Various general art critiques/suggestions for new mobs

[-Variant]

There's a lot of new mobs, so a lot of new art too. As per tradition, I try to voice my thoughts on these as EARLY as I can into a beta to make sure there's plenty of time to changes and suggestions to go through.

Overall, I want to start with the Icker.
The Icker is a very odd mob that spawns near Rifts, said to be an 'evolved form of Miasma', its design seems super weird. I'm assuming its meant to be Nightmare Fuel, but its design seems very tar/oil-like compared to usual depictions of Nightmare Fuel.
The various horns and eyes are what I'm assuming are dead animals. Unless its meant to be forming from the Blob, as if its making life.

Compared to other goop-y iterations of NMF, this is very shiny and gelatin like. Maybe I need to get used to it, but it seems very out of style.

 

Secondly, the Mimic. Over all, its design is kind of disappointing. I've wanted a Mimic mob since the dawn of time, we finally get one and its... a dot.
Its one eye isn't shadow-like either. Its a very normal-looking eye. Just something small that sticks out.

 

Rabbit King was super out of left field. Wild little thing, no notable concerns about art but he's... our first low-quality mob in years.

 

Depth Worm Boss, I love it. Everything about it. This is barely a concern but a few friends have noted that the inside of its mouth feels a wee bit under detailed for how large it is.

Shadow Thrall Mouth is super cool, I love it, but it have ONE walking animation feels super odd. Were the ones shown on stream cut, or are they coming later?

And then for the other unlisted mobs, I think they're either fine or generally well fitting in their current state.
I'm hoping some of these can be looked into, I'm excited to see the new Bunnymen coming later, and I think that might be it. It'd like to hear others thoughts, too.

[BalkanCockroach]

4 minutes ago, -Variant said:

Shadow Thrall Mouth is super cool, I love it, but it have ONE walking animation feels super odd. Were the ones shown on stream cut, or are they coming later?

They said it's hard to animate so that's probably why they cut it.

Also idle wormboss looks a lot like chomper from pvz.

[Theukon-dos]

I don't think I would have ever guessed that the Icker was a shadow-based creature if you didn't point it out. As you said, it's body is way to shiny compared to the generally ethereal/void-like nightmare fuel and pure terror that composes the other nightmare creatures. And what IS with all the spare body parts? I'm having trouble identifying all of them, the only one I feel confident in is a Toadstool eye. But haven't the dead been well-established to be the domain of the Moon? It's that side that's making all these weird, messed-up creatures from the corpses of beasts we slay. So why is the shadow suddenly playing with them like Mr. Potato Head?

[BalkanCockroach]

Honestly not this creature nor the ink blights look like they are made from nightmare fuel. Seems to be an artistic choice. Because on the broken clockworks the dripping fuel looks opaque, same with ink blights. But here we see another version... shiny gelatinous fuel...

 

[Wormboi]

I want fan art of the worm boss

[HeatAndRun]

I agree with the icker and mimic. Personally think they should use the black-red shadow rift color combination to them.

[Cassielu]

All ture dude. Your critiques and suggestions cut to the core perfectly every time.

 

I think the new shadow creature needs some tweaking as well. It is severely lacking in detail and movement length compared to the old shadow creatures, especially the rough edges that fully explain the bad mental state of tension/fear. And also too three-dimensional for the classic shadow creature style in most of anim. 

[WhackE]

I'm going to make a separate post complaining about the Icker. It hurts my eyes

[Primalflower]

the icker is only unique in its shine, the rest of it feels in line with what we've seen or barely breaking. Im kind of a fan of it being shiny, its pretty unique, but it makes sense if people want the shine removed

[gamehun20]

1 hour ago, -Variant said:

Compared to other goop-y iterations of NMF, this is very shiny and gelatin like. Maybe I need to get used to it, but it seems very out of style.

Looks kinda like a flash game monster

Maybe it's trying to be like a really condensed nightmare fuel or something 

[Wormboi]

1 minute ago, gamehun20 said:

Looks kinda like a flash game monster

Maybe it's trying to be like a really condensed nightmare fuel or something 

Looks like something out of the "world of goo" games

[Waoling]

I think Nightmare fuel might be an allergory for Fossil Fuel.

[Just-guy]

3 hours ago, -Variant said:

Compared to other goop-y iterations of NMF, this is very shiny and gelatin like. Maybe I need to get used to it, but it seems very out of style.

It tries to look similar to slime creatures where it's some sort of real liquid/fluid while Nightmare Fuel things always looked like ethereal energy or just literal shadows, I really like the design concept but I'm not sure if something can be done to make it look more like NF

 

3 hours ago, -Variant said:

Shadow Thrall Mouth is super cool, I love it, but it have ONE walking animation feels super odd. Were the ones shown on stream cut, or are they coming later?

I think the new shadow creatures are too smooth on their silhouettes compared to the first shadow monsters as well as bosses like the Shadow Pieces and Ancient Herald, like Cassielu mentioned a bit of roughness could help

Also I've noticed that new shadow creatures and shadow related items are more saturated and have solid textures which miss the look of them being shadows that were see-through

[Leonardo Cox]

I think the thing that bugs me the most about the icker is the gradient shine. Gradients are very rarely used in mob's art and if used, are usually very subtle (like beefalo). Also, my heart broke after seeing mimic's design. Give him a little more please!

[HeatAndRun]

About characters fall into the caves void, I personally think there could be more unique animations for it, similar to Wanda's rift watch exit animation, but more shadow-y?

[lowercase skye]

27 minutes ago, Leonardo Cox said:

Gradients are very rarely used in mob's art

Beefalo, Deerclops, Koalefants, Pigmen, Bunnymen, Lureplants, Rabbits, Antlion, Eye of Terror, Lavae, Pipspooks, Frostjaw, Hutch, Queen of Moon Quay, Deadly Brightshades, Skittersquids... Not trying to lay into you with the amount of examples, I just wanted to make sure I had some from a good few different time periods of the game's life. Gradients are decently common in the art style, especially back in Don't Starve (where the art was so low res we could hardly even tell), and I think it only really stands out on this mob because it's something new and we're all looking at it really actively. I can see why it would be offputting, but I think the quality is more subjective than it being style breaking.

[Just-guy]

Removing the top shines seems to make the Icker look more natural

[arubaro]

10 hours ago, Waoling said:

I think Nightmare fuel might be an allergory for Fossil Fuel.

Agree. Since the ancients lore was release i though the whole thing was an allegory of "civilization abusing fuel doesnt end well "

 

And now we have smog, acid rain and this goopy guy that looks like petroleum. All connected to fossil fuels/charcoal usage 

[goblinball]

10 hours ago, Wormboi said:

Looks like something out of the "world of goo" games

This is exactly what I was going to say!

[. . .]

17 hours ago, -Variant said:

Now I will be honest I don't like any of the inkblights at all they are unimmersive to me because they are too extremely different to the more simple, but good nightmares from don't starve. Ancient Fuelweaver was the maximum I was willing to go with a greatly different looking nightmare type creature..

Now this thing is an abomination.. it looks very out of place in the game I hope Klei adds an option to disable this guy specifically because it really disgusts me how awful it looks the artstyle doesn't match at all it doesn't look like a shadow creature, all these random horns and eyes make it look like they were low on time/manpower and just reused a bunch of assets to make this thing to meet a quota, the shine looks really bad, but as I said I don't like the other inkblights either like this snake thing they are making reminds me of Randall from Monsters Inc. it looks goofy and cartoon-y and unimmersive to me because of that, they are making the nightmares or these inkblights I mean look very cartoon-y instead of actually creepy like the originals.. also the new nightmare shark thing even though it's literally just black its art quality looks worse compared to the existing nightmares it's a lot less of the rough don't starve feel and it's very clean and smooth looking not to mention its animations are not just going sideways so it already looks off compared to other nightmares.. lol I have too much to complain about, but I regret getting hyped for this update IDK how many months it took for Klei to put this stuff together but it really is disappointing. I was hoping for the caves biomes to actually be made more interesting and less copypaste or like ruins is separated from caves like in Don't Starve.. not just some more "endgame" things.

The caves still are nothing special to keep me from putting it on smallest world gen option possible then I can interact with it as little as possible, not going to get my hopes up again.

 

17 hours ago, -Variant said:

Lol I forgot to say that "mimic eye" thing is so low effort design wise it's sad to me... these "nightmare" creatures don't even look like shadow nightmare things anymore so sad

[Pet Rock]

If I remember it right I think the devs said that the Icker was a form of miasma, not of nightmare fuel (the nightmare fuel could be a placeholder drop?)

[Milordo]

18 hours ago, Waoling said:

I think Nightmare fuel might be an allergory for Fossil Fuel.

It really is and more!

[goblinball]

19 hours ago, Cassielu said:

I think the new shadow creature needs some tweaking as well. It is severely lacking in detail and movement length compared to the old shadow creatures, especially the rough edges that fully explain the bad mental state of tension/fear. And also too three-dimensional for the classic shadow creature style in most of anim. 

I was thinking about this and it’s definitely something I’m mixed on. I do agree with you that difference is there however I don’t believe either side is necessarily better than the other. Older nightmare stuff was unsettling and and terrifying, where as the new nightmares are slick and sharp, with a hint of mischievousness/devilishness (at least with stuff like the shadow reaper’s dialogue and the new snake guy). 
I think both of these interpretations/directions of the nightmares are equally cool although I do agree there’s some dissonance there they are a bit different 

[Leonardo Cox]

On 8/23/2024 at 3:17 AM, finn from human said:

Beefalo, Deerclops, Koalefants, Pigmen, Bunnymen, Lureplants, Rabbits, Antlion, Eye of Terror, Lavae, Pipspooks, Frostjaw, Hutch, Queen of Moon Quay, Deadly Brightshades, Skittersquids... Not trying to lay into you with the amount of examples, I just wanted to make sure I had some from a good few different time periods of the game's life. Gradients are decently common in the art style, especially back in Don't Starve (where the art was so low res we could hardly even tell), and I think it only really stands out on this mob because it's something new and we're all looking at it really actively. I can see why it would be offputting, but I think the quality is more subjective than it being style breaking.

"and if used, are usually very subtle"

Granted, they use very apparent gradients on some light sources like skitter squid's eyes or bulbs, but icker does not emit light, and thats where it really pops out even among all the examples you listed, straight white on black with a gradient as if it emits light. Its obviously meant to be a sheen but even among other gel-like substances it pops out significantly, especially as whats supposed to be a blob of nightmare fuel/miasma(?). The small bits of him exacerbates the issue as well.

To be clear, I'm not asking for the shine to be removed, just reduced in opacity/whatever to where its not as glaring as it is now.

[WhackE]

38 minutes ago, Leonardo Cox said:

To be clear, I'm not asking for the shine to be removed, just reduced in opacity/whatever to where its not as glaring as it is now.

They thankfully removed the airbrush look to it. It's still there though