Hi, everyone. I’m Hiromichi Iwasaki, art director of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. It’s been a week since the game’s release. Are you having fun playing it every day?
…What? You still haven’t bought it yet…? No, no! That won’t do! You haven’t seen the “truth” to the meaning of life if you haven’t played the Investigations games yet… Well, in that case, just for you, I’ll spill the beans about a few of the changes to the graphics from the original version to the Investigations Collection. And then, after you’ve read what I have to say, you should be super ready and hyped to play it!
(Or, I hope so, in any case…)
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection was built off the backs of the Nintendo DS and the smartphone versions of each game in the collection, but the biggest hurdle we had to overcome in creating the graphics this time around were the chibi characters, which are an element unique to the Investigations series. There are over 100 of these little character avatars that go about their business on those little Investigation part screens with a total of over 1,200 different animations. Watching those finely drawn sprites glide smoothly around a small screen is a ton of fun! …is a fine sentiment to have, sure, but to recreate them for a large, full HD screen is a totally different story. “Just how are we going to deal with the sheer volume of work required?” was a very real question we had to face during this game’s production.
After all, we had intended to base our sprites off of the ones from the smartphone version. Those sprites’ outlines were touched-up versions of the original Nintendo DS pixel art sprites that had simply been doubled in size, and everything else was still in the original Nintendo DS resolution and size. Making all of these parts mesh with the full HD-resolution backgrounds meant that we would need to make everything be almost six times bigger than the original size… which was about the same amount as work as drawing one of the larger character talking sprites…
Furthermore, each animation in this case was made up of a series of individually hand-drawn pixel art sprites that are shown in quick succession to create the movements we see onscreen. Take Edgeworth’s walking animation, for example. One loop consists of 6 individual sprites, and we needed to create 1 set of these for each of the 8 directions (up, down, left, right, and the diagonals) he can move in. And that’s just for his walking animation. There’s still his running, surprised, objection, and many, many other animations to account for. On top of that, we had to create animations for Gumshoe, Kay, and all the other characters in the same way. “Just how much work are we talking about here???” I wondered. I felt faint just thinking about it…
But since we were re-releasing the games, we knew we couldn’t just leave them be – we had to do something to spruce them up! We first looked into how we could use the pixel art sprites as a base and work on upgrading them from there. It would be so much work to re-draw everything from scratch, after all, so of course we couldn’t choose to do that right off the bat…
We tried out a bunch of different options such as doubling the pixel density and applying a filter to smooth things out, but nothing good came of these experiments. We also looked into making everyone into 3D models, but to make over 100 models within the timeframe we were given and recreate the look and refined movements of the pixel art sprites in 3D – it was simply unrealistic from a workload and stylistic point of view. What’s more, even though we were going to upgrade all the backgrounds into full HD, they were still going to be in 2D, so we felt it would be hard to achieve a sense of cohesion between the 2D backgrounds and 3D models.
We tried everything we could think of, but in the end, there was only one thing we could do: steel ourselves for the pain and tears that were sure to come as we walked down the simplest, yet hardest road. We would redraw everything from scratch. It was the only way to ensure that the sprites and backgrounds wouldn’t clash with one other. To everyone who worked on these sprites, please forgive me…
The next hurdle in our way was how to create each character’s new design. The original sprites were tiny pieces of pixel art which left too much room for personal interpretation when remaking them in a much higher resolution. Plus, in order to make them the right size relative to the objects in the backgrounds, we had to make the new sprites 5.5 heads tall. Usually, chibi or super-deformed (SD) characters are designed to be a cute 2 or 3 heads tall, but at 5.5 heads, our characters would occupy a space between the “cute” and “realistic” body proportion types. However, this allowed us to strike a delicate balance between “adorable” and “cool” so that our chibi characters could be seen in either light, depending on the situation.
To summarize, we had wanted to keep the look and feel of the original pixel art sprites while making them chibi at an unorthodox 5.5 heads and they had to fit in visually with the larger talking sprites you see during Confrontation parts… The only person who could clear all these difficult hurdles was him! Yes, it was time for Miles Edgeworth… I mean, Ace Attorney Investigations series character designer Tatsuro Iwamoto to step in and direct and design the chibi characters.
The first thing we asked of Mr. Iwamoto was Edgeworth’s new design, and it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but we received one that perfectly balanced the cute and realistic styles straight away. I think this is down to the fact that he had worked on the series’ character designs in the past, so of course he had the perspective and pickiness to know just how to work so much into Edgeworth’s new design. “What a relief!” I thought. I could see a real glimmer of hope…!
And thus began the task of redesigning every character. But with over 100 of them, we decided to have Mr. Iwamoto focus on Edgeworth and the other main characters, while the remaining characters would be designed by internal staff at Capcom and passed along to Mr. Iwamoto for his approval and touch-ups.
Since we were redesigning everyone, one thing we were able to do that the original pixel art couldn’t (due to technical limitations at the time) was to make each of the chibi characters their correct relative size. I hope you’ll pay attention to how unexpectedly tall or short each character is as you play.
After nailing down each character’s design, we had to create their animations. Work-wise, our process was similar to how other types of hand-drawn animations are produced. Referencing the original pixel art sprites, we drew each animation to have the same number of frames and colored the line art in. At this point, the sprites would have moved exactly like their pixel art counterparts, but there were a few animations where we used a 2D animation tool to help add a few frames in between to make things look extra smooth.
Initially, we had considered using the animation tool’s auto-fill feature to fully create the animations, but when we actually tried it out, the animations it produced didn’t look right at all and felt really off. After a lot of trial and error, we eventually settled on the process we did. In the end, I think our final animations have the same slightly imperfect, human touch that regular hand-drawn animation tends to have.
The toughest step of the animation process for us was the initial line art drawing phase. Because of the sheer number of them, creating all of the high-res drawings from the small pixel art sprites was a daunting task, even for the talented artists on this title who were used to drawing such illustrations. With small pixel sprites, the viewer’s brain fills in a lot of the gaps, but when we made them in full HD, we had to carefully fill in all those gaps ourselves. That eye that was only one pixel originally – should we make it open or closed? Should we make Edgeworth’s bangs and cravat bounce? We mulled over every tiny dot as we worked to solidify each visual detail.
However, looming overhead was our final deadline, and had we wanted until we finished designing all of the characters before getting started on their animations, we would have never made it. So we decided to start creating each character’s animations as soon as their design had been finalized instead. Thus, the character designing phase became a race against time, and many a day were spent submitting designs to Mr. Iwamoto and receiving his feedback for us to implement.
And then, as we fell further and further behind schedule, and it became harder and harder for us to complete more than a handful of the line art drawings, I began to wonder if we had any hope of finishing on time… But everyone on the team fought hard, and we pulled through in the end somehow. I have nothing but gratitude for the designers who worked so hard every day, for the rest of the dev team who supported the art and design section, and for Mr. Iwamoto himself, who not only had his character design work to take care of, but wound up helping to draw a portion of the line art as well!
Another small thing we added this time around was a bit of lighting effects to help the chibi characters blend in better with the background (HD art style only). You should be able to see a difference when Edgeworth moves around on a nighttime background, or one with deep shadows. I hope you’ll check it out!
All that said, the chibi characters sprites aren’t the only graphical improvements we made. We also updated the way you interact with certain screens like the Organizer and the Logic screens, and the look of others such as the Mind Chess screen from Prosecutor’s Gambit. By borrowing elements of Art Deco and using straight lines throughout, we were able to give the UI a modern yet Edgeworth-like elegance. The Logic screen was given a jigsaw puzzle-like design with a pleasing animation when the correct pieces fall into place. I hope you’ll feel like you’re right there inside Edgeworth’s mind when you solve the puzzles for yourself!
As for the Mind Chess screen, we took care to preserve the feel of the original version when recreating all the 3D models. We sanded down all the straight edges and harsh corners and adjusted the lighting so that the chess pieces would blend in better with the background. I think they turned out looking pretty cool, but what do you think?
Backgrounds and in-game illustrations, the larger talking character sprites for the Confrontation parts, evidence thumbnails – we based all of these items and more on the original assets when making them full HD and in 16:9. And when something wasn’t wide enough to accommodate a 16:9 widescreen presentation, we would expand it by adding to the base illustration. When there wasn’t enough definition, we would fix that by adding those missing details in. In fact, you can even read what it says on the cover of Edgeworth’s law book now!
We also updated the 3D models of all the evidence into high polygon count ones. It might be hard to tell because we made each piece look like their illustration counterparts, but we smoothed a lot of things out! I know it’s not as impressive as the other upgrades, but it would make me very happy if you took note of these small changes, too.
Another point of note is that we had to implement a lot of new assets for each language version of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. Especially for Prosecutor’s Gambit, which was getting its first international release, we worked extra hard to make sure that nothing felt out of place in each language version since we were starting completely from scratch. After all, I think it’s pretty universal to feel disappointed when you spot a sloppily localized asset, you know?
Of course we had to make new “Objection!”-type speech bubbles, but we also had to make new pamphlet lettering and street sign designs, convert temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit, redesign some vending food packaging, and even localize the logo for a TV’s brand name and Edgeworth’s business card. Before we knew it, we’d ended up doing all of this just to meet our localization director Janet’s obsessive… I mean, passionate level of attention to detail…
(Janet: I’m sorryyy! And thank youuu…! sob)
You can play in any language you’d like by going to the Language settings in the Options menu, so for all you multilingual players out there, I hope you’ll enjoy seeing what’s different in each language version.
(I don’t thiiink there’s someone out there who can understand all 7 languages, but you never know, I guess…)
While we completely remade from scratch or up-rezzed all sorts of art assets from their original Nintendo DS versions, this collection wouldn’t be as good as it is without the high-quality work of the original. Therefore, we took great care not to destroy what came before as we made our new version. For those who have played the original or smartphone versions, I believe you’ll enjoy this version as well.
Well? Do you see the “truth” to the meaning of life now? I swear, life really is a lot more fun with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection in it!
(Is this really any way to invite someone to play…?)
Next time, it’ll be our director, Mr. Sakai’s turn. A great admirer of Edgeworth, what “truths” behind the development of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection will he bring to light!?
