Needs Help: Characters.Ace Attorney

Regarding the "portraits" of the characters that are found under full body art in some of the character sheets: eg. Ace Attorney: Wright Anything Agency, Ace Attorney: Main Prosecutors. In many cases these are low-res crops of their actual art and some look very spritey.

Spinning out from the IP discussion thread. Some users think that they are superfluous and should be removed, others think we should keep the 'major' redesigns.

Some history: I have been curating those character sheets for years, and for a long time clean full-body art of many of the characters wasn't easily available. Portraits were added for uniformity because every character has them, and for major characters who undergo radical appearance changes putting all of their portraits to the right of the text was fine layout wise since they're so small. The 3D games and continued updated rereleases have made that high-res art available though, and it's much more preferable to a portrait IMO. I don't like that all these portraits are there since many of them look very similar; I've tried to remove some of the more identical-looking ones in the past but they were added back (figured it wasn't worth picking an edit war over). There's some merit in keeping radical design changes (eg. "Hobo Phoenix" in Game 4) but if we were to make a unilateral decision regarding them I'd be fine if they all removed.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 11th 2020 at 12:45:57 PM

Opened.

Only the major characters have full-body artwork, which used to be on the left with the portraits on the right, but since the 1.8 update it's not possible to have text between two images. I say remove the portraits that are identical to their current appearance as displayed in the full-body art, but keep ones that are different. I think the characters that only have portraits now should stay that way, since most Posthumous Characters (plus Bat and Bruto Cadaverini) don't have official artwork (the Ace Attorney Wiki has full-body images of the victims from Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, but they're low-quality art book scans) and some other characters only have waist-up art.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jan 11th 2020 at 12:20:49 PM

I'm pretty sure there's actually official art available of some characters who only have portraits, so we should be using that (available here). When there's no official art, we should be using the full sprites where possible since most portraits are basically crops of those anyway (sprites are available here)

I think we should keep major redesigns, but what's major enough is up for debate. Hobo!Phoenix should definitely be here imo, but I can live without edgy bandage Apollo for example.

Edited by WikiWanderer on Jan 12th 2020 at 9:49:11 PM

Actually, court-records doesn't seem to have everything. here's the hd trilogy and Apollo Justice. There are HD remakes of the investigations games, but those sprites are a bit harder to find.

I might just put all the official character art in a sandbox later or something

I'd definitely like to see the tiny portraits replaced with half-body sprites wherever possible.

I think there is merit in documenting the characters's alternate designs if they change majorly (new outfits, young versions of the character, etc.) - though as other people have pointed out, the portraits are generally so tiny that it's hard to see the differences. I'm leaning towards "remove the identical ones, replace the majorly different ones with 1/2 body sprites". Do we have any alternate designs that have portraits but not sprites? I feel like if it doesn't have a sprite, the design isn't worth documenting.

Edited by rachiebird on Jan 12th 2020 at 1:49:16 AM

The 3D games don't use sprites at all, but I'm pretty sure any alternate designs in those have official art available.

I definitely agree with scrapping the portraits and replacing with half- or full-body art where available, except for characters who don't have it (most of the characters on Ace Attorney: Victims, for example, but many of them are flat characters who don't have a lot of tropes anyway so the portraits will be fine considering the size of the entries). Drastically different designs, like Hobo Phoenix, will have clean art available, especially with the Updated Re-release.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 12th 2020 at 2:16:17 PM

I've already gone ahead and uploaded the Phoenix images btw, though not at the right size

^{Click here to see his original appearance} 

^{Click here to see his Apollo Justice appearance} 

^{Click here to see him as a college student} 

Edited by WikiWanderer on Jan 12th 2020 at 9:54:02 PM

Yeah...full-body art of all those designs seems way too much. Since College Phoenix is only in one case and his original appearance isn't too far off from his current, can we just keep a waist-up of Hobo Phoenix?

I'm fine with replacing the portraits with body art for those that don't already have them, but I still don't think we need to catalog every single design variation.

I get that this is common on character pages, but I just don't see the point unless the change lasts for more than a single instance.

The only difference between Phoenix's "old" design and his "new" one is that he unbuttoned his blazer. Is that really that noteworthy of a change to justify two images?

Edited by Primis on Jan 14th 2020 at 10:11:50 AM

Not to me, but I think I've made my position on that clear Anyone else?

I agree.

Clock expired; closing.