I think it having a realistic artstyle helped make the idea more interesting Seeing moebius in a realistic style was an interesting idea especially with so many class based shooters having cartoony graphics
same here, now it's just gonna be well known for the memes about how badly it failed and how few people bought the game, 8 years of work and a ton of money gone to waste, if that's not meme material, I don't know what is
Although I personally don't like Concord's designs at all, I think it's less about the design that made it suffer, and more of the 3D translation + context of what they're supposed to be in, etc. I've seen this happen a lot to my favorite games where concepts look great as concepts but the choice of how they're rendered, stylized, translated, etc. is the major downfall, even if it was a 1-to-1 copy. I personally think Concord's design can somehow work if it were more stylized than realistic. And I don't even like them. edit: just like your stylization at the final product, they look MUCH better with how you stylized them even though you kept the original designs.
Yea, im 100% sure these designs were made in a more stylized look in mind (think the semi realistic look of owerwatch or just more cartoonish stuff) + upper managment might have dictaded the more realistic look of the final game.
That's the vibe I've gotten: They're interesting designs, given a questionable presentation. If you were to take any given character and run them through the "Draw in X Style" test, they'd mostly turn out really good. The game, meanwhile, interprets them realistically, while also keeping them very clean and bland, which creates a kind of uncanny valley effect. In a way, it's kind of an interesting concept--taking these highly cartoony elements (like big shoulder pads, purple hair buns, unique aviators, etc.) and asking "What would it look like if real people dressed this way?" Unfortunately, keeping within the restraints of realism also means they can't push extremes on their designs, which greatly lessens their impact. They end up with all of the drawbacks of both cartoony and realistic renders, with none of the reward.
I thought the same too. The silohettes in the concept art could have been great but once transferred over to 3D art everything might of gotten lost in the process. Guess we'll never know. Crazy how much better this game could have been if the characters had a minor style change.
Yeah, Pikat drew it in stylized way and drawing looks much better, because it has more appealing body proportions and better colors. In game 3D models are desaturated and are very-very ugly
As a game character artist and animator, I actually like your drawing much better, fore me, the adjustments you mentioned as "mistakes" to me are a huge deal on fixing her design actually, How you increased the glasses makes them look waaay better than the original and also the changes to the body shape (before, she looked downwards squashed like if she was struggling to live with gravity in her life) even though you said the hourglass body shape wouldn't sell speed much, it does help a lot portraying hip/torso rotations, associated to change in direction of movement, and necessary for air flips and such (Which she does a lot in game)
Yes, to me the biggest thing that rubbed me the wrong way with this specific design were the glasses. Either fixing them (like she did) or fully removing them would improve the overall design at least fivefold for me personally It's crazy to me that it seems like a lot of small stupid things like this would completely destroy otherwise decent designs, and somehow confusingly almost every single design from the game has one of these little "deal breakers" so to speak. It's very odd
I would still consider what you did a redesign. The small edits to the coat and body style better accentuate the intended role for the character, and speaking of, your illustration actually looks like it *has* character. The ingame model's coat muddles a lot of the body language and form of the character, so the player has a harder time gleaning it, especially with the... underwhelming... selection voice line and facial expressions.
Yeah Bazz's main issue was her tank-like proportions in general, it's not just style issue. The bulkiness of her character (Mainly how the jacket loom over her body) can be fixed without changing style. Another girls in concord have their clothes hug their body more, so it's not game engine issue either. Her glasses was small and awkward like a crazy mad scientist. The way she present herself in game with that pose is super awkward like a retired psycho, rather than femme fatale like Pikat present her, it's not style issue.
Ngl I have watch like 5 different redesigns of the concord characters on youtube and all of them ended up looking boring and worst that the original. I think people just want to hate something.
hmm i'm not so sure about that, personally. It's just little tweaks to the design taking into account the original character. I just think that the 3d rendition did the characters dirty (even though some of them I do think they need actual tweaks to shapes and color placement), because I've seen the concept art of the characters and they have cool shapes and contrast
I love that you are against the dogpiling and for healthy arguments. I still disagree with you, because the changes you made are quite big in my opinions - changing the glasses and the proportions. But you gave a few valid points, that the hyper-realism and weird poses made the game look much worse. Here's the like from me! I'll check out your other videos :3
She forgot to mention that the designs are TERRIBLE for a hero shooter. You NEED to know what a character does upon first glance. Imagine if in TF2 the Heavy had Scout's role?
As an artist, the designs look very unique... as a person though? These characters are fugly as hell LOL. They look terrible in their 3D world and that's not good. People want characters they stare at the entire time to be appealing. These characters are *NOT* appealing.
And let me tell you there these characters were different in different styles one of them being in their short lived animated series and even then they'd still look ugly.
i think the... "unappealingness" comes from their choice in textures, they look like a cheap 80's Scyfi show and it doesn't help that the characters lack anything to make them stand out much. it doesn't deserve the hate it's receiving but it doesn't deserve praises either
@@Soulxstar i agree with you! The retro scifi inspiration could have been a banger, if they didn't go for the hyper realistic route. I also think that the characters don't need huge redesigns, just some adjustments here and there with colors and shapes
I feel like if anything this video proves why the designs in concord were bad. In a stylized setting where contrast and proportions are pushed more, the characters don't look that bad, but the problem is that's in just a vacuum, within the greater context of the game that has a more realistic style, the designs were very conflicting with the overall art direction. The goal of character design isn't necessarily to just making a appling looking character, it's to serve a greater function within its context, and to that I think concord objectively failed.
9:08 Pikat, give yourself credit cause your redesign looks much better than the existing characters. Also while I respect you trying to be positive, I think your video ended up affirming my belief that the designs are just bad.
The photorealism / uncanny valley probably helped made people not like the design. Slapping cell shading shadder, like what you did, over the entire game would have made it less uncanny. This game should have been a single player or coop game. The character designs would be fine if that was the case. One of the game's selling point was weekly narrative cinematic to further the story, if that is a hook they were trying to use, then it should have been a single player narrative driven game in the first place. The animations, especially in the face, look so good. I'm guessing part of the 8 year development was executives demanding whatever the original game concept to be turned into a multiplayer hero shooter.
it is indeed funny how small adjustments changed the design quite significantly, thus defeating your point, but some comments here are a bit mean ngl. Also, the style the game chose being the reason why they look worse is actually a good point, overall, I dig your redesign, but yeee, I still think concord designs are quite bad
The designs are bad, but they're also badly implemented. I think that's an accurate summary. The overall style of the game doesn't suit the designs, and they're struggling to work to begin with.
I don't like when people say that they need appealing designs, aka sexy designs. I don't mind it, but is kinda sad because usually I see this complain more with woman (that case with a character that got "uglier" in a game, I don't remember what game). You can have designs being ugly but cool or just not convetional. (Btw, not a problem liking sexy designs, but usually get a bit repetive and usually restrain the design of womans)
I once read a comment that said the Concord designs look like cosplay or bad live action adaptations of fun, iconic cartoon designs and your 2D redraw proves this to me. They really feel held back by the more realistic art style attempted by the game. I would love to see more redraws of the characters like yours, that keep the game's influences in mind, rather than redesigning from scratch just to dunk on the artists.
The title misled me a bit, but I'm impressed, you actually managed to make the design work just with your changes. Now I kinda wish you made your take of more characters
Pikat is just very polite and people in comments try to keep up to her politeness to her opinion. However concord deserves to be clowned upon, cuz toxic positivity was bring to the development process by immature insecure people who don't know how to work with constructive criticism. And whoever owns the project shoots themselves in the leg by hiring such people to execute said project.
Personally I only like the Red-Blue guy kinda, everyone else sucks. Edit: You know what actually I think the artstyle being too realistic was the problem you did a great job here!
Says the person with corazon on their pfp 😭😭 sorry like yeah they're not the best designs but somehow i think if they had a cool backstory people would love them (like one piece 🤩🤩🤩)
@@kikoslemonsyea did One piece get cancelled after 8 days and lose 200 millions dollars? It didn’t? Wow I wonder fucking why it must be that people like the design and it drew them in the anime dumbass
@@kikoslemons this just proves one of the points of the video even further for me. if i see the design of corazon in a realistic setting with a more "grimdark" artsyle, yeah that shit would suck, but he is in one piece, and he is introduce as the brother of doflamingo (fucking banger of a design), so you only focus on the parallelisms with him and it works, it does the job, its not one of the best designs in one piece, but it doesnt has to be.
The stylization is definitely off, but I think the biggest problem with these designs is that they don't really tell you anything about what the character does. These are for a video game, so if a character can rain bombs on you from above, you have to be able to tell at a glance during the game. As they are, they don't really do that. Anyway, great video, and I definitely agree that we shouldn't be dogpiling these as hard as we are, especially considering the kind of environment the artists were potentially working in. We should just take our lessons from these, and move on!
Tweaks artstyle, Tweaks shape language, tweaks colour values, accidentally tweaks a few parts more. All the problems I've heard about when it comes to the designs xD
I meaaan. Most people who do this just completely throw away the design. This video doesn't change the design but only tweaks it. But even then I wouldn't consider this a design change. This is just an art style change. You can still tell what character this is, but with all the other "redesigns" you can't even tell what game they were meant to be from.
As you commeted in the video, at least the most serious thing about their desings is that they dont convey the role they play in the game. Un like Overwatch that without playing it I can get an idea of what role each character plays
@@lssjgaming1599 simply not true, concept art includes earlier versions of character designs and that's one of the earliest part of development. The problem is that it seems like they just stick with the first draft. Look at the video, even some minor tweaks like not making the glasses so small, helps the character a lot
@@Winterfang The development of a game is the responsibility of many different departments, the design and art department was subjected and limited by the rest of the departments that did not do their job well, I would dare to say that most of the 8 years was wasted time between executives and the production team, I would not even doubt the programmers.
Deadlines are placed by producers at every stage of development i don't like when people act like a long production time means the devs were goofin around
Concord failed because it was a $40 game that looked pretty much identical to a million other games that are free to play, it's really as simple as that
That's part of it, but it didn't even have a niche audience (because some people don't care as long as the game is fun and attractive for them as a new game), if only for a few months, but Concord could not even do that. Chinese/Korean games can literally get away with making some of the worse games (i.e. MMOs and gacha games) by using tits, ass, etc. This game could not even attract a niche audience with it's gameplay and character designs.
@@DD-fs7pg yeah that's true, its just the reality that cuteness and sex appeal sells and concord seems to have none of that, maybe if this was built off of some established property like starwars it might have found an audience but unfortunately nobody cared about concord's universe until was already too late
I don't think so, even in the open beta it was empty so the $40 price tag wasn't going to make much of a difference. What made it fail was the million other games that looked way better
Personally, I love the designs of Haymar and It-Z, but as you also said yourself, I think the main issue is that the designs don't convey the characters' gameplay styles very well.
In It-Z's case, after doing some research, I can say there are good ideas and reasons for her design, but they also don't work for a hero shooter (like you said, doesn't convey her playstyle). She's based on lynxes or caracals, so fair, she's a cat, she's fast, agile, etc.. She's wearing freerunner/parkour clothes, again, fast and agile. That's good. Problem is, she kinda looks like an NPC rather than a hero, and nowhere in here design we can see she's a trickster with crazy cosmic powers (teleport, illusions, stealing others' strength).
@@Klaymoor Yes! Exactly! I don't think she looks like an NPC though, she's the most colorful of the cast, so I'd say she's the most stand-out in this case.
@@Badguy292 Ah, sorry, I meant to say her clothes look NPCish. They make her look like a civilian of sorts instead of the mercenary kind of things the "Freegunners" are in the game's lore.
I think pikat's iteration was the best level of stylisation where the characters looked similar in realism to valorant and where the proportions look believable whilst still seving the shape theory of their playstyles. But then again ive seen the original and pikat's designs and none more
8:38 only according to the concord devs it's not fine and the people who tried to point out basic criticism were accosted. Most of the criticism towards the character you redrew you "unintentionally changed". I think this goes to show that when most none artist say the character designs are bad, they are also meaning the execution.
>Says the designs are fine >Does slight edits to them anyway make it make sense. I'm not one who dogged on them too much but damn it! They're not fine then!
I think the main problem with the character design of concord is that they don’t tell you anything about what the character is supposed to be. Take the girl with the astronaut like helmet (forgot her name) without her weapons I don’t think anyone would be able to tell what her gameplay is. Also very bad colour theory.
I Respectfully disagree. I think if you look at the rules of character designs like storytelling,shapes and Gesture (and many more) you can see that concord has done a terrible job in implementing them. I'm mean you can easily tell the flaws if you compare it to games like overwatch and even Apex Legends wich has a Realistic artstyle too(Because you mentioned it in you Video). I like that you want to spread more positivity but I also believe that Artist schould take concord as an Bad example and a way to know how to not do it. Love you videos though they really helped me to become better.❤️
I agree, though minor nitpick that design has principles rather than rules because they describe art which is inherently subjective and contextual (just to be clear, I’m not saying that any design is valid but that different goals can benefit from different philosophies). Concord’s visuals to me feel like the art was pulled in a lot of different directions, preventing it from really excelling at anything
More than a little weird to try to explain the rules of character design to a character designer. I don't believe the purpose of this was to spread positivity exactly, but actually being fair, which frankly most people have not been towards Concord as a whole. The designs aren't the reason the game failed, whether someone likes X design or not is mostly irrelevant, but this has easily been the most prominent thing people point to for why it all went to crap and those arguments are almost never made in good faith. Not a fan of the art direction for the game by the way, but really importantly: Not liking something doesn't mean it's bad. There's no meaningful lesson for an artist to learn from Concord. The problems started and ended a hell of a lot higher up the food chain than the character artists.
@MrsMetronome I am aware that she knows about all of the principles of character designs, but she literally made a video 2 weeks ago about character design where she explained how you're characters don't end up Boring. She said that The whole purpose of character designs is to express information about the character. Concord has non of that the characters just seem soulless, like there are just some random characters. If you look at other games like the ones I mentioned than you can clearly see that they did a better job in implementing storytelling in their designs.
@@Genghis_of_Swanstoxic positivity and putting herself down, that’s basically it imo. I feel pikat is (or is acting) too positive to the point it’s getting kinda toxic… like with other stuff it made sense but this??? The thing that was so bad it ended 8 days later and lost the company 200 millions dollars I feel like this just… is a bad look imo
@@weebmaster exactly. Not to be an armchair psychologist, but she seems to be downplaying herself. I think she knows her art is good but is trying to be humble about it. Which is great! Just not in this case. I’ve drawn stick figures with more character than Concord
The issue is... No one has given any empathy to Concord. I feel like its weird to say "sometimes negativity is warranted" when the entire situation has been ONLY negativity. And contrary to internet belief... There are real human people watching their work be not only criticized but excitedly bullied. Talk about the budget and time, but don't forget that some of the designers and artist were more likely than not mistreated. They likely were very talented after all you need to have things like a resume to get jobs on projects with this much money involved.
The realism just clashes so hard with the goofy retro clothing style they tried to go with. Like it just makes everyone look like they had limited budgets to cosplay at a sci fi convention.
In your drawing, the fashion choice is the same but you did change the curvature of the character hence enhancing the design of the original model which is more bulky, also the glasses is made bigger. OW was not free originally and did tremendously well, so saying concord fail because of paywall is only half truth. It fails 100% because of unappealing character design and the direction it takes.
Concord has some good element of concept but very poor execution. Their problem is not "design is not good or unique" their problem is "lack of coordinate in each element" as we can see here when you have a minor tweak in the design to make it connected with the personality and role. I'd say that's a redesign .
0:03 pikat jumpscare I think your interpretation really helps the character’s personality shine a whole lot more. I was always a bit jaded about these designs but your insight really helped me see the potential of them in a different art style. good work pikat :)
i think long tern videos of you rumbling about art or whatnot would do good, ur voice is so relaxing that people will play it in the background for sure
Its more of a style thing, the design remains about the same. I think the problem of the designs was more of arstyle/proportions thing. The designs just dont work too well in a realistic 3D style.
@@kaisla7423 she got a waist, her hair is now separated from the shoulders, improving the silouhette, glasses are not so stupid, changing the perception of the face.
Yeah no The character designs are bad and not only looking really boring (that's my opinion tbf) but also being bad in a gameplay sense I mean yeah the realistic style makes them look a lot worse than they actually are but a lot of the designs are still really boring
While I agree about the sentiment on needlessly dog piling the artists who made these, given that we dont know the circumstances, I do think some criticism is warrented. The designs are ugly. If we have to change the fundamental art style to get them to look good, that means they failed in the character design aspect. When consumers are paying (now) $70/a game and these companies boast about their AAA (sometimes saying they're AAAA) and then give you something that looks unappealing like this, people are going to get mad. And I think the companies need to be held accountable for these decisions. Again, I dont think we need to rage over these designs and gang up on the artists. But the designs are not good. And there's an expectation (and a fair one) that was not met and the game suffered. Im happy people are learning to voice their opinions with their wallets. This is how Capitalism is supposed to work. Companies lose when their products arent good because the consumer makes the judgment.
@@dakotawylde6407 maybe one or two but the ms eggman is all over the place anyone that understands character design can see the contradicting forms and mismatched color themes
this lol 8:36 seriously yall either didnt watch the whole thing or just skipped to each points until the final design. Comments goes "oh, You dont have defend this" but they didnt realize that the video implies "You dont have to like or hate this" As much as Style being a part of the character design- No its not. See both star wars movies and cartoon shows. Someone like, say, vader has roughly about the same design in both, but looked pretty much different when comparing both cartoon and movie version. THE STYLE is dictated by the product's whole visual indentity, NOT THE CHARACTER. I love the stylized design. Theres almost absolutely no changes on the actual character aside from the shoulder pad. Realistic games always had weird unapealling posing too so the new posing just fits so well. Every other changes people LOVEEE to point out is indeed DICTATED BY STYLE, not the character design itself. This is a style change. Not a redesign. Never was. Never Will. Love the final art!
I was seeking this video out exactly because I felt people were just parroting eachother in terms of criticism against Concord and not evaluating things themselves. They complain about the healer not looking like a healer, but neither does most of Overwatch's support characteres. Your stylized drawing looked great and I think you kept it quite faithful to the original design and lack of stylization seems to be like the biggest downfall in the design.
I'm not going to change anything! Proceeds to change quite a lot. Proving that the designs were poorly done/executed and the criticism still stands. Also I 100% agree with you on the shape language. A lot of the designs are fine, just not executed well. I took fashion design and doing Interesting things with fashion is kinda hard in reality. I think shows like The Fifth Element show how this kinda of cartoony over the top fashion can work Really well. But you still gotta understand proportion and bodytype when designing. They gave a stockier, athletic body type some BIG draping shapes, that end up making her look shorter, than said she was fast. And I still think they should have made the main guy just a lizard. His too human features were creepy and temu Yandu. lol Just, make him a bipedal alien lizard. So much better.
I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing Yandu whenever I look at him. I honestly don't understand how that design made it through, that's literally all I see.
said debt didn't happen JUST because of character design. It's because their pay scheme was shitty and only god tier art and marketing could save it, normal-to-mid characters couldn't
the labels at 1:00 are backwards, Apex is on the left but labeled as Overwatch and vice versa, but honestly I think it helps the point that it’s an oversaturated genre that they look so similar😅 The art is gorgeous btw, the changes made to posing, shape language, style, and shading really sell that the other elements of these designs could have worked under a more unified or focused art direction
Thank you for this video and I think it was very wonderful to hear your opinion! I loved your redesign of the character though and your thought process to getting there. Also the ending of the video really felt like an ending to a video game with the big speech and lesson learned type of vibe. ❤
This still feels like a redesign. I feel like you made some good points on how to improve the designs and how it should've been more stylized, but I feel like you contradicted the main point you were trying to make. I also get what you mean about empathy, but we know that this game had a ludicrous amount of money and time poured into it and some of the devs have lashed out at people for not liking their game. They kind of killed any empathy they were going to receive themselves. There's also the fact that this is a hero shooter game. They kind of live and die by their characters. I feel like the reason why this game received so much vitriol is because it was just one of those "perfect storm" type situations. I don't think the hate just came out of nowhere.
really cool concept! Honestly i think you did a good job. I may be a bit less positive than you toward the concord's design, but i agree that they could have been pretty great if they were framed differently and if the art direction was leaning a bit more in the retro comics/Möbius vibe
@@SleepyBuggo Yeah imagine see a big issue right in front your face, and you don't allowed to say it. 😂 When the game released and fail, you at fault too. Literally nightmare😂
Love this video and attitude. I'm really curious what would have been stylistically possible with creative shader use to achieve a style closer to their inspirations.
You are a very kind person and I appreciate your perspective. But I have to say, the primary thing that I didn't like was their art direction and character designs. They were just not good and did not align with the tastes of their target demographic at all. I think it's clear that their designs resonated with virtually no one considering that no one played the game.
In your design she comes off more as a rogue/trickster class like Sombra rather than Tracer. The knives are a common thief weapon, the big sunglasses hide her eyes (eyes are windows to the soul) and make her more mysterious and hard to read and the long cloak is a hindrance for a fast runner, but practical for an assassin to hide weapons in.
Great video! I agree with you and can appreciate it more since you pointed out the 70's sci-fi inspiration. I think if the official style was slightly better executed it would have read more clearly.
For me with that character its her siloheuette. The round big hair clashes with the pointed collars. Also the pointed collars go the wrong way if she's fast n agile. If they go rid of the Dracula collars, made the coat tails flow with her acrobatics n speed; the character would work better. And the big purple afro would be a better hero feature of her character.
"Hyper realism" was never the issue, people are just dumb. There are a lot of characters from realistic looking games with "appealing" or "iconic" designs.
Concord design discourse has just made me realize how few people actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to critiques. They start at end point (product failed) and then trying to pin that on something they didn’t vibe with. When you look at the concept art and the source of inspiration I actually think many of the designs are incredible. When you look at the assets made it’s clear the artists behind them are awesome and insanely capable. They are not beyond criticism but so much of the backlash I’ve seen seems to be from people that can’t understand why something didn’t work for them or being unable to separate the look of a character with their design. Let’s say someone draws your favorite character in an art style you don’t like does that make the original character design bad? I don’t think so. What about all the live action anime adaptations that remain very faithful to their source material but look wrong? Does that make the original anime design bad? I do think things got a little muddled in adaptation and separately the artists working on both sides are amazing, they just didn’t mesh together, but that does make either one bad.
"I'm gonna try and draw her without changing her character design at all." ... "I think I could make some very minor adjustments." "Now I'm going to start making bigger changes." "It's not like I didn't make any changes at all." "I accidentally ended up making the glasses quite a lot bigger." "I also changed her body shape quite a bit more." "...even with my changes." Pikat, I respectfully suggest that if you wanted to create a video that generates empathy, perhaps this should have been a "I'm going to draw a concord character while discussing the video game business/the right and wrong way to criticize." Maybe do some research into video game character design, the hecticness of a production schedule, how producer oversight affects design, etc. Though to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that would have helped generate empathy in this case either. They had 8 years, $400 million, and have rejected any and all criticism, blaming their audience for everything.
@@AmiMonev Insane? They wanted to charge $40 for a subpar game, in a genre where their more experienced competitors are free to play. Concord, and mostly Sony, deserved the hate. They have far too little respect for their potential consumers.
@luxuriousmindset1906 No she isnt, she is just speaking her mind in a formal way and at a point she says she is not trying to do better than the og designers. i disagree with a lot of her points but that doesnt mean we should discredit everything she says. And what the frick you mean with "real pro" if you dont know what your talking about then dont say anything
A reoccurring thing that I saw on my side of social media during the brief time the game was alive was that the characters looked significantly better in cinematic form where the overall art style was different, so it really comes down to how they were rendered in-game.
I believe many people are upset and trying to understand how such a large budget (8 years of development money) was spent on a product that was supposed to be a major attraction for PlayStation but went kaput immediately. The designs are not the biggest issue as you mentioned. However, the sales heavily rely on whether people are interested in playing a new concept (just another hero shooter) or connecting with the characters through the story or appealing designs. Personally, I didn't even consider the game as something fun to play. It seems like they knew that their target audience was limited due to one of their decisions, so they took the game down (temporarily?). After you expressed your thoughts so well, it made me think it would have been nice to hear from the team on why they made their decisions before the game faced such backlash. The fact that the art style was realistic makes me wonder if the artists had their designs forced to be more diverse. I also wonder if the artists were proud of their characters. Was the feedback the team received productive? Hey, I like your redesign and I think you did a great job. The fact that you made the glasses larger looks nice, and the more triangular look with certain features made me realize they were close to something that didn't quite hit the mark. The kneepad is really distracting and, in my opinion, it hurts the design by disrupting the flow of the body and drawing attention away from the cool jacket. I think there could have been more elegant choices made... TLDR: I like your slight redesign and think it communicates better visually.
“You don’t have to like the designs it’s ok” bruh it’s a live service game that needs people to buy skins and cosmetics. If the characters look ugly no one is buying that lmao. Check out The First Descendant character designs. It launched around the same time as Concord and the skins and cosmetics in that game are printing money right now
I think your artwork looks great, and it made me appreciate the design, but it does not make the in-game model look any better to me personally. The realism applied to these designs do not mesh at all for me. Kind of feels similar to how comic book superhero suits look completely wacky in live-action adaptations. I appreciate your positive message as well, the internet is real annoying with this kind of thing.
While the style change helped, I don't think the base designs are all that great in general. As other redesigns have shown, Baz can be salvageable with some changes (although still not great), not so much with all the other characters.
@@DD-fs7pg thats fair, but i would suggest you look at the entire cast of valorant, apex, OW and similar games. I would not deny that those games have some great designs and overall a much clear art direction (at least for the untrained eye) but you cant also say that they are all great, i would even suggest the mayority are just fine, okay, not really something it would inspire you or motivate you to have in the wall. At the end of the day, character design just have to be something that you dont notice, as every element that benefits the inmersion of someone in a product. if concord would have been made with another artstyle, i still wouldnt be a fan of the deisgns, but i garanty you they would not have receive so much backlash and toxicity (and the game would have still fail catastrophically)
@@treiz. Apex's designs are really good. Not sure why you listed that one. Now the actual role of the character may not be all that, not a big fan of Rampart, but their looks are good enough to be content with the base skin. And I like a lot of their paid skins.
Excuses I've heard: "The game didn't have enough marketing!" - Deadlock had negative marketing. "No one will buy a $40 live service in 2024!" - HD2 launched at $40. "Diversity killed the game!" - OW has a literal monkey in the roster. "Hero shooters is a saturated market!" - Marvel Rivals. Maybe it was just a bad and bland game. Yes, the character designs are awful.
While I agree artstyle did play a factor in the designs I ultimately just think these designs are generic and uninteresting. Compare them to overwatch and you'll see a huge contrast, style change or not
Finally... a non nutty person talking about this. For a moment there I thought I was going crazy. But I really like your happy-go-lucky attitude here, really enjoyed the positivity.
Honestly, making the glasses a wee bit bigger actually made them better looking to me lol. Concord would definitely be a lot nicer to look at if it used a style similar to how you drew this over the more realistic, MCU-y style they went with. And personally I think the more hourglass shape would look fine if the whole cast had more of those kind of lightly exaggerated proportions.
I remember that animated short! I believe it actually interested me back then, I feel like the game got like no publicity after that, I certainly heard nothing about it after that short, and next I hear it is dead. Honestly, making it animated and stylized, maybe with a fun high contrast to make the colors pop and feel like those classic sci-fi posters, would have made the game stand out from the crowd and make people interested in playing! Even just the celshaded style of the short would have been more interesting than just a standard realistic style like everything else. BTW, I really like the art you made with that speedy character! Just a few small changes and the design pops even more!😊
4:13 what you said about the design makes me believe that the original art fell into the “uncanny valley” and your light reconfigured model, really gives the character a stronger stylistic direction 🔥👽
I don't like any of the character's designs, but after seeing your version while respecting the original concept, the change is suddenly a lot more appealing. You did an awesome job🎉
I’ve seen quite a few of these redesigns/redraws this is the best that I’ve seen for this character. That said; I think changing the shape language and moving from a realistic style to a more 80s cartoon style is still redesigning the character. It really works well. So I wonder if there was some decisions from execs along the lines of “realistic fps games sell better make it more realistic “ and the end result was just meh as a still. I do agree animations add a lot of needed personality.
Really like the WIP at 7:16, I think the additional colors and highlights of the final version make it less appealing. The constrained color palette and flat colors give it a fantastic stylization that fits the design.
All you've proven with this video is that you can do better at their own game. don't put yourself down so much. We don't have to always come to the rescue of every piece of media that gets thrashed online, sometimes it happens because it actually was bad. negativity can be vile but forcing positivity can also become toxic.
Or maybe, maybe, the studio was plagued with negative positivity that if you dare to say the design was bad, then you will be shut down by everyone?! :O
"Bad" artists don't get hired by billion dollar companies. I'm sure that the art team was full of great artists, but were stifled by awful direction the art director and others in power.
@@TheDeathby2 In this era, "bad artist" indeed still hired by companies, especially the one who going so hard with their DEI campaign. Don't be out of touch. In fact, idiots on twitter who always 'fix' someone else characters design also got hired you know?
this the thing with concord design in particular, is that is a case study As you noted for example the use of a very realistic render instead of a stylized one for these characters, there is I think a matter of character presentation, just going crazy with the poses and body language could go a long way there, you have the example of your take on Bazz here, a straight clear pose pointing upward, versus a very flat, random pose Is just how they have issues at every level that makes this interesting to dissect, and leave us to wonder how this happen
I just think choosing hyper realism was the first mistake, probably a very corpo thing "so it looks AAA" or smt
nope, they wanted to make a colossal franchise, they are that way to help the transition to live action.
There are official animations of concord characters in more cartoonish style… STILL LOOK LIKE ASS
@@НикитаЕфименко-п8б you even saw it? Bruh
I think it having a realistic artstyle helped make the idea more interesting
Seeing moebius in a realistic style was an interesting idea especially with so many class based shooters having cartoony graphics
Mcu has realistic character design. No one hates the designs
I didn't even know this game existed until I heard it was getting shut down.
Fr it's our generation's ET
same here, now it's just gonna be well known for the memes about how badly it failed and how few people bought the game, 8 years of work and a ton of money gone to waste, if that's not meme material, I don't know what is
I think it's the main problem about the game not selling.
No one even known it was going to be sold.
Did you watch the state of play it was revealed in?
Pikat just being nice to the dead. I wish I have the same courtesy.
Considering how badly they treated their consumers i just laugh at the gravesite
@@Zero-no5vf Oh yeah the talentless freak tweet, almost forgot about that
@@Zero-no5vfwhy were yhe consumers treated so badly?
This is so poetic for a concord video lmao
@@Feedback72 One of the people that worked on the game called consumers "talentless freaks"
Although I personally don't like Concord's designs at all, I think it's less about the design that made it suffer, and more of the 3D translation + context of what they're supposed to be in, etc. I've seen this happen a lot to my favorite games where concepts look great as concepts but the choice of how they're rendered, stylized, translated, etc. is the major downfall, even if it was a 1-to-1 copy. I personally think Concord's design can somehow work if it were more stylized than realistic. And I don't even like them. edit: just like your stylization at the final product, they look MUCH better with how you stylized them even though you kept the original designs.
Yea, im 100% sure these designs were made in a more stylized look in mind (think the semi realistic look of owerwatch or just more cartoonish stuff)
+ upper managment might have dictaded the more realistic look of the final game.
That's the vibe I've gotten: They're interesting designs, given a questionable presentation. If you were to take any given character and run them through the "Draw in X Style" test, they'd mostly turn out really good. The game, meanwhile, interprets them realistically, while also keeping them very clean and bland, which creates a kind of uncanny valley effect.
In a way, it's kind of an interesting concept--taking these highly cartoony elements (like big shoulder pads, purple hair buns, unique aviators, etc.) and asking "What would it look like if real people dressed this way?" Unfortunately, keeping within the restraints of realism also means they can't push extremes on their designs, which greatly lessens their impact. They end up with all of the drawbacks of both cartoony and realistic renders, with none of the reward.
I thought the same too. The silohettes in the concept art could have been great but once transferred over to 3D art everything might of gotten lost in the process. Guess we'll never know. Crazy how much better this game could have been if the characters had a minor style change.
Yeah, Pikat drew it in stylized way and drawing looks much better, because it has more appealing body proportions and better colors. In game 3D models are desaturated and are very-very ugly
I will say though, I did look up some of the inital concepts on Artstation..I can't say they don't look much better either but that's only my opinion.
The idea that to improve a game it has to look more realistic has ruined so many games....
which are...?
As a game character artist and animator, I actually like your drawing much better, fore me, the adjustments you mentioned as "mistakes" to me are a huge deal on fixing her design actually, How you increased the glasses makes them look waaay better than the original and also the changes to the body shape (before, she looked downwards squashed like if she was struggling to live with gravity in her life) even though you said the hourglass body shape wouldn't sell speed much, it does help a lot portraying hip/torso rotations, associated to change in direction of movement, and necessary for air flips and such (Which she does a lot in game)
Yes, to me the biggest thing that rubbed me the wrong way with this specific design were the glasses. Either fixing them (like she did) or fully removing them would improve the overall design at least fivefold for me personally
It's crazy to me that it seems like a lot of small stupid things like this would completely destroy otherwise decent designs, and somehow confusingly almost every single design from the game has one of these little "deal breakers" so to speak. It's very odd
I would still consider what you did a redesign. The small edits to the coat and body style better accentuate the intended role for the character, and speaking of, your illustration actually looks like it *has* character. The ingame model's coat muddles a lot of the body language and form of the character, so the player has a harder time gleaning it, especially with the... underwhelming... selection voice line and facial expressions.
Yeah Bazz's main issue was her tank-like proportions in general, it's not just style issue. The bulkiness of her character (Mainly how the jacket loom over her body) can be fixed without changing style. Another girls in concord have their clothes hug their body more, so it's not game engine issue either.
Her glasses was small and awkward like a crazy mad scientist. The way she present herself in game with that pose is super awkward like a retired psycho, rather than femme fatale like Pikat present her, it's not style issue.
Ngl I have watch like 5 different redesigns of the concord characters on youtube and all of them ended up looking boring and worst that the original. I think people just want to hate something.
hmm i'm not so sure about that, personally. It's just little tweaks to the design taking into account the original character. I just think that the 3d rendition did the characters dirty (even though some of them I do think they need actual tweaks to shapes and color placement), because I've seen the concept art of the characters and they have cool shapes and contrast
That's not a redesign babes
@@meat2023 it literally is, adjusting a design in anyway is, by definition, a redesign. you can stop being wrong any time
I love that you are against the dogpiling and for healthy arguments.
I still disagree with you, because the changes you made are quite big in my opinions - changing the glasses and the proportions. But you gave a few valid points, that the hyper-realism and weird poses made the game look much worse. Here's the like from me! I'll check out your other videos :3
She forgot to mention that the designs are TERRIBLE for a hero shooter. You NEED to know what a character does upon first glance. Imagine if in TF2 the Heavy had Scout's role?
@@Twiddle_things that would be hilarious
@@robot7338 im 100% sure that mod exist.
As an artist, the designs look very unique... as a person though? These characters are fugly as hell LOL. They look terrible in their 3D world and that's not good. People want characters they stare at the entire time to be appealing. These characters are *NOT* appealing.
Glad someone acknowledges the obvious. >_>
And let me tell you there these characters were different in different styles one of them being in their short lived animated series and even then they'd still look ugly.
They were not meant to be appealing, they were meant to display an agenda of "this is X, accept X".
i think the... "unappealingness" comes from their choice in textures, they look like a cheap 80's Scyfi show and it doesn't help that the characters lack anything to make them stand out much. it doesn't deserve the hate it's receiving but it doesn't deserve praises either
@@Soulxstar i agree with you! The retro scifi inspiration could have been a banger, if they didn't go for the hyper realistic route. I also think that the characters don't need huge redesigns, just some adjustments here and there with colors and shapes
8 years in development, shut down in 8 days
Uuum, 12 akhtually.
It's not like ive accomplished much in the past eight years either
@@kara-uppercuttbf you’ve lived a longer life than Concord
Go woke go broke
Outlived by a house fly, lmao.
I feel like if anything this video proves why the designs in concord were bad. In a stylized setting where contrast and proportions are pushed more, the characters don't look that bad, but the problem is that's in just a vacuum, within the greater context of the game that has a more realistic style, the designs were very conflicting with the overall art direction. The goal of character design isn't necessarily to just making a appling looking character, it's to serve a greater function within its context, and to that I think concord objectively failed.
9:08 Pikat, give yourself credit cause your redesign looks much better than the existing characters. Also while I respect you trying to be positive, I think your video ended up affirming my belief that the designs are just bad.
The photorealism / uncanny valley probably helped made people not like the design. Slapping cell shading shadder, like what you did, over the entire game would have made it less uncanny.
This game should have been a single player or coop game. The character designs would be fine if that was the case. One of the game's selling point was weekly narrative cinematic to further the story, if that is a hook they were trying to use, then it should have been a single player narrative driven game in the first place. The animations, especially in the face, look so good.
I'm guessing part of the 8 year development was executives demanding whatever the original game concept to be turned into a multiplayer hero shooter.
it is indeed funny how small adjustments changed the design quite significantly, thus defeating your point, but some comments here are a bit mean ngl. Also, the style the game chose being the reason why they look worse is actually a good point, overall, I dig your redesign, but yeee, I still think concord designs are quite bad
It's not too dissimilar to the iterative process some artists go through to refine their designs by making minor tweaks.
The designs are bad, but they're also badly implemented. I think that's an accurate summary. The overall style of the game doesn't suit the designs, and they're struggling to work to begin with.
@@lssjgaming1599 and thats how overwatch or disney designers make cool concepts that are way worse in the end lmao T_T
I don't like when people say that they need appealing designs, aka sexy designs. I don't mind it, but is kinda sad because usually I see this complain more with woman (that case with a character that got "uglier" in a game, I don't remember what game).
You can have designs being ugly but cool or just not convetional.
(Btw, not a problem liking sexy designs, but usually get a bit repetive and usually restrain the design of womans)
People are just mean cuz mentioning concord attracted a whole lotta different people from the usual audience of pikat, thats just sad.
I once read a comment that said the Concord designs look like cosplay or bad live action adaptations of fun, iconic cartoon designs and your 2D redraw proves this to me.
They really feel held back by the more realistic art style attempted by the game. I would love to see more redraws of the characters like yours, that keep the game's influences in mind, rather than redesigning from scratch just to dunk on the artists.
The title misled me a bit, but I'm impressed, you actually managed to make the design work just with your changes. Now I kinda wish you made your take of more characters
"Fine" is really the furthest you can push them.
It's still a stretch as long as the Walls of China
Oh, maaan. This surely isn't gonna be a fun comment section with such a hot take and title, hahahahaha.
Pikat is just very polite and people in comments try to keep up to her politeness to her opinion. However concord deserves to be clowned upon, cuz toxic positivity was bring to the development process by immature insecure people who don't know how to work with constructive criticism. And whoever owns the project shoots themselves in the leg by hiring such people to execute said project.
@@darkvulpes4826 👑
Personally I only like the Red-Blue guy kinda, everyone else sucks.
Edit: You know what actually I think the artstyle being too realistic was the problem you did a great job here!
Says the person with corazon on their pfp 😭😭
sorry like yeah they're not the best designs but somehow i think if they had a cool backstory people would love them (like one piece 🤩🤩🤩)
@@kikoslemonsyea did One piece get cancelled after 8 days and lose 200 millions dollars? It didn’t? Wow I wonder fucking why it must be that people like the design and it drew them in the anime dumbass
@@kikoslemons this just proves one of the points of the video even further for me. if i see the design of corazon in a realistic setting with a more "grimdark" artsyle, yeah that shit would suck, but he is in one piece, and he is introduce as the brother of doflamingo (fucking banger of a design), so you only focus on the parallelisms with him and it works, it does the job, its not one of the best designs in one piece, but it doesnt has to be.
@@kikoslemons agreed
The stylization is definitely off, but I think the biggest problem with these designs is that they don't really tell you anything about what the character does. These are for a video game, so if a character can rain bombs on you from above, you have to be able to tell at a glance during the game. As they are, they don't really do that.
Anyway, great video, and I definitely agree that we shouldn't be dogpiling these as hard as we are, especially considering the kind of environment the artists were potentially working in. We should just take our lessons from these, and move on!
Tweaks artstyle, Tweaks shape language, tweaks colour values, accidentally tweaks a few parts more.
All the problems I've heard about when it comes to the designs xD
Man that true 😅
Tweaks body proportions
I meaaan. Most people who do this just completely throw away the design. This video doesn't change the design but only tweaks it. But even then I wouldn't consider this a design change. This is just an art style change. You can still tell what character this is, but with all the other "redesigns" you can't even tell what game they were meant to be from.
@@thewatcher7940 oh yeah, absolutely, but that wasn't the point of my comment :D
@@thewatcher7940 If you need to tweak everything, everything was off in the first place.
As you commeted in the video, at least the most serious thing about their desings is that they dont convey the role they play in the game. Un like Overwatch that without playing it I can get an idea of what role each character plays
"maybe the were extreme deadlines"
The game was 8 years in development 😭.
The finalized art isn't the first thing you work on when developing a game, that's done much later
@@lssjgaming1599if only they had 16 years...
@@lssjgaming1599 simply not true, concept art includes earlier versions of character designs and that's one of the earliest part of development.
The problem is that it seems like they just stick with the first draft. Look at the video, even some minor tweaks like not making the glasses so small, helps the character a lot
@@Winterfang The development of a game is the responsibility of many different departments, the design and art department was subjected and limited by the rest of the departments that did not do their job well, I would dare to say that most of the 8 years was wasted time between executives and the production team, I would not even doubt the programmers.
Deadlines are placed by producers at every stage of development i don't like when people act like a long production time means the devs were goofin around
Concord failed because it was a $40 game that looked pretty much identical to a million other games that are free to play, it's really as simple as that
This is said 2 minutes into the video!!!! Neither is it even the topic!!!!!!
That's part of it, but it didn't even have a niche audience (because some people don't care as long as the game is fun and attractive for them as a new game), if only for a few months, but Concord could not even do that. Chinese/Korean games can literally get away with making some of the worse games (i.e. MMOs and gacha games) by using tits, ass, etc. This game could not even attract a niche audience with it's gameplay and character designs.
@@uhoh7545 don't care bozo
@@DD-fs7pg yeah that's true, its just the reality that cuteness and sex appeal sells and concord seems to have none of that, maybe if this was built off of some established property like starwars it might have found an audience but unfortunately nobody cared about concord's universe until was already too late
I don't think so, even in the open beta it was empty so the $40 price tag wasn't going to make much of a difference. What made it fail was the million other games that looked way better
Personally, I love the designs of Haymar and It-Z, but as you also said yourself, I think the main issue is that the designs don't convey the characters' gameplay styles very well.
In It-Z's case, after doing some research, I can say there are good ideas and reasons for her design, but they also don't work for a hero shooter (like you said, doesn't convey her playstyle).
She's based on lynxes or caracals, so fair, she's a cat, she's fast, agile, etc.. She's wearing freerunner/parkour clothes, again, fast and agile. That's good.
Problem is, she kinda looks like an NPC rather than a hero, and nowhere in here design we can see she's a trickster with crazy cosmic powers (teleport, illusions, stealing others' strength).
@@Klaymoor Yes! Exactly! I don't think she looks like an NPC though, she's the most colorful of the cast, so I'd say she's the most stand-out in this case.
@@Badguy292 Ah, sorry, I meant to say her clothes look NPCish. They make her look like a civilian of sorts instead of the mercenary kind of things the "Freegunners" are in the game's lore.
@@Klaymoor Ohhh, that makes more sense, yeah.
I think pikat's iteration was the best level of stylisation where the characters looked similar in realism to valorant and where the proportions look believable whilst still seving the shape theory of their playstyles. But then again ive seen the original and pikat's designs and none more
8:38 only according to the concord devs it's not fine and the people who tried to point out basic criticism were accosted. Most of the criticism towards the character you redrew you "unintentionally changed". I think this goes to show that when most none artist say the character designs are bad, they are also meaning the execution.
Concord would look better if instead of realistic graphics it had a unique art style like OW2, Valorant and TF2
Lets be honest.
hold on let him cook
oh absolutely. The attempted realism did not work in favour at all.
Cold take! 👍
The unrealistic artstyle wouldn't save the game either. the designs are bag, it being realistic or not wouldn't make a difference.
@@roberto8442 never talked about saving. Just looking better
>Says the designs are fine
>Does slight edits to them anyway
make it make sense.
I'm not one who dogged on them too much but damn it! They're not fine then!
I think the main problem with the character design of concord is that they don’t tell you anything about what the character is supposed to be. Take the girl with the astronaut like helmet (forgot her name) without her weapons I don’t think anyone would be able to tell what her gameplay is. Also very bad colour theory.
i think its the render style that made them look so depthless , because the concept art on artstation looks so good
I Respectfully disagree. I think if you look at the rules of character designs like storytelling,shapes and Gesture (and many more) you can see that concord has done a terrible job in implementing them. I'm mean you can easily tell the flaws if you compare it to games like overwatch and even Apex Legends wich has a Realistic artstyle too(Because you mentioned it in you Video). I like that you want to spread more positivity but I also believe that Artist schould take concord as an Bad example and a way to know how to not do it.
Love you videos though they really helped me to become better.❤️
and if you do the simple "put everything black and white" their is nothing on all of these character that stand out, so even the coloring is bad.
@@Goudlock Isn't black and white meant to show values? So not only are their colouring bad, the values aren't that good either
I agree, though minor nitpick that design has principles rather than rules because they describe art which is inherently subjective and contextual (just to be clear, I’m not saying that any design is valid but that different goals can benefit from different philosophies). Concord’s visuals to me feel like the art was pulled in a lot of different directions, preventing it from really excelling at anything
More than a little weird to try to explain the rules of character design to a character designer. I don't believe the purpose of this was to spread positivity exactly, but actually being fair, which frankly most people have not been towards Concord as a whole. The designs aren't the reason the game failed, whether someone likes X design or not is mostly irrelevant, but this has easily been the most prominent thing people point to for why it all went to crap and those arguments are almost never made in good faith.
Not a fan of the art direction for the game by the way, but really importantly: Not liking something doesn't mean it's bad. There's no meaningful lesson for an artist to learn from Concord. The problems started and ended a hell of a lot higher up the food chain than the character artists.
@MrsMetronome I am aware that she knows about all of the principles of character designs, but she literally made a video 2 weeks ago about character design where she explained how you're characters don't end up Boring. She said that The whole purpose of character designs is to express information about the character. Concord has non of that the characters just seem soulless, like there are just some random characters. If you look at other games like the ones I mentioned than you can clearly see that they did a better job in implementing storytelling in their designs.
Your thumbnail chibis are getting sooo cute lately, you're killing it
all the things your changing are part of character design imo, so i think youre still proving that Concord's character designs weren't great.
I mean... what's the title of the video?
While I appreciate the sentiment, sometimes negativity is very much warranted.
For whatever it's worth, your re-design is at least better.
The thing is, pikat can ABSOLUTELY do better than the artists at Firewalk. I don’t know why she even said that.
@@Genghis_of_Swanstoxic positivity and putting herself down, that’s basically it imo. I feel pikat is (or is acting) too positive to the point it’s getting kinda toxic… like with other stuff it made sense but this??? The thing that was so bad it ended 8 days later and lost the company 200 millions dollars I feel like this just… is a bad look imo
@@weebmaster exactly. Not to be an armchair psychologist, but she seems to be downplaying herself. I think she knows her art is good but is trying to be humble about it. Which is great! Just not in this case. I’ve drawn stick figures with more character than Concord
The issue is... No one has given any empathy to Concord.
I feel like its weird to say "sometimes negativity is warranted" when the entire situation has been ONLY negativity.
And contrary to internet belief... There are real human people watching their work be not only criticized but excitedly bullied. Talk about the budget and time, but don't forget that some of the designers and artist were more likely than not mistreated. They likely were very talented after all you need to have things like a resume to get jobs on projects with this much money involved.
@@weebmaster It's definitely teetering on the edge of toxic humility
The realism just clashes so hard with the goofy retro clothing style they tried to go with. Like it just makes everyone look like they had limited budgets to cosplay at a sci fi convention.
In your drawing, the fashion choice is the same but you did change the curvature of the character hence enhancing the design of the original model which is more bulky, also the glasses is made bigger. OW was not free originally and did tremendously well, so saying concord fail because of paywall is only half truth. It fails 100% because of unappealing character design and the direction it takes.
Concord has some good element of concept but very poor execution.
Their problem is not "design is not good or unique" their problem is "lack of coordinate in each element" as we can see here when you have a minor tweak in the design to make it connected with the personality and role. I'd say that's a redesign .
0:03 pikat jumpscare
I think your interpretation really helps the character’s personality shine a whole lot more. I was always a bit jaded about these designs but your insight really helped me see the potential of them in a different art style. good work pikat :)
i think long tern videos of you rumbling about art or whatnot would do good, ur voice is so relaxing that people will play it in the background for sure
"I'm not going to redesign her." Proceeds to redesign her.
Its more of a style thing, the design remains about the same. I think the problem of the designs was more of arstyle/proportions thing.
The designs just dont work too well in a realistic 3D style.
@@kaisla7423 that's changing the design...
@@genin1541 maybe a little, but an artstyle change is not a design change. Maybe i worded my point a tad incorrectly
Part of Design is the style. Designing with/for the style in mind, and designing the specifics of the style itself are all hugely important.
@@kaisla7423 she got a waist, her hair is now separated from the shoulders, improving the silouhette, glasses are not so stupid, changing the perception of the face.
Yeah no
The character designs are bad
and not only looking really boring (that's my opinion tbf) but also being bad in a gameplay sense
I mean yeah the realistic style makes them look a lot worse than they actually are but a lot of the designs are still really boring
While I agree about the sentiment on needlessly dog piling the artists who made these, given that we dont know the circumstances, I do think some criticism is warrented. The designs are ugly. If we have to change the fundamental art style to get them to look good, that means they failed in the character design aspect. When consumers are paying (now) $70/a game and these companies boast about their AAA (sometimes saying they're AAAA) and then give you something that looks unappealing like this, people are going to get mad. And I think the companies need to be held accountable for these decisions. Again, I dont think we need to rage over these designs and gang up on the artists. But the designs are not good. And there's an expectation (and a fair one) that was not met and the game suffered. Im happy people are learning to voice their opinions with their wallets. This is how Capitalism is supposed to work. Companies lose when their products arent good because the consumer makes the judgment.
Coming up with better character designs in like 20 minutes then a huge team and budget can do in eight years is CRAZY 😂
they're really truly not
She’s coping 😂
they are actually
@@dakotawylde6407 maybe one or two but the ms eggman is all over the place anyone that understands character design can see the contradicting forms and mismatched color themes
@@michaelp1923 no, they're good actually
@@dakotawylde6407 I'm just going to assume you're trolling at this point
this lol 8:36 seriously yall either didnt watch the whole thing or just skipped to each points until the final design.
Comments goes "oh, You dont have defend this" but they didnt realize that the video implies "You dont have to like or hate this"
As much as Style being a part of the character design- No its not. See both star wars movies and cartoon shows. Someone like, say, vader has roughly about the same design in both, but looked pretty much different when comparing both cartoon and movie version. THE STYLE is dictated by the product's whole visual indentity, NOT THE CHARACTER.
I love the stylized design. Theres almost absolutely no changes on the actual character aside from the shoulder pad. Realistic games always had weird unapealling posing too so the new posing just fits so well.
Every other changes people LOVEEE to point out is indeed DICTATED BY STYLE, not the character design itself. This is a style change. Not a redesign. Never was. Never Will.
Love the final art!
???
It's Darth Vader in both versions. Stylizing him a bit doesn't change that his design give the same general, iconic impression.
@@mechadeka yeah i just call him vader, anyways
Rule of 2.
The audience should know all the important information about your character in 2 seconds or less.
I was seeking this video out exactly because I felt people were just parroting eachother in terms of criticism against Concord and not evaluating things themselves. They complain about the healer not looking like a healer, but neither does most of Overwatch's support characteres.
Your stylized drawing looked great and I think you kept it quite faithful to the original design and lack of stylization seems to be like the biggest downfall in the design.
I'm not going to change anything! Proceeds to change quite a lot. Proving that the designs were poorly done/executed and the criticism still stands.
Also I 100% agree with you on the shape language. A lot of the designs are fine, just not executed well. I took fashion design and doing Interesting things with fashion is kinda hard in reality.
I think shows like The Fifth Element show how this kinda of cartoony over the top fashion can work Really well.
But you still gotta understand proportion and bodytype when designing. They gave a stockier, athletic body type some BIG draping shapes, that end up making her look shorter, than said she was fast.
And I still think they should have made the main guy just a lizard. His too human features were creepy and temu Yandu. lol Just, make him a bipedal alien lizard. So much better.
I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing Yandu whenever I look at him. I honestly don't understand how that design made it through, that's literally all I see.
The designs were most definitely a significant part of their marketing bungle
Their massive debt disagrees.
said debt didn't happen JUST because of character design. It's because their pay scheme was shitty and only god tier art and marketing could save it, normal-to-mid characters couldn't
I've played so much overwatch that when you switched apex and overwatch titles at 1:00 I had an internal malfunction
the labels at 1:00 are backwards, Apex is on the left but labeled as Overwatch and vice versa, but honestly I think it helps the point that it’s an oversaturated genre that they look so similar😅
The art is gorgeous btw, the changes made to posing, shape language, style, and shading really sell that the other elements of these designs could have worked under a more unified or focused art direction
Thank you for this video and I think it was very wonderful to hear your opinion! I loved your redesign of the character though and your thought process to getting there. Also the ending of the video really felt like an ending to a video game with the big speech and lesson learned type of vibe. ❤
This still feels like a redesign. I feel like you made some good points on how to improve the designs and how it should've been more stylized, but I feel like you contradicted the main point you were trying to make.
I also get what you mean about empathy, but we know that this game had a ludicrous amount of money and time poured into it and some of the devs have lashed out at people for not liking their game. They kind of killed any empathy they were going to receive themselves. There's also the fact that this is a hero shooter game. They kind of live and die by their characters. I feel like the reason why this game received so much vitriol is because it was just one of those "perfect storm" type situations. I don't think the hate just came out of nowhere.
really cool concept! Honestly i think you did a good job. I may be a bit less positive than you toward the concord's design, but i agree that they could have been pretty great if they were framed differently and if the art direction was leaning a bit more in the retro comics/Möbius vibe
HOW DARE YOU BE REASONABLE AND POSITIVE!
Great job!
Toxic positivity at the studio was one of the key reasons why the game flopped lol
@@gorohachi86 im glad i am not the only one realizing this
"How dare you not consume product"
@@gorohachi86not even positivity, if you had a comment on anything you were fired 😭 i feel so bad for the ppl forced to make this game
@@SleepyBuggo Yeah imagine see a big issue right in front your face, and you don't allowed to say it. 😂 When the game released and fail, you at fault too. Literally nightmare😂
She honestly looks awesome in your drawing!!
This is one of the healthiest viewpoints I've heard online in years. It's very refreshing. New subscriber.
Love this video and attitude. I'm really curious what would have been stylistically possible with creative shader use to achieve a style closer to their inspirations.
You are a very kind person and I appreciate your perspective. But I have to say, the primary thing that I didn't like was their art direction and character designs. They were just not good and did not align with the tastes of their target demographic at all.
I think it's clear that their designs resonated with virtually no one considering that no one played the game.
In your design she comes off more as a rogue/trickster class like Sombra rather than Tracer.
The knives are a common thief weapon, the big sunglasses hide her eyes (eyes are windows to the soul) and make her more mysterious and hard to read and the long cloak is a hindrance for a fast runner, but practical for an assassin to hide weapons in.
Great video! I agree with you and can appreciate it more since you pointed out the 70's sci-fi inspiration. I think if the official style was slightly better executed it would have read more clearly.
For me with that character its her siloheuette. The round big hair clashes with the pointed collars. Also the pointed collars go the wrong way if she's fast n agile.
If they go rid of the Dracula collars, made the coat tails flow with her acrobatics n speed; the character would work better.
And the big purple afro would be a better hero feature of her character.
"Hyper realism" was never the issue, people are just dumb. There are a lot of characters from realistic looking games with "appealing" or "iconic" designs.
Concord design discourse has just made me realize how few people actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to critiques. They start at end point (product failed) and then trying to pin that on something they didn’t vibe with. When you look at the concept art and the source of inspiration I actually think many of the designs are incredible. When you look at the assets made it’s clear the artists behind them are awesome and insanely capable. They are not beyond criticism but so much of the backlash I’ve seen seems to be from people that can’t understand why something didn’t work for them or being unable to separate the look of a character with their design. Let’s say someone draws your favorite character in an art style you don’t like does that make the original character design bad? I don’t think so. What about all the live action anime adaptations that remain very faithful to their source material but look wrong? Does that make the original anime design bad? I do think things got a little muddled in adaptation and separately the artists working on both sides are amazing, they just didn’t mesh together, but that does make either one bad.
"I'm gonna try and draw her without changing her character design at all."
...
"I think I could make some very minor adjustments."
"Now I'm going to start making bigger changes."
"It's not like I didn't make any changes at all."
"I accidentally ended up making the glasses quite a lot bigger."
"I also changed her body shape quite a bit more."
"...even with my changes."
Pikat, I respectfully suggest that if you wanted to create a video that generates empathy, perhaps this should have been a "I'm going to draw a concord character while discussing the video game business/the right and wrong way to criticize." Maybe do some research into video game character design, the hecticness of a production schedule, how producer oversight affects design, etc. Though to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that would have helped generate empathy in this case either. They had 8 years, $400 million, and have rejected any and all criticism, blaming their audience for everything.
Yea this video was quite… a horrendously bad take honestly
@@weebmasterhorrendous is dragging it 😭 it’s way more tolerable than the insane hate train against this game
@@AmiMonev Insane? They wanted to charge $40 for a subpar game, in a genre where their more experienced competitors are free to play. Concord, and mostly Sony, deserved the hate. They have far too little respect for their potential consumers.
@@AmiMonevInsane? It's pretty fucking tame
Poster Boy of the game Bazz looks like a tawdry drag queen
The color coordination on the costumes are the first time I've ever been aware of color coordination. Before I never thought it mattered
Pikat: I'm not gonna change the design at all
- Proceeds to change legs, placement of coat, shape langage and everything about her
Yeah she's trying too hard to sound like a real pro i wouldn't take much of anything she says seriously
The design wasn't changed
@@meat2023 It was, if you change the size or shape of something the design is affected
@luxuriousmindset1906 No she isnt, she is just speaking her mind in a formal way and at a point she says she is not trying to do better than the og designers. i disagree with a lot of her points but that doesnt mean we should discredit everything she says.
And what the frick you mean with "real pro" if you dont know what your talking about then dont say anything
A reoccurring thing that I saw on my side of social media during the brief time the game was alive was that the characters looked significantly better in cinematic form where the overall art style was different, so it really comes down to how they were rendered in-game.
What Concord? There is no "Concord".
And there is no Joker 2
And Epstein didn't kill himself
>designes are fine, actually
>proceeds to fix major design mistakes
Yeah....
your finished version is pretty rad! it's got that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 rendering going on
The robot looks cool and that's it
I believe many people are upset and trying to understand how such a large budget (8 years of development money) was spent on a product that was supposed to be a major attraction for PlayStation but went kaput immediately.
The designs are not the biggest issue as you mentioned. However, the sales heavily rely on whether people are interested in playing a new concept (just another hero shooter) or connecting with the characters through the story or appealing designs. Personally, I didn't even consider the game as something fun to play. It seems like they knew that their target audience was limited due to one of their decisions, so they took the game down (temporarily?). After you expressed your thoughts so well, it made me think it would have been nice to hear from the team on why they made their decisions before the game faced such backlash.
The fact that the art style was realistic makes me wonder if the artists had their designs forced to be more diverse. I also wonder if the artists were proud of their characters. Was the feedback the team received productive?
Hey, I like your redesign and I think you did a great job. The fact that you made the glasses larger looks nice, and the more triangular look with certain features made me realize they were close to something that didn't quite hit the mark. The kneepad is really distracting and, in my opinion, it hurts the design by disrupting the flow of the body and drawing attention away from the cool jacket. I think there could have been more elegant choices made...
TLDR: I like your slight redesign and think it communicates better visually.
“You don’t have to like the designs it’s ok”
bruh it’s a live service game that needs people to buy skins and cosmetics. If the characters look ugly no one is buying that lmao. Check out The First Descendant character designs. It launched around the same time as Concord and the skins and cosmetics in that game are printing money right now
I think your artwork looks great, and it made me appreciate the design, but it does not make the in-game model look any better to me personally. The realism applied to these designs do not mesh at all for me. Kind of feels similar to how comic book superhero suits look completely wacky in live-action adaptations. I appreciate your positive message as well, the internet is real annoying with this kind of thing.
Having a nuanced take on this topic ? Oh boy
You made me like the design a lot more honestly.
They fail to match the art style they where going for; so they aren’t really “fine”
Idk how else to say it, but the character design feels like a bunch of 3d background characters cosplayed as their favorite niche 80s anime characters
More a style issue than design issue. Fair.
While the style change helped, I don't think the base designs are all that great in general. As other redesigns have shown, Baz can be salvageable with some changes (although still not great), not so much with all the other characters.
@@DD-fs7pg thats fair, but i would suggest you look at the entire cast of valorant, apex, OW and similar games. I would not deny that those games have some great designs and overall a much clear art direction (at least for the untrained eye) but you cant also say that they are all great, i would even suggest the mayority are just fine, okay, not really something it would inspire you or motivate you to have in the wall. At the end of the day, character design just have to be something that you dont notice, as every element that benefits the inmersion of someone in a product. if concord would have been made with another artstyle, i still wouldnt be a fan of the deisgns, but i garanty you they would not have receive so much backlash and toxicity (and the game would have still fail catastrophically)
@@treiz. Apex's designs are really good. Not sure why you listed that one. Now the actual role of the character may not be all that, not a big fan of Rampart, but their looks are good enough to be content with the base skin. And I like a lot of their paid skins.
The whole, “Discount Guardians of the Galaxy” vibe didn’t even turn me on to the game.
But I also don’t have a PlayStation…
They should've used more Stylized 2D art/animation like your concepts in the promotional material.
Excuses I've heard:
"The game didn't have enough marketing!" - Deadlock had negative marketing.
"No one will buy a $40 live service in 2024!" - HD2 launched at $40.
"Diversity killed the game!" - OW has a literal monkey in the roster.
"Hero shooters is a saturated market!" - Marvel Rivals.
Maybe it was just a bad and bland game. Yes, the character designs are awful.
While I agree artstyle did play a factor in the designs I ultimately just think these designs are generic and uninteresting.
Compare them to overwatch and you'll see a huge contrast, style change or not
Finally... a non nutty person talking about this. For a moment there I thought I was going crazy. But I really like your happy-go-lucky attitude here, really enjoyed the positivity.
9:17 in Concord's and many western studios cases, we know. We definitely know what drives their character designs
Honestly, making the glasses a wee bit bigger actually made them better looking to me lol.
Concord would definitely be a lot nicer to look at if it used a style similar to how you drew this over the more realistic, MCU-y style they went with. And personally I think the more hourglass shape would look fine if the whole cast had more of those kind of lightly exaggerated proportions.
I remember that animated short! I believe it actually interested me back then, I feel like the game got like no publicity after that, I certainly heard nothing about it after that short, and next I hear it is dead.
Honestly, making it animated and stylized, maybe with a fun high contrast to make the colors pop and feel like those classic sci-fi posters, would have made the game stand out from the crowd and make people interested in playing! Even just the celshaded style of the short would have been more interesting than just a standard realistic style like everything else.
BTW, I really like the art you made with that speedy character! Just a few small changes and the design pops even more!😊
they should've hired you
4:13 what you said about the design makes me believe that the original art fell into the “uncanny valley” and your light reconfigured model, really gives the character a stronger stylistic direction 🔥👽
I don't like any of the character's designs, but after seeing your version while respecting the original concept, the change is suddenly a lot more appealing. You did an awesome job🎉
I’ve seen quite a few of these redesigns/redraws this is the best that I’ve seen for this character. That said; I think changing the shape language and moving from a realistic style to a more 80s cartoon style is still redesigning the character. It really works well. So I wonder if there was some decisions from execs along the lines of “realistic fps games sell better make it more realistic “ and the end result was just meh as a still. I do agree animations add a lot of needed personality.
Even "fine" is stretching the line
Really like the WIP at 7:16, I think the additional colors and highlights of the final version make it less appealing. The constrained color palette and flat colors give it a fantastic stylization that fits the design.
All you've proven with this video is that you can do better at their own game.
don't put yourself down so much.
We don't have to always come to the rescue of every piece of media that gets thrashed online, sometimes it happens because it actually was bad.
negativity can be vile but forcing positivity can also become toxic.
I love your avatar btw! So cool and unique
Or maybe, maybe, the studio was plagued with negative positivity that if you dare to say the design was bad, then you will be shut down by everyone?! :O
Exactly.
"Bad" artists don't get hired by billion dollar companies. I'm sure that the art team was full of great artists, but were stifled by awful direction the art director and others in power.
@@TheDeathby2 In this era, "bad artist" indeed still hired by companies, especially the one who going so hard with their DEI campaign. Don't be out of touch. In fact, idiots on twitter who always 'fix' someone else characters design also got hired you know?
this the thing with concord design in particular, is that is a case study
As you noted for example the use of a very realistic render instead of a stylized one for these characters, there is I think a matter of character presentation, just going crazy with the poses and body language could go a long way there, you have the example of your take on Bazz here, a straight clear pose pointing upward, versus a very flat, random pose
Is just how they have issues at every level that makes this interesting to dissect, and leave us to wonder how this happen