Stylizing your art; getting rid of the greeble
polycounter lvl 18
Lately I have been thinking about how to work more effectively on 3D art, and how to make everything look more... well consistent...
What the Hawken guy did is of course cool too, e.g. reusing bits and pieces all over the place... but ultimatly you are still dealing with a lot of small details.
In general I feel all that greeble ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble ) you will find in todays games, is of course cool and so on... but it just takes a very long time to make, and unless done very well, it looks kinda bad too. And I feel many artists fall for the Zbrush trap (e.g. just because you *can* add more details, doesn't mean you *should*).
What I am looking for is in a sense what was done during the development of the Anime style too... e.g. how could you cut down on features while still keeping it believable and good looking?
So just to start this discussion... does anyone have some good examples, tips & tricks or advise on how to develop such an 'minimal' art style (which doesn't have to be comic like)?
What the Hawken guy did is of course cool too, e.g. reusing bits and pieces all over the place... but ultimatly you are still dealing with a lot of small details.
In general I feel all that greeble ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble ) you will find in todays games, is of course cool and so on... but it just takes a very long time to make, and unless done very well, it looks kinda bad too. And I feel many artists fall for the Zbrush trap (e.g. just because you *can* add more details, doesn't mean you *should*).
What I am looking for is in a sense what was done during the development of the Anime style too... e.g. how could you cut down on features while still keeping it believable and good looking?
So just to start this discussion... does anyone have some good examples, tips & tricks or advise on how to develop such an 'minimal' art style (which doesn't have to be comic like)?
Replies
I know It sounds totally stupid but it helps a ton when it comes to removing unnecessary details from a concept, an asset, and so on.
Depends on subject matter and particular look you are going for. According to that, you might want to draw inspiration from illustration world, or even architecture and industrial design.
Big shapes are important, but you still need to add complimentary smaller shapes in strategic places in order for piece to work. It's more about ratio and relationship of these shapes which you figure out based on particular needs or gut feeling.
I can hardly track what kind of style you're trying to explain, but a few examples that are probably fitting:
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they all are more or less cartoony and have great style and lighting
I usually paint on a single layer (and ONLY on a single layer) in Blender's 3d view without a focus on greeble. unfortunately another part of my brain wants to OCD in greeble. i have to fight the urge before I get distracted and make another waste of greeblemaking effort even if it's just practice work.
And in the end, no one's going to give a crap anyway when your player base always insist on using r_picmip 2 at the least!
For a sci fi ship, it's one thing to cover it with random squares, and another thing to cover it with functioning vents, actual compartments with doors that escape pods can come out from, turrets, and such.
Also keep in mind, when a technology is first 'invented' you SEE the mechanics of how it works. Then as the technology progresses, it becomes smaller and more compact, that the emphasis no longer is about HOW it functions, but making things look more aesthetically pleasing.
Just look through the history of car design.. how we went from the first Automobiles, to the model T Ford, to the Rolls Royce, then the muscle car era, the 70's boxy style, then to the current modern streamlined sleeker designs.
runs off to experiment...
Typically (mind you I'm a crappy artist) I use the step back and squint method to do something sort of similar but I'll have to play around with your crazy method they always end up helping, sometimes in unintended ways ha!
This concept drawing also has some interesting parts in it (found it a while ago on this page I think, forgot by whom it is though):
The idea of blocking things out in single colors, with a lot of fog seems interesting... and working with actual silhouettes only as playermodels might be worth trying too. Maybe have all the world textures in desaturated colors and only use full colors for everything that moves to really make it pop... hmm and if you stop moving the color of your player silhouette fades back into a desaturated tone... just brainstorming here
people way better than me at the same kinda shit;
http://calader.blogspot.com/
http://mandrykart.wordpress.com/
just a few more suggestions -
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(this, and no more heroes too)
I don't know what exactly vector games you mean (zx-spectrum?), but rez has a nice constructivist/vector styled design -
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(love it, so trippy, and rez HD is 2x awesome too)
I like the idea that you have in mind with monochrome tones and selective colouring - okami sort of had it as a part of game concept, but still it was quite different. (I'd like to play something like that too, though. I miss artistic games.)
Yeah Mark what I meant is that, once one reaches that tricky state when it's a bit unclear if a piece has enough details or not, simply hiding the troublesome area with the fingers on the screen tricks the brain into thinking that the details are not here, while still seing the whole thing.
It's kinda obvious, but the cool thing is that it lets you see two versions of the model or painting, giving you an instant undo/redo between the two states (instead of having to paint on a new layer, and so on...)
You can try it easily on this :
http://i.imgur.com/8Wg4O.jpg
On the third screenshot, there is a bit of a weird shadow patch near the bottom edge, making the separation between character and background confusing. Hiding that part instantly reveals what "should not be there" so to speak.
Hope it makes sense!
Jackwhat- Thanks for those links man, I gotta get practicing, love to see who you are inspired by.
Pior- That does make sense to me on Jack's third thumbnail, I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.
Pixar and feature animation in general is a great resource to study for the "simpler" kind of stuff (even though many make the argument that simple design like this can take quite a bit longer than realistically-styled work):
no matter what style you're interested in, we could all do with learning more about good design. When you look at games with great art direction like TF2, Castle crashers, WoW, Portal, etc. It's easy to see that design and storytelling are going to trump new technology every time.
Do you realize I could render Toy Story 1 *in real time* on my home computer? There's something holding a lot of us back, and it's not the fact that my computer can only handle 8 million polys per subtool in zbrush......
to quote Miyazaki: "Do everything by hand, even when using the computer"