cool da best part is wehn ermak riped tsang in half lol ermak rulz

It's about time we got another fake out of you MKRocket.

Yes it's brilliant (duh). The sprites are what dreams are made of.

The only complaints I have are that Ermac's glow is too yellow and the background is way too blurry. (sorry if these are explained Im too lazy to read your text).

5/5

Ha, well, I couldn't ever stay focused on a fake over the past year. I just sat myself down and told myself I needed to make one. Technically, I should have had this done by last Sunday, but knowing me, I should have known I would have delayed it.

I can only truly account for the background in your complaints. I wanted it to be a little softer (guess I over did it) to create an emphasis on the sprites and fatality. Oh, and the reason why the glow is so bright is to create that "Full power! Over 9000~..." effect, haha. *Shrug*

Thanks for the comments, Fedegita. Btw, you need to make more fakes, lol.

I have three on the front page as we speak...

...And I wont stop poking you until you look at them.




*poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke*

It's a good start, but several of your design choices really bring it down a few notches. For one, if you're gonna create a MKD Ermac from a MK3 Shang Tsung, dont put that same character as your opponent. I also think it was a bad choice to cover-up Ermac's face with his power glow. Thirdly, the stage and characters just seem out of place, not matching any MK storyline. Looks weird to me.

Only two things that I don't like;
-seeing Ermac's face would've been cool; I think you could've done something like show how much strain he is in to summon so much power to rip Shang Tsung apart (the "over 9000!" explanation was pretty funny, and seeing Ermac's face could have demonstrated this more).
-the life bars seem a bit unusual. The names seem out of place, I think that font is a little too big for the bars, and too bright in colour. Also, the bars being a shade of light-purple/pink doesn't fit how dark the rest of the background is.
Otherwise, this fake is gold. Seriously, the expression on Shang's face is priceless, and the detail you put into the blood and costumes is spectacular; when you say you're a perfectionist, I believe that, as it shows. You put a lot of effort in your work, and it really paid off. You need to send some of these new "fake makers" to school with your work and show them what a real fake is, even if it is only bi-annually.

i still think its pretty good considering you havent made fakes in a while. the sprite edits are incredible, and the lighting is nice. my only critique right now would to be to make the color of the glow on ermac's hands match the color of the glowing effects around shang because thw glow on ermac's hands seem a little yellowish

I don't see how it makes a difference what sprites I use since it's a complete overhaul of the sprite. I don't see ANY reference to Tsung in Ermac's sprite aside from his position. Be realistic.

....I will get to the power glow...

The stage and characters: MK:Armageddon. They're both in it, the stage is in it, I don't have the time to re-do the whole thing and I'm not going to be bothered in making a custom one. The only thing I changed was the coloration of Tsung's pants and vest. It would take 5 minutes for me to change it to red, but you know what that does? It blends in too much with the blood, too distracting. I did what I had to for a reason.

But hey, I'm just glad to see you making an unbiased judgment. Props to that.



Ermac's face.. yeah, you wouldn't have seen much of it anyway. His right hand covers most of his face... and you know... I just realized something.. If someone can point out a serious error I will give them a cookie or something. But back to Ermac's face. In the interest of visual harmony, it just wasn't possible to show Ermac's face without making something that would make you want to stab out your eyes with sharpened toothbrushes.

Just to clarify the whole face thing, this is what my Ermac's face looked like pre-glow:


Honestly, it was hard enough to make his black gloves/tape not blend in with the tape/wrap on his head. *shrug*

The life-bar deal... That's just my laziness. I was about 10 minutes from not including any life-bars. But, I did, only for the sake of visual balance. The font? Man, I tried working it... that was the best I could do... No font was working with me. Lighter colors were bothering me, they blended too much. *sigh* It's hard enough being color blind, but that's not an excuse. The actual blue/purple/pink hue to them is my fault, I didn't take the two seconds to gray-scale it.

Sometimes I just get in a mode where I don't care so much about those things.. and life-bars... eh.. never really cared for them. Heh.

Thanks for your comments Jerrod, and I do hope that some fake makers take some cues from this fake and incorporate them in to their work. Honestly, I wouldn't be too bothered if people contacted me via AIM/MSN/IRC and wanted advice, tips, or just flat out help with sprite editing.



Making full fakes, true, I haven't made one in a long while. Sprites? I have so many scraps and unfinished sprites just laying around on this hard drive. Thanks for your comments as well, Jago.

very nice man i like it people like UR can learn some skills from stuff like this lol

the sprites are very gd the only thing that i would say is a bit wierd and takes the attention from the sprites is the really blury bg why is it blury i dont get it but other than that ts sweet

3/5 because the bluryness is rely anoying

It's blurry because the focus of the fake is the sprites and the fatality.

And it's a shame that more people don't comment on this... Heh.

Just goes to show that [Mortal Kombat] fake making is going the way of the dodo.

Isn't it just...

Still I'm glad you posted this.

I actually like the background slightly blurry with the feathered mask to really bring the sprites into the foreground; I think it was tastefully done.

I agree it would've been nice to see Ermac's face, but that was the pose and it really suits the move so fair enough.

But what I really like most about this is that you've used the a colour palette, and limit, that the game would use.
All these sprites going round with a million colours in them look instantly out of place in a fake because the game didn't have a million colours.

I think it's particularly well done for the blood, which appears to use no more colours that the in-game blood itself which is superb.
And also particularly well done for Ermac, the colour palette alone on him makes him look straight out of the select screen.

Only gripes are the ones already listed really, the slightly lazy lifebars (particularly the fire behind the timer) and the glow on his hand doesn't match (the rather excellent) glow around Shang's torso.

Won't stop a 10/10 from me though .

Yeah how many people take fakes seriously AND create on a consistent basis? Like 4? If by some act of God they released a brand-spankin' new 2D digitised MK game though ...

Thanks man, I really appreciate that coming from you.



Ha, it seems like it anymore. I have a couple possible scenarios where fakes could make a comeback.. one includes the slim chance that people re-create stuff from the upcoming MK8. The others are so far shot, that it's just silly to tell them, and you would call me a lunatic.

Though I have given some deep thought in the transition of what these fakes were in the past and what they currently are today. Back in the day, they were actually fakes.. you know, true enough to the game that people could believe that it could actually happen in a classic game. Over the years, artistic expression has evolved fakes into a whole new beast. Hell, sometimes I debate with myself on whether or not to call my work a "fake" instead of a 2D representation of a 3D game, or perhaps even a potrait or vision of an idea.

People have said that my fakes seem to be more style than substance... or even digital painting. I can see the further development of this genre of art in the works of K1llKano.. I think if I can get my hands on a pen and tablet I may try and make a totally original, very high resolution, "fake." Hell I could probably do that now, but the thing is time.. it takes too much time with a mouse..

I just hope that fakes don't completely die out... but it could happen.

I don't even mind the blurry BG. In fact I never even realised that it was blurry until I saw someone complained about it. It seemed like the be best idea to me. I mean really, what do you wanna see more the BG or the fatality?
Whats with the complaints on not being able to see Ermac's face? You can obviously see that its Ermac.
BTW 5/5

yea i also noticed how you had blurred the background to bring focus to the foreground and sprites. maybe another trick you could do is too use a motion blur effect for the background....but dont make it too obvious like the matrix effect, possibly going in a vertical direction since thats the direction shang's torso was lifted....

you can do that to a copy of the image layer, and just erase the parts where the sprites are so you can bring them in focus, and if you want to see the effect more you can sharpen the layer twice
and i know they look nice, but i think you should take the lifebars out, or at least darken them some, itd look more like the style of an authentic mk game. since this fake looks so nice and authentic enough, itd really make it look good and raising the dramatic value. remember in fakes that lifebars help add a nice touch to your fake, but i wouldnt use them during fatality scenes. when we see a fatality were like "i dont care how much times left in the fight" and i mean, we already know that thats ermac, and that the dude getting ripped apart is shang tsung. well i hope everyone here knows that since they play mk. when i see one in whats supposed to be a fatality im all like "well i guess he must not be dead yet the fights still gonna go on"

Nice Job there MK Rocket!

You're still around?

Thanks man.

Wow! Do my eyes fool me or are these ACTUAL custom/edited sprites?? Its about time!

The Good
-Ermac and Shang edits are well edited, they look nice
-Effects look good
-lifebars are alright
-nice looking blood

The Bad
-Not really a big deal but the health of the first health bar goes down the opposite way

Overall, its pretty good, I will give it a 4.9/5

The sprites and blood edits are really nice. The only two minor gripes about it are just the color of the glow on Ermac's hands and the text on the lifebars (But it's not that bad imo). Great job.

Heh, yeah, I know what you mean. If you want me to show the progression of Ermac's development, I will gladly post, if anyone is interested. Perhaps it would show some little hints on how to edit better... *shrug*
And to be honest, I haven't played MKA, so I didn't really know about the life bars. Just one of those "I don't care" things.



Thanks.

You know, with the positive response this fake has generated, I am leaning towards making another fake. Not that it will be coming out anytime soon, but I may start playing around with some ideas in the near future when I have the time. I'm thinking about something a little different. A little bigger, or something... who knows.

Peace.

Go ahead, I am interested, it may inspire a few.

i agree

Alright here's something [almost] straight out of MSPaint. I use it for keeping backups to the separate stages of development and "frankensteining" my sprites. The only thing I added was the finish product.


--Edit-- Erm, I guess I forgot to say to right click --> View all to see the whole picture. Or, go to this link.

There are other things on here.. just little things that I tinkered with or looked into, etc.

I hope this helps.

Thank you