoyed!

I'm surprised you didn't mention Donkey Kong Country on the SNES created by Rare where they made 3D models of the characters / enemies, animated them and then converted each animation into sprites.

Ffffk when I saw PoP i immediately thought about El Mechner..

I was never a fan of PoP SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE of the animation. HOWEVER, games like Blackthorn and Flashback I loved to death.

i get the point.. but your examples for comparing was kinda off? if you even mentioned cuphead once I would've agreed.. why? because you're comparing mortal combat all these old games that was yes were innovative at the time but we can all agree they were limited by technology.. Meanwhile Cuphead and Scarlet Deer could've done things digitally, they didn't need to scan hand anything from a physical stuff but they choose to do it anyway, because of the passion of doing art and animation.

I feel the unique look is lost in the final product. Honestly it shluld have looked to Yoshi's Wooly World and Crafted World for some inspiration. That game made the yarn texture look so good and be incorporated as a gameplay means too. Also the Epic Yarn Kirby game would be another good reference.

How you gonna skip the groundbreaking work of sierra online?!? Literally half the stuff you talk about here was done by sierra first.

Feel like "Forgotten Anne", another game with impeccable storytelling and graphics 💚💚

This video missed Street Fighter the movie game - it was Mortal Kombat looking Street fighter game with realistic background and characters digitized of actors of movie! While it's less known street fighter game, it's actually the best one!

For a less successful early digitized fighting game, see Atari's Pit Fighter.

Great 👍 video.

MK has digitized actors for sprites????? NO WAY BRO Is this a video for 5 years old?

Weird how?

Problem is they don't look embroidered at all ingame... that filter they put on all the sprites removes all the texture they're going for.

Scarlet Deer Inn would have been better off saving time by hand drawing the frames with ink and coloring them with pencil crayon. It would have looked the same. The effort is really lost and it just seems like they wanted to have a marketing angle like cuphead. I do like the art style, but it doesn't look embroidered. Ironically, looking at something like Yoahi's wooly world, using textures and shaders could have communicated the embroidered idea better

Where's Lara Croft in all this?

TBH I expected character models from The Elder Scrolls Morrowind and Oblivion. 🤣🤣

"Prince of Persia" was a great game that led to a franchise still kicking around up to the present day. But if you're really bringing it up for the sake of the animation, it seems like a missed opportunity to fail to mention "Karateka", another Jordan Mechner game, using many of the same rotoscoping techniques- that preceded "PoP" by five years. As impressive as "PoP" was, it was in some ways even more remarkable what Mechner managed to accomplish with the less powerful technology available in 1984.

Passion WAS a driving force, nowadays is money, look at the messes that keeps happening with triple-A dev studios and publishers, there are tons of cases where passion is thrown out of the window, due to time, money, impossible requests from publishers etc. I won't talk about the cases that keep popping up, instead, I'll remind you all about Driv3r mess, and how they started a cyber-guerrilla warfare; are you willing to say passion was the driving force for that too?

Yes, Prince of Persia was the most horrific and difficult game ever. I regret all the hours I have wasted trying to complete this game and curse the game makers forever. The suffering and pain they caused is unreal and they make Satan look like a saint.

What in this vid makes it cost over 600 dollars?