RAYMAN 2 HD - Art Department Devlog - 2023

Following last week's Rayman Alive, here's a dev diary from our Art team, showcasing progress made in 2D and 3D Art and more.

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[CamCaustic]

Rayman 2 on PC was one of the first proper adventure/platformer games I ever played on the PC. I had to use a really old scuffed controller, but man I replayed it so many times. To see the game being treated so lovingly to be remastered like this is such a treat. I cannot wait to see more as time goes on!

[kavariteraa]

Your art direction is just perfect! Keep it up guys its great!

[Yormolch]

I like that the Piranha looks even more undead and fantastical now, it fits the "the world is in danger of dying and changes accordingly" narrative.

[alextechnogamer]

My apologies for commenting so late, but yours truly couldn't help but say that all of this is nothing short of magnificent!!! 🥰

Not to mention the piranhas and/or Ly’s beautiful new look that we can't wait to see translated into the game graphics… 😍

[THEGEEKSONIC]

It looks amazing ! We can see all your passion, thank you for all this hard work !

[wiandivreeswijk]

This is great! One of my favourite games of all time

[weegeesoul]

This is so exciting to see. The artstyle is tremendous and fits Rayman so well. I really wish you guys the best of luck with this project.

[EmilXOM]

Rayman 2 and 3 have some of the nicest models and texture work of their time imo. I’ve been wanting to make art analysis videos on them for a while now, because nobody really talks about this sort of stuff - ever.

It’s great to see you guys are sticking with an illustrative approach for this project.

[Vexod]

Those mushrooms looked perfect ♥(anim pushes the original a bit further while respecting the original and models looks on point, the squash'n stretch flow is so satisfying to see, hats-off to whoever animated that !)
Other than that, I find models quite soft when the original designs/silhouettes tend to be much sharper. Also at some point thee textures might be too dull (avoid leaving curvature as is, I think working on top of it will give a nicer effect on the end result. Like just add a final polish layer on top of the pile and paint over the basecolor/rough/metal =))
Or too noisy (the wooden pillars for the crumbling bridges looked overly detailed. Without a clear shape and gradient and a "details distribution" that feels a bit overloaded everywhere. I'd definitely suggest for less but more dynamic ones, and maybe bring this fine details in the roughness for when you get close to it in the game. As you might run fast in the environment, the shapes, and colours should read extremely fast and having too much noise might play against that). Perhaps look at how Crash Bandicoot evolved from past to present and inspire from that art direction transition process, cause here the goal is the same.

As always it's wonderful what you're crafting and be sure I feel how hard it is and I respect that. I hope you'll get to finish it, reignite Ubisoft interest for Rayman (cause well...what they did recently was kind of an insult to the character to me, I don't understand why they don't take care of such an iconic IP)

May the Force be with you guys, or Polokus haha (more appropriate I guess ;))