TreIII said:And again, I personally would like nothing better than to see Capcom try something more akin to what Treasure has been doing for years, and Vanillaware has just brought out into the forefront again: segmented sprites.
It goes without saying that the classical, hand-drawn way of sprite drawing is probably the main thing that makes it so it's not as viable a solution today as it was yesteryear, when we didn't have a choice. Drawing that many frames of animation just takes too much time, and costs too much money. And I'm sure Capcom is not interested in giving up either for the sake of one game.
But with segmented sprites, you basically could stand to cut that type of work drastically, because then it would be more of a thing of "drawing" for each specific part of a model's body, instead of trying to draw the whole body per frame. Done correctly (again, see Treasure's stuff, and Odin Sphere), and it is a great look that creates a seamless presentation. And, truthfully, it doesn't even need to be in HD, as Odin Sphere and that new Vanillaware game for the Wii clearly demonstrate.
segmented sprites look and move exactly like what they are - cardboard cutouts. there's no weight or momentum to them because nothing squashes or stretches right. not to mention that complex actions that require foreshortening of the limbs require the arms/legs/body trunks to be redrawn again anyways. this is why the all the characters in the rumblefish looks so damn stiff.
the only way to imbue that sense of life and (above all things) weight is either properly hand-animated 2d sprites or hand-keyframed 3d models.