Something the Epilogue showed me...

[bluestarultor]

Part of it is because the emoting is turned down. Sprites, small sprites like the 8- and 16-bit era, need to emote and emote hard. Otherwise, it won't be visible. That's why the poses are so big and dynamic. Like stage makeup, they're super-flashy to be seen.

More realistic art just looks silly doing that. Real people don't emote that way, and you're at a higher level of realism.

It's the transition that highlights the differences. If hand-drawn, 8-Bit Theater could have been just as good, but it would have had a different feel.

[Sliths]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Part of it is because the emoting is turned down. Sprites, small sprites like the 8- and 16-bit era, need to emote and emote hard. Otherwise, it won't be visible. That's why the poses are so big and dynamic. Like stage makeup, they're super-flashy to be seen.

More realistic art just looks silly doing that. Real people don't emote that way, and you're at a higher level of realism.

It's the transition that highlights the differences. If hand-drawn, 8-Bit Theater could have been just as good, but it would have had a different feel.

While that is true, in this case I would say the artist's ability to draw put a ton of emotion into the characters while using exaggeration. He does it really well in How I killed your master, too. People don't actually move around the way he draws them, but it works really well because he gets their emotions down solidly.

[Neni]

Sprites are just a completly different Medium than handdrawn art and convey something completly different. That's why I think Brian's decision to use Matt's art for this last page was a wise one. It was such an epic end like this. Just BECAUSE it was a little more serious and detailed than the spritework.

I am reminded on (and excuse me for bringing up that other game series again) a fan-analysis about why Zelda: Wind Waker was such a shock to many fans. This fan suggested, it was that the characters suddenly had distinct facial expressions, whereas OoT just made very limited use of those. People felt stiffled in their own interpretation of the character's feelings and this resulted in their rejection of the new style. That's a nice conclusion in my opinion.

I think the same thing happened here. Many people imagined White Mage and the Light Warriors to have different expressions and features. That's why a few of them initially felt disappointed, like the Epilogue was "Not true to the characters".

As for me, I always imagined White Mage to be a little more shy in her expressions and with long hair, but I like the now-Canon version of her a lot as well.