[PeterHolzwarth]

It's a bit ironic that he says he was not really a fan of Day of the Tentacle's "Chuck Jones" art style, when the screenshots for his upcoming Return to Monkey Island are all very specifically that 90's-infused Chuck Jones style - multiple skewed perspective lines in a scene, extreme avoidance of curves (rendered instead as polygonal outlines, so to speak).

The art style for his new game is rather ironically nostalgia-laden in probably an unintentional way: it's deep nineties pop art, ala "Xtreme", etc.

<edit> This interview article has a number of screenshots that demo this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/23021974/return-to-monkey...

[egypturnash]

I replayed Secret of Monkey Island this weekend and was really struck by what a ramshackle, distorted place Melee Island is. It is an accurate cartoon caricature of slapdash architecture on sinking ground.

Here's the very first place Guybrush is controllable in:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...

https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...

Look at those walls. Not a vertical one in sight. They're all leaning.

Deeper in town:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...

https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/secret-of-monkey-island...

Lots of straight lines, but no two buildings are in the same perspective. It's cartoon cubism, filtered through a 640x480 grid. Maurice Noble's work with Chuck Jones looms large over the backgrounds but so does the realities of what cheap shacks slapped together by pirates on constantly-sinking ground would look like.

I suspect the "Chuck Jones" art style of DOTT he's referring to is the character design. Which was so Jones-influenced that I recall hearing that when Lucasfilm had a chance to show it to Chuck, he did the most flattering thing possible: he tried to hire the animators to work at the new studio he was opening up.

[wlll]

> I suspect the "Chuck Jones" art style of DOTT he's referring to is the character design.

I played Day of the Tentacle last night (remastered version on iPad, but the pixel art not the new art). My impression is it's kinda like monkey island except more extreme. Like someone took monkey island and added loads more vortex art tool.

[foldr]

> 640x480 grid

320x200. We could only dream of 640x480 with 256 colors in those days!

[egypturnash]

Ah yeah, you're right! My bad.

[emmanueloga_]

Reminds me a bit of games like guacamelee [1]. There are a bunch of new or newish games that use this "vector style" ...

I always thought this is used mostly out of convenience since it is cheaper/faster to animate with tools like Spine or Dragon Bones.

1: https://www.drinkboxstudios.com/games/guacamelee-super-turbo...

[syntheweave]

Originally the style in gaming came about through two related influences:

1. Flash and its status in the 2000's as the tool every animator cut their teeth on. Flash makes it easy to paperdoll things with scenegraph relationships, though it has no skeleton system per se; if you animated the doll by hand and set up your assets proportionately you were good to go on making games with character creation, visible equipment etc.

2. Texture memory limitations imposing limits on keyframe animation in mobile games. This led the larger mobile companies circa 2010 to build out proprietary systems that would get the most out of relatively small textures and make them modular assets for everything - UI, animations, backgrounds, collision bounds, FX etc.

Spine, Spriter, and Dragon Bones basically followed up as third-party versions of those proprietary tools. Now it's taken root as a definite style; even modern TV cartoons are using these setups, although they have more complex dolls with more keyframes. "Puppet" animation basically does the things that animators used to do by tracing model sheet drawings and it lets them go a lot faster, hence you can pull off 2D shows with detailed characters and still have it look crisp and polished.

[wlll]

Yeah, I just played DotT remastered (iPad) last night. I wasn't a fan of the art style /in general/. Something to note though, I played it entirely in the "old" pixel format not the new style (you can change between the two with a gesture at any point). I really did try to like the new art, but just couldn't, I genuinely preferred the pixel style.

For Monkey Islane I'm pretty sad that he's gone with the art style he has, looking at the photos they just seem claustrophobic, lacking in charm or character to me.

[halfnormalform]

The new one sort of reminds me of the "lowbrow" style of Josh Agle, AKA Shag: http://www.shag.com

[hadjian]

I thought exactly the same! I remember, seeing screenshots of DotT for the first time and the new screens of RtMI invoke the same feeling. Love it!

[seba_dos1]

Yeah, I kinda feel like the style of RoMI could make a better DotT:Remastered than DotT:Remastered did :)