Talk:Cut Halo 3 vehicles

Corporate starships

I've reverted the edit on the corporate starships, as I believe their labelling as a Reach asset are simply due to the fact that they're uploaded in a blog post containing the Reach Pelican artwork. On ArtStation, Hannaford labels these ships as Halo 3 assets and has them uploaded with the Halo 3-era Paris-class frigate artwork alongside the aforementioned Pelican. However, the Paris artwork is featured in The Art of Halo 3, and the Pelican is not (nor does it match any Pelican artwork found in that book in style).

Personally, I believe this is good reason to suggest that these corporate starships are in fact Halo 3 work and not Reach - if you look at the Halo 3-era artwork for the Paris-class frigate, the corporate ships match it in style where they don't match Hannaford's work from Reach quite as much (Reach sees Hannaford adopt more shading and sleek angles in his designs alongside the use of 3D paintovers where he mostly used flat tones and linework for 3).

I'll properly attribute this information later when I get home from work, as it is a bit confusing.BaconShelf (talk) 03:37, September 27, 2021 (EDT)

I had a feeling that Hannaford's ArtStation may have been behind the confusion! Unfortunately his uploads there are not always labelled properly, which has led to a number of cases where Halo: Reach concept art is mistakenly attributed to Halo 3. For example, these Elite concept pieces labelled "Halo 3 elite development work" are actually from Halo: Reach. He labels these pieces correctly as "Covenant elite development for Halo: Reach" on his original blog post from 2011, which he has recently backed up on Twitter. And that's far from the only example of such a mix-up on ArtStation, take these Brute pieces. All but one of them are clearly from Reach (which is again backed up by his old blog), but they're all labeled as being from Halo 3 on ArtStation. Or this upload of supposed Halo: Reach Elite permutations, which clearly features some artwork from the Halo 3 Art Book. I mean even the ArtStation post for these corporate starships features the Halo: Reach Pelican art despite the Halo 3 label.

As Hannaford has said once or twice on his recent Twitter uploads, sometimes it can be hard to remember when exactly something was drawn after all these years. This has led to a lot of confusion with his more recent ArtStation uploads. Given the track record, and how much fresher the memory was at the time, I think his old blog posts should very much be considered over his ArtStation. I also don't think that the corporate starships concept is consistent with Halo 3-era art. For one, the line weight is much heavier than we see in the Halo 3-era Frigate concept. Most Halo 3 art features very thin linework, where the opposite is true for most Reach art. The wear patterns are also more consistent with Reach-era art.

At the very least, the case for this being Halo 3 art isn't any stronger than the case for it being from Halo: Reach. And I think that we need more evidence that this is from Halo 3 before we can overturn the long-held understanding that this was Reach art. This would also be more consistent with how the Pelican artwork is being treated, as that one is still labelled as being from Reach on the Pelican page despite the ArtStation post claiming otherwise.M0aHerder (talk) 04:58, September 27, 2021 (EDT)

This is all fair points (I didn't see you'd edited this talk page until after I added the AS link to the main page - my bad!). Perhaps it could be worth asking Hannaford himself? He's in the Discord server and seems pretty receptive to answering questions there (I've previously asked him there about the Tempest concept art labelled as Halo 3 on ArtStation for example). Overall though I definitely think this is why it's good to source both the ArtStation and the blog where possible!

When I'm home from work I'll double check and have a proper scan of my copy of the Art of Halo 3 and The Art of Creating Worlds too to make sure these ships don't appear in either book with a specific credit.BaconShelf (talk) 05:05, September 27, 2021 (EDT)

I can confirm that neither ship appears in those books! To be honest, I really don't think that his ArtStation account should be treated as a reliable source, especially when we have other sources which contradict it. There are just too many examples of inaccurate labelling. Not that the captions there shouldn't be considered at all, but sadly they're hardly definitive. If a more Discord-savvy user where able to gat a response that would be helpful! Though I think the current evidence is much more in favor of these being from Reach.M0aHerder (talk) 06:02, September 27, 2021 (EDT)

Good stuff. I've asked Hannaford over Discord but if there's no response within the next day or so, I'd say feel free to move this back onto the Reach page (probably with a note linking to this discussion). I'll update here if I get anything back. BaconShelf (talk) 06:14, September 27, 2021 (EDT)

[Reset Indent] A bit of an update, Hannaford got back to us with a response and well... we were both wrong.

Actually neither. Those were done for the WETA collab that got canned and turned into ODST.

So the corporate starships are Halo: Chronicles artwork, which is insane to consider.BaconShelf (talk) 17:31, September 27, 2021 (EDT)