BaronGrackle

Ahem. Remember that the Voodoo Lady is reshaping reality as she goes, to literally keep the story moving so that their universe stays relevant and alive.

Ahem! https://mixnmojo.com/news/The-musical-cover-up-continues-with-Stans-theme

New MUSIC based homework assignment for everyone: Buy a ship from Stan. Instead of using the CD theme or silence, play variations of his Go Tell Aunt Rhody theme. See if you like any results.

The fact that it was something they had to think about for MI6 is huge praise, Marius.

And at some point, you even get to a level of intent vs. perception. Forget about BaronGrackle's opinion for now. Instead, think back to one of the posts quoted in the badmouthing VGA thread: https://www.resetera.com/threads/return-to-monkey-island-announced-by-devolver-digital-lucasfilm-games-2022.569392/page-20 Forget about realism vs. cartoonism for just a moment. Do you think EGA Guybrush looks like the guy on the box of Secret? You might say this Guybrush looks like a cartoon, too. Maybe Steve Purcell drew them both as cartoons. Yeah, when you stare at this guy, he's not a photo at all. Except... we also have this: And at some point? Yeah, that Purcell art might not technically be a photograph. But it's depicting someone who could be a real guy. Brush. Fair! Fair.

It goes hand in hand with complete breakdowns of time and space.

I would stop, but at the invocation of my name a few times... I do believe the VGA is more photorealistic than the EGA. I believe this is because the VGA had more color potential than the EGA. And this EGA picture of Guybrush? I believe this EGA picture of Guybrush is equally as photorealistic as that EGA picture of Indiana Jones from Indy 3.

In terms of subdivisions to the graphics on the poll? I prefer VGA looks overall, but EGA Estevan for his infinite despair, and Special Edition Carla SPRITE for adding her red headband which appears on my preferred VGA closeup of her.

Always Mancomb; never the others. Estevan, Cobb, Smirk, Carla, Elaine, the Head of the Navigator, LeChuck via blimpcam, and Guybrush all come off as more "realistic" in EGA than Mancomb here. Mancomb's the one who makes me think of the Dick Tracy film characters... he's got a fatter face than we'd expect, but it's not impossible. It's not invoking the cartooned geometries of Curse and later games. Oh, it's filled with cartoony actions and physical invulnerabilities. Indy 3 also has this. Apart from "seeing stars", Indy will pause when a cliff is opened beneath him... before falling in. The end of the game sees a decapitates head bouncing like a ball across the screen. It plays into the contrast, like a Three Stooges bit, or the ending scenes in Roger Rabbit where Eddie takes hits like he's a toon himself.

We are at an impasse , but it's because I see the EGA versions as equally realistic as SOMI VGA. Just with fewer colors to work with. I don't think you could use EGA's limited color options to make Cob(b) look more realistuc than they did.

Funny enough? I would disagree with "more cartoony than the VGA versions" (emphasis on the plural), because VGA Cob from Loom arguably looks more cartoony per this understanding than EGA Cob and EGA Cobb, because VGA Cob from Loom has the greater color pallette but doesn't do more to define his facial features. It just screams spectrum to me, not a clear division. As you cited, the portrait in Indy 3 is an amazing work of realistic art. Yet also, Indy 3 is the game where you give a trophy filled with ale to a muscled man, see literal bubbles above his head, and then knock him out to see little trophies spinning around - akin to a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But if you tried that kind of "seeing stars" animation in Loom or even Secret? It would've risked breaking immersion. (I may be wrong. I don't remember anyone in Secret "seeing stars", though that kind of Chuck Jones stuff happens in Revenge.)

Confession time: I never studied the alley entance/exit as closely as I should have. This thread shames me. Good thing the church is nearby. Guys, is this the back door?

With the Warcraft franchise, the thing I tended to say was: Every piece of media is a different version of canon. Each game or book will recount past games and books differently. The Second War in Warcraft II is a different continuity than the Second War according to Warcraft III, or the Second War according to its later novel, or the Second War according to the current version of World of Warcraft. I originally meant it as a half joke, but it kind of holds true for any franchise with a loose canon. Even within Gilbert canon Monkey Island. Is the Voodoo Lady lying in MI2 when she says she helped Guybrush make root beer (she did no such thing in MI1)? Is Guybrush stretching things in MI2 when he tells the Men of Fiber they tried to sell him PTA minutes as a map in the last game (they joked about it but revealed their joke before Guybrush could even respond)? When we replay MI1 and see Guybrush crash into the grog machine and get pulled out, are we to inagine that it now looks as physically damaged as it does in the MI2 tunnels (because it doesn't, not yet)? Or, is the continuity of MI2 slightly different than the continuity of MI1, and within the story of MI2 these things actually happened?

This was always my interpretation: a building behind the church.

You see a difference in styles between EGA Cob from Loom and EGA Cobb from Secret? Other than accessories like hat and beard, I don't see a difference between those two. With things like the difference between VGA Cob in Loom vs. VGA Cobb in Secret? With that, I honestly think its more of a difference between artists than between styles. I think VGA Cob in Loom is supposed to look realistic... but the artist for VGA Secret just did his version so very, very well. Minus a few bits like the unibrow and warts. In these early Scumm games, I feel like there's a blend or spectrum for cartoonish<->realistic. It's similar to how Indy 3 has stars showing when someone is knocked out, or Loom has visible eyes behind the darkness of cloaks, but both of these games have other scenes that appear to be as live actiony as possible. EDIT: As you allude to with Bugs Bunny, animation has a wide range. Even the VGA Secret portraits are drawings and thus technically cartoon. But if you're looking for something that may have "triggered" me, then I don't know. These MI6 art discussions have stretched me so far that I've heard people tell me the Special Edition closeups are an improvement over the VGA closeups, because the Special Edition versions are cartoonish like the original EGA. Maybe that's still left a taste in my mouth. Special Edition Estevan is a crime.

Funny enough, that line made me think of Escape. Not in a bad way... but in how he was assembling a crew to meet with lawyers, but he could lie that they were going to raid fishing villages.

Not in the VGA versions I know. Could it be a VGA floppy vs. VGA CD situation?

Do you think Loom is sort of like a cartoon, with its artstyle? EDIT: Granted, the weavers' eyeballs in darkness are a classic cartoon trope. But I also saw it with Star Wars jawas... And Indy 3, despite having that excellent closeup image, shows little stars/swastikas over people's heads when they get knocked out.

I found one of the conversations I had recently: https://forums.thimbleweedpark.com/t/ron-declares-he-is-working-on-a-new-monkey-island/4993/1673?u=barongrackle I asked to verify: he liked the realistic covers but not the realistic portraits? Bonus - while searching, I found this other random forum. They were arguing about MI6's art style compared to the more "standard" art in MI1's portraits, which pivoted into a side-discussion about Secret's EGA art vs. VGA art. https://www.resetera.com/threads/return-to-monkey-island-announced-by-devolver-digital-lucasfilm-games-2022.569392/page-20 Stuff just comes up in relation to the art direction in various Monkey Islands, with this new release.

Full disclosure: the Indy 3 EGA closeup shocked me at how well-done it is. But why did you pick Mancomb? Why not Estevan, or Carla, or Smirk, or Guybrush. Nothing about them screams "cartoon" to me. And in that context, even Mancomb could be some guy with a fat face and missing teeth. And Cob? Regardless of how well drawn he is in VGA, he's still basically identical in EGA Loom and EGA Secret. Do we think EGA Loom is depicting cartoonish characters and shying away from realism? EDIT: I just realized VGA Secret Cobb is the only version without a unibrow.

Let me just point out: I've routinely argued with people who tell me that EGA Secret's closeups are "cartoony". 😛 My line of reasoning is usually: Did Indy 3 and Loom look cartoony to you? Cob's portrait in Loom is basically the same as Cobb's portrait in Secret. The closeups in Secret are comparable to closeups in other pixel games at this time period meant to be seen as realistic, such as Laura Bow. If they had wanted to, they could have used giant heads like in Maniac Mansion or Zak! Of course, my current take is: Disnryland Pirates animatronics realism. . . . With so many people hating Stan's theme, am I the only one who's always bored by the blandness of the Voodoo theme? Those scenes could have benefited from an eerie silence.

I've heard it more recently in the midst of MI6 art discussions, regarding Ron's original vision and such. Specifically, I learned this year that the final scene for EGA has the fireworks casting shadows on Guybrush and Elaine, which the VGA version did not replicate. People notice that, and I guess it's hard to blame them when they argue the VGA end portrait lost something on an objective level. And while a different topic, some folks also disparage the 256 color backgrounds over Mike Ferrari's original work. This isn't entirely related to the closeup portraits, but it is a VGA change in the disk version - not just the CD. I'm not in my discords anymore, so I can't find any of those quotes. But here are some references in articles. Here's a November 2020 article, describing art that would have been true to VGA's disk or CD versions: https://scientificgamer.com/lucasarts-time-machine-the-secret-of-monkey-island/ This random comment relates to the loss of Ferrari's dithered backgrounds, but it likewise applies to any VGA version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26446738 And from that article written by ThunderPeel, one of the comments:

That's fantastic if apparently the VGA portraits are more beloved by the majority of fans! I have read that wonderful article and often go back to it. But I have heard other people indicate a strong preference for the original EGA portraits. Often, it's for the sake of continuity with the product that Ron Gilbert was involved in - though of course people will reference Steve Purcell directly. The comparisons have come up in recent art-based discussions, when I've listed the portraits in Secret as one of the items that pulled me into Monkey Island and one of the reasons I interpret those first two games (or at least the first) as looking more "realistic" than Curse and the later games. People disagreeing tend to hold up the EGA profile of Mancomb Seepgood (arguably the most cartoon-leaning of the group) as a repudiation of realism in the ORIGINAL game, and some have even told me that when experiencing VGA Secret they were taken out of their immersion by the too-realistic closeup images. For me, I saw it all as a realistic world with cartoon logic applied, akin to the weight-lifting scene in the original Nutty Professor where the live actor has his arms stretched out cartoonishly. More recently, I see continuity between Purcell's art and the animatronics for Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean. Those animatronics have such a realism-to-cartoonism range that the characters in Secret and Revenge could coexist with them, in my opinion. But yes, I have heard from people who strongly prefer Purcell's closeups.

Hmm, I've heard people (e.g. Ron Gilbert) throw shade on the VGA portraits much more frequently than I've heard complaints about Stan's theme or the extensions on LeChuck's.