Can you feel the magic?

Agree wholeheartedly. Good job guys. I'm also one of those guys that loves the art style, very art deco.

Yeah...thats true. The new pics. for the spells are very nice. I have to say, i like the whole art style of the game.

Agreed!

Absolutely agree.   I really am loving the changes (both big & small) and the Elemental world is becoming more and more interesting.

Yep, I have also enjoyed the added art and if I am not mistaken I thought I heard some new music !!

Seeing that the art team is part of the ongoing completion/update/whatever is a good thing, but no, I still can't "feel the magic," at least not anything remotely like what I'd hoped to feel during many years of anticipating and 'beta testing' this title.

Eye (or ear) candy is no substitute for the lack of a structurally meaningful cosmology for the game. The devs ditched essence, which held so much wonderful potential to make the game both distinctive and innovative. The elements have never had any functional themes and spell books seem quite like they came from a how-to library and not an ancient system of mystical lore.

Mostly, I'm trying to crush all the hopeful feelings I've had for the game. But they're persistent buggers and are trying to maintain a defensive position of in the land of An Expansion Will Fix It. This post-launch process has been at least very unusual and possibly unique in the industry. So my vexing swarm of hopes seem to think that the first or second expansion for Elemental could (and should) remake the game far more dramatically than the DA and TA expansions did for GC2.

Looks great.  Now we just need some nicer looking hats.  I'm tired of all my heroes looking like this:

Janusk is looking for a soverign to aid....  And a really cute purse!

Just noticed them in my first serious attempt to play a beta game. Although I agree with GW Swicord that the magic system is far from great, these awesome pictures do help quite a bit

Hey! When did Janusk shave? O_o

* Just trying to help you in the "crush any hope!!!" part.

Yeah, the magic system definately 'looks' great.

I like the art a lot, very stylish

I also really like the art direction and ongoing additions.  One of my favorites that you didn't show is the empire town's info card portrait.  Unfortunately, the Kingdom town still has what looks like a screenshot from the alpha build as the image.

That's half a fair cop, or better. You're a Very Visual guy, and I've always meant my mockery of your stream-of-avatars as ironic respect.

That made it impossible for me avoid responding given your thread title. I truly love the visual arts and appreciate the value of the new game art you cited. But your thread title includes the word "magic," and I seem to be at least half-hell-bent on offering a dead horse buffet of complaints about how un-magical the game magic still seems to be.

p.s. Some other rotters in Stardockia taught me the notion of threadjacking and how it might not always be a bad thing, but I always try to defer to thread 'owners' ...

These pictures do look amazing. I really dig the art style.

I agree as well.  I like the style of art in the game.

It was not the art style I was expecting. I see some anime influence in there. That said, it's pretty, colorful and well constructed, and I do enjoy looking them over.

Art like this is one aspect of the game that really appeals to me.   As an artist myself, it's nice seeing bits like this scattered throughout the game, as it adds a lot of flavour.  While it's not quite the style I do my work in, I really like the aesthetic they're going for.

It reminds me of a lot of the old Warlords series of turn-based fantasy strategy games, which also had some rather remarkable art scattered throughout.   Anybody else play those?

I really love the 2d art of ewom (yes, reminds me of warlords too), but the 3d is.. well.. all the models look great. cartoonish (blizzardish) , which isn't quite my taste, but still - very good for lowpoly models. the sole exception are people. I assume mr potato head is an american 'invention' and maybe SD has some deep patriotic sympathy to deformed heads, but shouldn't it be at least possible to select a few faces which don't look so deformed?

I know, lowpoly etc. makes it near impossible to create a realistic face. but since the game has this comic style anyway - why not go in the same direction with faces? If you take a look at 'Torchlight' (great game, btw!), it has an even more comicesque style but manages to make the faces at least fit into the environment.

I'm sorry, I know this is the least of ewom's problems, but I just had to mention it

Ora

I haven't noticed anything wrong with the head models. They look fine to me. Perhaps they may be modeled after ethnicities that you're unused to seeing?

What does look kind of bad, though, is the hair and beard models. But honestly, considering the technical constraints, they're the best we can expect. Although some are much better than others.

nah, I'm swiss so I'm used to quite some different ethnicities (and I also like to travel)

It's not very easy to describe the problems as I can't quite put my finger on them. Take a look at this screenshot for example:

I think the eyes are ok. the nose seems a bit large but ok. the mouth on this model is fine (even though on other models it's gigantic *g*). but what seems wrong are the jaw and cheekboness. maybe also the chin a bit. the form of the cheeks might be too concave, I'm not sure. It just doesn't feel right.

also, the available textures for males don't seem natural.

compare it to this picture, which, in my opinion, looks very realistic (caucasian, google for male head to see a lot of 3d models of different racial backgrounds to compare):

take special note on the positions of the cheekbones, jawline and the edge of the jaw (or whatever its called in english) below the ear. its close, but definitely different in a way which seems unnatural to me.

the women heads, on the other hand, are quite well-formed as far as I can tell.

well. I'm just a bit tired of games having perfect beauties as females and males which can hardly be called human

Hope this makes my point a bit clearer.

Ora

Yes, good thread I've been meaning to say how good all the new art work is. Good unique art work does help make the spells feel a lot better because sometimes the cosmetic is important for atmosphere.

Well done stardoc.