Okami's Botched Cover Art And Redemption
Wow, I can't believe I didn't notice this when it happened. Recently, it was "discovered" that the Okami Wii cover art contains an... abnormality. Amaterasu is barking a translucent IGN watermark. Yep, that's right, they stole their own artwork off IGN's web page. I guess the cover art staff could not be bothered to actually use press packs from the original release of the game.
To help remedy this problem, Capcom is offering free replacement covers to anyone who requests them from their "Artwork Redemption" page (exact words)! These are said to better reflect the game's art style.
I find this whole situation quite funny, if not a little unfortunate for Capcom. I don't think it is nearly as large of a screw up as some people might think, they did design the original art after all, and they are offering replacements. Now we can all rest happy knowing that we get some really nice replacement artwork, and next time the artists will know to clone tool those things out.
Okami Cover Artwork Redemption [Capcom]
[via Kotaku]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 24 April 2008
· Comments (8)
Other stuff like this: cover art, ign, okami, redemption, watermark, wii, woops
This is just the oddest thing. I too can't really understand why Capcom wouldn't just use the original artwork that... they had already designed for the game. What on earth possessed them to use a version of their artwork that a gaming site had repurposed? It's mind boggling.
Luckily it doesn't change the fact that this is a really terrific game.
Odd though.
I have a feeling this has something to do with Clover being dissolved. For all we know, some really angry employee deleted all the artwork he could. Or whoever made the cover at RaD didn't have immediate access to the artwork.
Whatever the case, I'd have ordered the new cover art even if there wasn't a watermark on the original. I think it'll look great and really make the cast stand out due to the lack of Wii branding.
(FYI, I actually ordered all three covers. I got the same confirmation screen and e-mail for each. Not sure if they'll notice, but it's worth a try if you're greedy like me.)
Redemption would have been just sending you all three covers without having to fill out the thing three times. Seriously.
I actually like the new cover (sans watermark), it looks much more visually attractive on a Wii-white dvd case than the original cover would.
I think Philbo Faggins is on the right track. Either some malicious ex-employee deleted their source art, or quite simply, a lazy employee didn't bother asking a co-worker for the location of the source art, which is likely sitting on their internal network.
Spazgadget, and others who are on this train of thought, don't assume it was some sort of corporate Capcom decision to use the image hosted on IGN. It was probably just an oversight by one person that no one noticed when reviewing the work. An unfortunate accident, that's all. :)
Well, what gave IGN the right to watermark artwork that they didn't own in the first place?!?
Eroman: Most watermarking is done to stop people from hotlinking to images on their servers, it's not to prevent theft.
It's hard to look professional when you have a big IGN logo stamped on all your images.
I'm guessing someone used the IGN art to make a mock-up, which, other than the watermark, was good enough to go through printing.
How can anyone f*ck up that bad? It's pretty rediculous.
When in doubt, blame the intern.