The CC is dated 13+ yo art. Its paperdoll is a bland milk toast manequin.
It may be a bland, milk toast mannequin, but it is, at least, something I don't mind looking at. The EC paperdolls aren't something I'd attach the word "quality" to. The "faces" that they implemented (save the RP faces which are nice... though, god, why an "anime" face?) aren't all that great, and the poses and looks of both paperdolls are less than the quality standards of the 2D client.
I look at most of the artwork that's come in the past few years and I wonder, "Who is approving this stuff?"
Some of it looks great -- like whomever did the Halloween artwork, that actually fit the style of things. Other things would look fine if given the proper in-game perspective -- like the silver sapling tree, the anniversary cakes, and the horribly skewed codex of virtue (which I think would look awesome if someone would take whatever model it came from and shrink it to properly fit the game's perspective). Other stuff... other stuff makes me wonder what they were thinking. Several of the SA house tile sets are incomplete, and while I largely like the artwork added there, some of it makes me wonder -- particularly the brownish-red tileset where the edge of the walls are gray, meaning they don't line up well with the end of the wall at corners.
I mean, it's just this continual inconsistency in artwork that really makes me wonder who's in charge of the art department, if there
is an art department, and why little things like fixing tilesets or paperdolls haven't actually been done.
Then again, many moons ago, the work on all kinds of dancing and other animations had been completed, and they'd just need to dole the out because they didn't want to make a huge patch. Yes,
that'd be March 25, 2008, otherwise known as two years ago, well into the development of the UO:SA expansion and client, that the following was stated:
GrimmOmen - *Elm* in regard to the animations such as dancing, etc. All the work has been completed, but we've done a TON of animation fixes as well and we want to keep patch sizes bearable. So it might be a while before those animations become accessible in the UOKR client.
I understand he was talking about the KR client, but given that the paperdoll didn't suddenly change between the two clients, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this stuff should have at very least made it into the EC, and yet, more than two years later, no sign of it at all.
One might have you believe that art is hard, but my response would be, "Not for an artist." Given there's supposed to be some working on UO, it makes me wonder what's going on. Particularly given the recent state of a particular grandfather graphic that made it into patch where clearly no one bothered to check the animation of the other facing. What
is going on with the state of art in UO?