Chad over at gb.net caught wind that Dapper Dan, who has been posting his awesome Ghostbuster art for years now (and is well known to readers of PC and Cereal Geek magazine), may be linked to the art style of the more “cartoonish” Wii and PS2 versions of the Ghostbusters video game. In his Deviant Art blog, he has posted an image comparing his art to the neutral pose shots of a 3D Ray from IGN.com.
He also mentioned he was contacted by the game developers at Sierra’s specific request in May of 2007, half a year before the rest of the world would even hear about a video game. His current concern is that his art style will go without credit and has contact the developers again, but without having seen the other three Ghostbusters or a copy of the game credits (which we won’t see until October) it’s hard to say how much or how little his style will be used, and what credit he will receive. That the developers contacted him at all is a great deal more respect than a lot of online artists are granted these days – we expect as fellow GB fans, Red Fly will do right by Dan. We’ll know more in the coming months.
Uh, that’s Chad Paulson, not Paul.
I wrote it at three in the morning with a massive head cold – cut me some slack.
Sorry to hear that you were ill. I woke up with a massive headache myself of the “feels like a thousands needles pressing down on your head” kind.
As for the topic at hand, I sure hope he does get credit for part of it seeing as how it seems pretty obvious that they did infact use his work as a starting point. Speaking of which, I wonder just exactly when we’re finally going to get some previews of the Wii version of the game.
Based on what I have seen so far, he obviously needs to be credited. It would be a shame if we got our Ghostbusters game with the knowledge a die-hard fan was cheated. By the way, a note to Dapper Dan… Is there any-way you can make your artwork higher-res for desktop wallpaper. That would be greatest thing to look at all day!
This is a really iffy issue. While the art styles are DEFINITELY similar, it’s really hard to say who came up with the “original concept”. Obviously, the Wii and PS2 versions will require characters and objects with a lower Polygon count than the other versions, to keep everything running smoothly without slowdown. So, while this may be the reason they went with more “cartoony”-looking characters, it IS hard to deny the similarity between the two art styles. Hopefully, at the very least, Dapper Dan will at least recieve a credit for “concept art” or something. It is encouraging that Red Fly at least contacted him. Hopefully it is a good sign that they will give him a little credit, for “inspiration”, if nothing else.