To someone like me (and most others here) who are not artists, can you be more specific? Despite your contemptuous assertion that it was not professionally done (I guess the WOZ video assets are not professional either? please advise), I happen to like it a lot. But, I also have a much different perspective than you because I know what assets there are and aren't and what we are allowed to do to said assets (ProTip: NOTHING). All you've given an example of is "something should've been done with wood."

I'm genuinely curious what you think of a playfield like ST, also.

Thanks for chiming back in with a couple of examples. I guess I understand the LOCK complaint, but we can't change the other stuff you pointed out, so that one's out the window. Again, I'm not an artist. Think about this though (and this isn't just to you): If you say something sucks without saying why, then you could be a sandwich artist or you could be frickin' Michelangelo, and in either case I look at your statements exactly the same: useless whining.

Oh and don't take that as a criticism or trying to stifle your opinions. You're welcome to say and feel and think whatever you want, what the hell do I care? Think of it as an education as how you look to others.

Mostly addressed this already above... It doesn't matter what you are if you can't (or don't want to) explain why.

Look at it this way... You have a GOLDEN opportunity to engage with someone who's pretty intimate with the project (and is WILLING to engage you!!), something that almost never happens in this industry, and you want to take the theft of services angle. That's fine if that's how you look at it, I can respect that. But if you want to engage, then this is your opportunity. Otherwise it's just noise and I'm wasting my time.

I'll give a quick analogy. A couple years ago I would rail against Stern's product publicly. But every time I said something negative, I explained exactly why with very specific reasons and examples. And look at it this way: Everyone probably eventually got new Transformers software thanks to the storm I started. ;P

Oh, so you have extensive knowledge of working with licensed materials, submitting for approvals, waiting up to 2 weeks for various levels of approval (WB initial, then Wingnut (I think they're called)), and then hoping they don't notice you changed the stuff you're not supposed to change because otherwise it costs you time to go back and put it the way it was before and REsubmit it and wait another 2 weeks? Most businesses do not have the luxury of taking chances and jeopardizing relationships with others they do business with and wasting weeks of time going into production, but that's awesome that you do. I envy you, sir.

I think you mean art and not design. So we're done here then, right? k

I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I get what you're saying about the head backgrounds and what not. To my eye, to some extent they are already "anchored" being attached to the inserts, but IANAA, etc.

And unfortunately I don't want to say you completely wasted all your time railing against the Dwarf text, but all of that stuff is straight out of the style guide and unchangeable, so, yeah, you kinda did. Right down to the fact that Thorin gets a last name and the others do not (so does Bilbo and some other certain characters - or other qualifiers if not last names). I do appreciate you taking the time to explain yourself, though.

I'm saying the font and "the dwarf" have to be the way they are. I don't know about the heads tbh.

Snark begets snark. Besides, I'm sorry, but seeking permission from estates while I'm sure is annoying, is not anywhere close to dealing with established style guides and 2 corporate entities that are very particular. If anything, he should've said "yeah, working at Disney, I know how much we force people to stick to style guides; you're right, you couldn't change that stuff, sorry."

Then you're contradicting yourself WRT changing the wood frame things.

lolk. Your post has no basis in reality.

Sunfox kind of beat me with a few examples, but I did finally find this with everything conveniently in the same place: http://www.tshirtroundup.com/blog/the-hobbit-roundup At least the first half of those are right out of the style guide. If I could just post the style guide, I would.

No hard feelings.

Constructive criticism is good. I don't believe I've said anything other than "thanks I appreciate it" to it when provided and it was usable. A lot of you probably aren't used to style guides and how much of a bible those things are.

WRT Nori and Ori, that was in fact a good catch. I'm surprised that none of us noticed it, and I'm even MORE surprised that WB hasn't noticed it. It's amazing the things they'll pick up on, but then to miss that is just astounding.

As to how it happened, well, JP inherited the playfield from another artist that we parted ways with, mostly because of how the playfield looked. If I want to see your guys' heads explode, I'll post one of those pictures someday. I personally can only identify about 7 or 8 dwarves just based on their picture, but it may have just gone up by 2.

Actually it's pretty easy to decal rollovers. The problem is they are free to rotate, so putting letters on them is a useless endeavor.

Well they'll be clear like on WOZ so they can be rgb-lit.

They're rollovers, as mentioned several times in this thread.

Sorry but you are completely wrong here. The art is doing exactly what I wanted it to do. There is no miscommunication there is no ignoring.

I get commenting on various technical issues of design and what not, and some changes have in fact been made already. However, now you're going into contexts which you do not understand (and how could you understand it since we have not disclosed anything in that regard).

I'm not going to go into it right now, either, sorry. Either I'm full of crap and an idiot gameplay designer, or things will work out just fine and won't be that confusing. That's probably an even-money bet. But everything is conveyed properly as far as I'm concerned.

...and who's done all the art for the past x games, be it JJP or Stern? Greg Freres, Kevin O'Connor, John Youssi, Jerry Vandersteldt (not as storied as the others but has games under his belt)...

Fact is, licensing has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Guess I'd be interested to see what he can get away with in a modern licensed game.