I like the HM style. I don't have problems with it; but yeah, sometimes boys may look some kind off; but I recognize that designing boys' clothes is harder than desinging girls'.
The style I like the most in the HM series is the one of Matsuyama Igusa (ToTT). He's style is simple, not too detailed, but it is cute and colorful.
With RF I do have a problem, I feel that maybe in the last games they have run out of ideas. I don't know, in the first RF I could see characters with better designs, differently from RF ToD and RF4. I particularly don't like RF4 characters' design, not the girls not the boys. In RF4 I think that characters like Kohaku, Kiel and Doug are too simple, like they would be design to be townspeople and not marriable candidates at all. But this is just my point of view.
Blue Rose wrote:
I enjoy the more...older and more detailed of this style versus the ones like in GrB/IoH/SI. And MM was pretty bad, although it was my favorite game.
So, I dunno.
Yeah I really disliked the GrB/IoH/SI styles, so after those games I'm kinda happy with the new designs. I don't really mind them unless they turn all chibi-ish and stuff. But I think I'm okay with it overall. I don't hate it and that's pretty much what matters to me.
I like RF designs a bit more but I think that's their own thing (some characters still look kind questionable imo) and ToT/AP is all right too but I think the transition to their game models look funny sometimes.
I also love the HM and RF styles~ Besides the young looking bachelors like others have already said. Magical Melody and Tree of Tranquility were the last games that felt more Harvest Moon-y to me, But I have heard that this game is kind of like Magical Melody, So I will probably end up liking it a lot.
It's probably just me but I think they got stiffer after the artist stopped drawing in chibi and the girls look alike now.
My biggest pet peeve is the way the eyes are drawn on a 3/4 angle the other eye sometimes looks too small. And those little eyelash things where it gets a dot at the end, it just really bugs me and i don't know why. It's like the hair bulbs are sticking out.
I prefer this art style as compared to the GrB simply because they at least look closer to their age.
The gameplay is more important to me than the art style, even though I think FoMT was my favorite art style. The colors weren't too bold and the characters looked nice.
The designs of the guy they normally use (I forgot his name) are alright sometimes, but his actual technique is lacking. His poses are often stiff and sometimes the drawings themselves are just off in terms of anatomy (the ANB post-wedding pics come to mind).
I mean, he's not terrible, and he's being doing this for years so obviously I don't hate his designs or anything. But I really wish they would change artists every now and then, like they did with Animal Parade/Tree of Tranquility. Now THOSE were excellent character designs.
I really do prefer Mika Nunokawa's art (ToT/AP) (Thanks for that name drop Nurse Finn, I'm going to try and look up more of her work). Great details while still staying very stylized, and interesting designs, and great anatomy. And her lines. I'm looking at pictures in another tab and am positively drooling over how amazing they are.
I really like Matsuyama's promotional illustrations, and he can come up with really interesting character designs (I think I liked AWL best) but I was pretty disappointed with ANB's characters with the exception of Hana and the Mt. Fuji guy. They look pretty generic, their poses are all very stiff and uncommunicative, and some awkward anatomy--he tends to err towards a "flat face," where the eyes, neck and hair are positioned on the head so it doesn't feel like it has any dimension.
But to be fair, I get to be much harsher on Matsuyama since he's produced SO MUCH for this series--there's been patches where he's been amazing and others where he's uninspired. And with the volume he's produced and the constraints he has it's not surprising if stuff isn't original anymore. But I like Nunokaya's work better than anything he's done for the series. He's not a bad artist by any means, but I think it would be good to have a change.
When I first saw the pictures of the bachelors, I just thought "what the eggplant?". They all look either too girly for me or just odd. Rod and Soseki are polar opposites in that one looks like a child and the other looks like a creepy older guy to me. I suppose it's more like a manga style maybe?
Oh well, perhaps the style will grow on me as I play the game, but for now, I am definitely going to be a cross dressing boy and marry WP who I find is actually the prettiest version I've ever seen of her. I also like the new harvest sprite style, so cute! Otherwise, I'm pretty disapointed in the bachelors; half of them could be women if they were given a slight chest and threw on a dress and some eyeshadow! But still, it's good to have fresh blood in doing the art too.
Blue Bell wrote:I really do prefer Mika Nunokawa's art (ToT/AP) (Thanks for that name drop Nurse Finn, I'm going to try and look up more of her work). Great details while still staying very stylized, and interesting designs, and great anatomy. And her lines. I'm looking at pictures in another tab and am positively drooling over how amazing they are.
Unfortunately I haven't found any of her stuff aside from sketches from the Chrono Cross artbook, but there are quite a few of them. Her style is pretty recognizable (particularly the anatomy on girls) even when it isn't in the super deformed HM style.
There may be more examples in the artbook but these are some of the more obvious pieces.
She should really have more work out there... maybe she uses an alias I don't know about. Cuz her work is amazing yo.
Nobuteru Yuuki is the only credited Artist on that page, but I think she did those two. I found a twitter account that has a sketch that also looks like hers, but it looks like its friends only. I wish Marvelous linked to a gallery of hers or something. Maybe she doesn't have one
I guess I'm alone in this, but I actually don't like the character art in AP/ToT. The technical aspects of the art are obviously on point. I don't like the soft shading or some of the over-stylized aspects of the characters, like how some of them have gigantic hair. It's a personal preference, but I don't really care for the end result. Her other work that was posted by Nurse Fin, though, is quite amazing.
On the whole, I don't dislike the art in ANB. I do think some things are a bit off -- like how Soseki seems so much older than the other bachelors, but probably isn't supposed to be. There are some elements that could be refined and could probably look better if even minors changes were made, like the colors used. But I don't think it looks terrible either.
I wouldn't mind another artistic direction in HM. They could obviously keep some stylistic elements the same and have them drawn by a different artist. Kind of like the Final Fantasy series: you can always tell when a character is from FF, even from completely different character designers.
RF art is gorgeous~ But it's RF art, and would look kind of strange in an HM game.
I'm just glad that most of the marriage candidates don't look like small children. When it's super chibi, I feel like it's two kids playing house instead of actual married teens/adults. That and I like some of the designs in this one. I actually like Soseki's design. Then again, age differences don't bother me as much as it does some people.
