Art 1: Dosu

Both are pretty decent, right?

The Good

Holy hell, that Melody Arm. Look at all those details. As I said in my first case:

“In his Plot Instance profile sprite, he has the correct eye covered. The programmers and artists clearly weren’t careless with their details here; they even got the cracks on Dosu’s Melody Arm correct, which is really quite commendable. (I would know since I tried to draw the Melody Arm, to limited success)”

Seriously, this is actually pretty admirable. While the UNB Dosu is still pretty nice looking, the Melody Arm is covered. Here, the arm is visible and quite obvious.

The Bad

That straw raincoat on his back.

The lack of details there is a little worrying. Especially if you compare it to the UNB art of Dosu. UNB Dosu’s raincoat has all sorts of little lines and details.

The Ugly

First of all, the general quality of the Naruto Online Dosu art is lower. Less detail, less shading, less everything.

Look. I get it. Art is hard. I tried it and I did terribly. But it seems like you guys were torn between whether to just use the official arts… or try to make your own. Perhaps Dosu got the short end of the st1ck because he’s not an important character like Sasuke?

Second of all. (and the severity of this part is just my opinion. I personally think this falls into the “ugly” category but it could also just be “bad”) There’s not much character flair in the Naruto Online Dosu art. I mean, there’s not much in that art that really screams “Holy governments, that’s Dosu!” on there. It doesn’t “feel” like Dosu.

The UNB art has him hunched over in his distinctive Dosu position, with a distinctive Dosu head tilt. But the Naruto Online art is… kinda like that? Sorta? Eh… not really.

The Verdict

I gave the Naruto Online Dosu art a lot of flak, but it’s not particularly bad. It’s probably the best out of the three Team Dosu arts though. I do have to give them props for their details on certain aspects, it’d just be nice if those details were all over the art, instead of just one part of Dosu.

Note: I’d also like to apologize beforehand - since there’s no high quality sources of Zaku’s and Kin’s art in Naruto Online, I had to go to a different game also developed by Tencent to get good quality pictures of their art. Since before you guys, the mods, didn’t want me to talk about it, I won’t say what game it is and will try to keep any identification of it to a minimum. Mods, if you want me to remove this, please let me know ASAP and I’ll try to find a Naruto Online sourced image. Or you can provide me a replacement?

Art 2: Zaku

The Good

Uh… the hair and clothes are shaded fine? To be honest, this is a perfectly fine piece of art and I don’t see any flaws from a TECHNICAL perspective. No shading errors or anything like that - if anything, this one seems a little more detailed than the Dosu one.

The Bad

Nothing really, actually.

The Ugly

First of all, the combination of that face and that pose. It looks like he’s like trying to give someone a high five or something, but then he looks at the other person’s hand and there’s a bunch of snot on their hand.

The pose is kinda weird and not Zaku-ish at all. It almost looks like the artist just wanted to showcase the little tube in his palm by making it super obvious.

My second complaint is his expression. He just looks either pissed off or drat depressed. I can’t really tell. His eyes are more sullen th@n usual and he looks… well, tired. That’s not the Zaku I know. The Zaku I know is confident, brash, and energetic. He’s not afraid to get loud and boisterous out there.

Ultimately, this art suffers the same problem as the Dosu art, but at a greater scale. He doesn’t *feel* like Zaku at all. He lacks all of the things that made Zaku’s character. I mean, sure, the UNB art also suffers from slightly awkward posing as well, but it still maintains the c0cky and obvious grin that’s more fitting of Zaku.

The Verdict

It’s a fine piece of art, but it lacks Zaku’s character and that’s a huge flaw. The posing is awkward and the face is just not Zaku.

Art 3: Kin

Kin’s a bit of a difficult one since she’s the least developed character out of the trio. But there’s still things to say about her art.

The Good

Unlike Zaku’s, Kin’s pose is fine for a cutscene pose. Though it doesn’t align with anything in particular, the general vibe the pose gives off – one of confidence and style – works well with Kin’s personality. And I like that, it looks nice.

The Bad

A lack of highlight on Kin’s prominent physical traits, notably her long dark hair. This is something that the UNB art does quite well, but this one is just… alright. The shading’s a bit weird and it kinda looks more like a blanket around her head than her hair for some reason.

In Dosu’s and Zaku’s arts, both of them had their prominent physical traits (Dosu’s bandages and Melody Arm, and Zaku’s face mask and Airwave Tubes) obvious in some way. Here, it’s more subtle and a bit messier.

The Ugly

Kin suffers from the same problem as Zaku: her expression. However, the scope of the problem is different. While Zaku’s expression is unfitting of being Zaku, Kin’s is just too generic. It reminds me of the portraits that the generic Sword Forces, Archer Forces, et cetera have, and I don’t think that a named character should look generic like that.

This is the biggest flaw with her art, in my opinion.

The Verdict

Like Zaku, Kin’s art doesn’t portray her personality enough. Thankfully, it’s not as bad as Zaku’s as she at least has a little bit going for her.

So what would I recommend doing to fix this?

Simple - get an artist to draw new art for them. I mean, after all, the Main Characters’ dialogue portraits in the Instances have changed a few times over time.

Heck, if it's too much of a hassle and the devs really don’t want to redo their art, they can even reuse these ones from the other Tencent game that I put below. Both of these two arts actually look quite fine and capture Kin’s and Zaku’s personalities pretty well!

(Sorry for the bad quality, I borrowed these screenshots from someone else)

“But Dosu, why does this matter? Again, why do you care about a little detail like this?”

Do you remember me saying this in my second case?

"One hugely important thing about this game, Naruto Online, is that it affects people’s opinions on the Naruto franchise and storyline.

A while back, I was quite surprised to learn that only a certain percentage of people who play Naruto Online have actually watched Naruto. There are a good chunk of players who have never watched Naruto in their life, and as such are completely clueless about the storyline, characters, etc. To them, the Naruto Online plot might be the only exposure they have to the regular Naruto storyline.

This is even more important due to the endless amounts of ads that Naruto Online has on the Internet. I can ask practically any of my friends who aren't Naruto fans about this game, and they will tell me that they have seen a Naruto Online ad somewhere. Clearly this game has HUGE coverage and a lot of people know about it. This makes it even more important for Naruto Online to be reflective of the Naruto storyline, or else you're not fully representing, or worse, even sullying, the creative work Masashi Kishimoto put into this series.

As such, it should be Naruto Online’s role to provide the best representation of the Naruto storyline that they can, to show all of the intricate thought and detail that Masashi Kishimoto put into the storyline and each of the characters."

This exactly. It still has all the influence it used to. The ads are still everywhere. The coverage is everywhere. Everyone knows about this game.

So it should be even more important to provide a good representation of these characters, instead of just presenting them off as uninteresting and generic!

TLDR: Team Dosu’s art is misrepresenting of their personalities. While the art itself is perfectly fine, it lacks little quirks and details that make the characters feel more accurate, alive, and real.

-This is important due to the heavy amount of influence this game has.

-It would be, in theory, easy to nab an artist and redo their art, or even reuse a currently existing resource from another Tencent game.

Thanks for reading all of this, hopefully it was a little easier since it wasn't hugely long like my other two.

That's all I've got for you today, and I hope that everyone on the team considers this idea.

Dosu out.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure how likely it is to be changed. Depending on the artist, art can be pretty expensive...

Bumpity-bump.

Dude, I don't think anybody cares about these second rate characters but you. :D

Hello Dosu!

All graphics designs in the game (this includes character profile cards/images) are official images done by artists either in Tencent Games or Namco Bandai Entertainment. We understand you might not be fan of this type of art or drawings but it is not right to call it unofficial.

Also, please keep in mind promoting other games or posting links to other non Naruto Online (official) websites is forbidden.

Have a nice day.

Thanks for the response. I was unaware that they qualified as "official" though, that's interesting to note. Hm...

I tried to minimize how much I talked about other games, but I felt it was necessary to clarify what I meant in the post.

EDIT: My apologies Daiske, maybe I'm just missing something or my brain's not screwed on straight, but I'm having trouble understanding how art from Tencent qualifies as an official art. Can you explain more? I thought Bandai/Namco and Kishimoto were the only "official" artists.

Oh, it's so on.

Not here though. Check your PM.

Maybe I'm blind but, the art looks fine to me.

wow wow wow....Chill a bit can you?
I did not see the post include linkS of anything at all...
I saw images of other characters...but it was never mentioned that they were another game.
There was ONE MENTION of a game with an actual NAME included.
I'll give you that one BUT even so...it is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TYPE...
This game is BROWSER baseD while the other is a MOBILE GAME.
I don't feel a MOBILE game being mentioned will affect this BROWSER game.

Most NORMAL people would quickly realize that people would easily play both.
Only way for another game being mentioned...would hurt Naruto Online would be if it were another BROWSER game.
Just thought you might want to know the DIFFERENCE.

Also...if I read it all right...it was only mentioned of how the art had differences between THIS game and ANOTHER.
A good employee would instead take this as FEEDBACK and let the higher ups know of this so that MAYBE we can update NARUTO ONLINE
and make it 100times better. Instead...I basically hear you saying "quiet peasant! we like our unofficial looking artwork!"

Like i seriously don't get it....where are your people skills?
and like I said above...yes you could say to limit the use of other game names or something but the way you seem to go about it is WAAAAY off.
It's basically showing how you just seem to post because you MAY have to...and not because you really want to.

I for one want to say that the artwork SHOULD get updated.
I see many other things change...except the basic stuff.
Some people would probably say they preferred most of the old things about Naruto Online before most of the MASSIVE changes.
Yet the few things we have ASKED to be CHANGED....yeah you just tell people they can't have it or that you aren't allowed to comment on it.
Sometimes you just try to QUIET EVERYONE DOWN and so on.

next thing you know....you'll be offended instead of taking this like a discussion about how your attitude about a lot of things seems to be entirely biased on your end.
I do NOT believe images done by artist from TENCENT GAMES to be OFFICIAL.
OFFICIAL would mean that they come from the MAIN SOURCE.

If I create a character...MY ART is the OFFICIAL ART. The character BELONGS to ME.
So if YOU are telling ME that TENCENT GAMES now OWNS "NARUTO" in all its ENTIRETY then I will accept THEIR ARTWORK to be OFFICIAL.
To me your statement feels like it could go around into LEGAL troubles.
Of course. You don't have to respond to any of this. Consider it me just talking loudly to the wall while you listen in. Ya know?
But I will say that I'm pretty sure that if they don't own Naruto as a whole...then it is NOT allowed to be called OFFICIAL artwork. Please do make note of that.
As far as I know...the GAME is OFFICIAL. As in they are allowed to use the characters and their likeness along with the storyline (which is I may add...NEEDS WORK...feels like those that wrote the scripts FAILED TO WATCH THE SERIES). This would mean that they could've just been allowed to draw art for the game but that itself doesn't make it OFFICIAL ARTWORK.

Hope we c*l get along one day :D lol

There's nothing wrong with the quality of the artwork. The problem is that it doesn't *feel* like it's an accurate representation of some of the characters - like it doesn't have the quirk or personality of many of the characters.

Does this help?

@Fiyuri - I had a few links and a few names; I removed them and made things more ambiguous to accommodate for Daiske's request.

I'm gonna agree with what Dosu stated in this thread .. Yeah, some of the Artwork feels bit lacking something, with Chikushodo i will agree too since she's one of my likes in the Naruto Character and i always say that she's the cutest female character in the Naruto, of course except for my Hinata .. Another thing i noticed is the Hidan's artwork, one of his elements is missing and that part is the most important part of his character, the "Jashin Symbol Necklace (Circle with inverted Triangle inside) which clearly represents his devotion for his Lord Jashin .. I can say that Images and Artworks of Ninjas of the game should be updated too, with more high-quality artworks or some sort that can have more resemblance or more alike with the character they represent ..

For the Response with long argument type reply above, Some part of the response is right and some of it is wrong .. Yes, Oasis should take this as a Constructive Criticism and make a subject for possible future updates and upgrades of the game because, this Naruto Online is not just a "Game" of some sort but this is one of the Highest Earning Game i think, and it earns Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars and from that aspect the game should be more Good and Better (fixing those wrong spellings too would be great) .. But the Wrong part, you literally slayed Daiske with you response, if he didn't consider Dosu's effort in this thread then this thread wouldn't be open anymore, i mean it will be deleted or closed as soon as Daiske read this thread, but it is not .. It is still open and open for further debates and conversations about this topic ..

Okay, I'm kinda confused, the forum says Daiske edited his post but it looks just the same as before o.o

Perhaps he was stunned into silence?

Maybe he got some typo error in his reply and just corrected it ..

lol nino is georgian female name...

Yeah... though he still hasn't answered my follow-up question.

That said, the thread's still open, so you do have a point...?

Perhaps he's too busy right now setting up the new events to follow up on you?