King of Fighters XII is One Big Hand-Job
The Internet seems to be abuzz over news surrounding Street Fighter IV, but SNK-Playmore has a pretty epic fighting game on their hands too. King of Fighters XII maintains the standard 2D appearance of most fighting games, but the actual graphics are much more polished than what we have seen in the past. It’s not the psuedo-3D of Street Fighter IV. Instead, as evidenced through the preview video, the character sprites have more of a cel-shaded quality to them.
As it turns out, though, KOF XII is not cel-shaded. The entire game has been drawn by hand. Are you kidding me??!? In this day and age, who hand draws any final production stuff anymore? But you know what? King of Fighters XII looks simply stunning and if hand-drawing is what is required, then all the more power (and man-hours) to SNK-Playmore.
According to KOFXII producer Masaaki Kukino, “The game is one hundred percent hand drawn. There is zero cell shading in The King of Fighters XII.”
Kotaku writes:
Every single frame, every character and every background. Everything — down to the game’s in-game title. SNK gave us the full rundown, so here’s how it worked: The original character drawings were modeled into 3D. Those 3D models were then rendered back into 2D. That way the 2D characters could have a greater depth of motion. Since the 2D models were devoid of color and details, artists went through each character, background, image and painstakingly added colors and drew in details pixel-by-pixel on a tablet PC. In one day, one artist would be able to draw one frame and a half for whatever image he or she was working on.
“We knew it was going to be hard going in,” says Kukino. “But we wanted to make the ultimate 2D fighting game.” Up close, that meticulous attention to detail becomes apparent, and you’re always noticing a flourish here or a nice touch there. Every inch of the screen has something interesting going on. “We wanted the look of the game to have more in common with manga or anime,” Kukino adds. With KoFXII, it looks like SNK hasn’t only created another stylized 2D fighter, but this time, a genuine work of art.
King of Fighters XII could turn out to be one of the best-looking fighting games ever. Take that Capcom!
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