Stylization
polycounter lvl 19
I wrote a post about stylization in games:
http://lucas.hardi.org/?p=15
and I thought it would be worthwhile to post it here and see what people though about the topic. I expect some of you have some opinions about what's a good style and what's a bad one. WELL, DO YOU?
http://lucas.hardi.org/?p=15
and I thought it would be worthwhile to post it here and see what people though about the topic. I expect some of you have some opinions about what's a good style and what's a bad one. WELL, DO YOU?
Replies
I'm sick sick sick of realism.
For example, how would one go about setting a style for a game? What's the best way to explore styles, test them, choose one, and then apply it consistently to a project?
Could you provide illustrated examples of a stylistic exploration, show the process as the styles were refined and the final one chosen, and why it was chosen?
I wish I had enough experience to write up something on this... I've got me some opinions but not nearly enough artistic mileage to really back them up. It would be great to see this article grow from just a short article on why stylization is good to a useful pseudo-tutorial for people trying to come up with a unique style but struggling with the process.
Sometimes the temptation is there to use the idea of stylisation for the express reason of cutting corners, but then no further thought goes into it and someone pipes up 'cell shaded! we don't have to texture anything!'. So if its used just as a shortcut and not as an artists tool then it's destined to fall flat. The style has to be something the creator *and the audience 'gets' (it clicks, like tf2, exit, paper mario- 'oooh shit yeah' type of thing)
I mean come on who the fuck tries to make a game about bomber man realistic
wtf
As far as good style vs. bad style...
Good: WoW, TF2, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, Fable and Wind Waker just to name a few.
Bad: I'm having a tough time trying to think of some games that I consider to be bad in their stylization. While I liked some of the zany characters in Timesplitters, I can't say I particularly liked their style. Also, I can't say I was a big fan of the semi realistic/ semi gum drop comic look that was the redesign of Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark Zero. Also, virtual fighter, if you can say it has it's own style, I have never been a fan of. I really dislike all of the characters and well I personally hate the gameplay. I don't understand why a lot of people hail it as such a great fighter.
I think one of the terrible ironies is that what you have stated is the obvious truth. Seeing how games are meant to be a creative medium, one would think that ALL processes in its development would be creative as well, and by that i mean creative problem solving and the ability to assess and realize the situation the group will be in for the duration of the project.
That truth can hit us in the face over and over and over again, but the second we see that latest hi-res 'in game' screenshot our brains fall out our ears and we have to surpass that art some way or somehow. It's never the process most artists look at, it's the end result, and that's fine for a person or group funding the project or a consumer buying the game, but for a developer, trying to achieve that end result can spell months of heartache and doom for the project's over all level of quality.
It's just a bummer that we are so set in our ways, yet we still show awe for those few devs that can make something stylized totally awesome.
In philosophy there is a difference between "Believing" and "Knowing". You have to convince the audience that you "Know" what you are saying is true by providing data. Use examples of games with stylized graphics, and how they came to critical acclaim status, games that come to mind are Pshychonauts, Okami, Sam and Max, Team Fortress 2 coma to mind immediately, but the rub here is that 2 of those games were critically acclaimed, but absolutely horror on the shelf, they sold like shit, and the studios producing them have since shuttered their doors. You are going to come across people who disprove your theories, because you haven't backed anything up with data. Do that and your article will be water tight.
I for one value style over realism, but I am a realist, and I understand that the average joe wants WOW graphics, and that usually means realistic.
The fact is that we are lucky enough to have a medium that is practically free from most design constraints as far as style goes. The game environment is the perfect playground of doing abstract work that involve both motion and interaction, all you need is to apply the creativity.
Yet i think we are still stuck in the tail end of the movie era, movies being infinitely more constrained in what they can do creatively (although less so since 3d graphics) and most games are stuck trying to copy the medium that is most familiar, and because of this inheriting all the constraints to the design that the film has to deal with.
It's going to take some time and a serious push to pull away from that and start seeing what the essence of games are really capable of as an art medium, because i think it's only now that we are being acknowledged as a real medium. I also doubt that any of the real masterpieces of the game medium have been made yet, but i believe we're coming to a turning point now, where we ARE capable of near photorealism and now people are saying...ok, we proved that, now we can do anything, so whats next?
Are cartoony games automatically stylized? Is everything other than strict realism stylized? Seems to me the vast majority of games are stylized to some degree. I guess all the military themed games usually try and adhere to the real world, but all the rts, rpg, action/adventure games, platformers, fighters, puzzle games, a lot of fps - they're all stylized. Oh - i guess sports titles are usually realistic, aren't they?
I guess my point is that stylization seems to only count if it is past a certain threshold that I'm not aware of. Would you consider MGS4 realistic or stylized?
/ramble
I for one value style over realism, but I am a realist, and I understand that the average joe wants WOW graphics, and that usually means realistic.
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WOW is super stylized and is used as one of his examples.
Just to be clear, I'm not advocating extreme stylization, like, say, Viewtiful Joe or Okami.
Consider something like Assassin's Creed that stylizes it's color palette, but tries to be very realistic with basically everything else.
Even something like Kane & Lynch is stylizing trying to reference a certain kind of film and use it to establish a tone for the game.
There's infinite ways to approach it. Every game has it's style, what I'm advocating is to make carefully considered choices about what that style should be. Don't just "let it happen" and leave it up to the collective intelligence of your programmers and artists. Consistency is key, and you can't get consistency with a big team of people, each with their own creative spirits. You can get a lot of cool individual components, but not a cohesive style.
One title that, to me, feels pretty devoid of style is Oblivion. But I guess even it's over all aesthetic could be deemed "it's style." /shrug
Here is what Merriam-Webster Dictionary had to say:
stylize : to conform to a conventional style; specifically : to represent or design according to a style or stylistic pattern rather than according to nature or tradition
Consistent stylization is going make your game more immersive than trying to be the extraordinarily rare game that achieves that next leap in virtual realism.
The goal has always been believability; The Illusion of Life. It just gets confused with realism sometimes.
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Thank you. Every so often a game is released claiming to be the next step in realistic gaming, and I cringe. Larger textures, and new shaders have not provided an immersive experience for me. When everything in the world works together nicely, I'm pulled in. Interaction with environment, and characters. Using objects to interact with characters. Having characters express emotion and reaction and interaction and tactics with the environment. Giving characters different tasks, while maintaining balance. Introducing new methods of gameplay and scenarios while remaining simplistic in design. Light that produces a more realistic view of the environment with proper use of colors to focus attention, instead of intense light, dark shadow, blurry after-effect. Showing any attempt at diversity. This all contributes to believablilty, moreso than any normal map or shader. To me, an artistic direction focused on style simply lends an attractive aesthetic to a fun believable gameplay experience. It's enjoyable to watch, even when you revisit it months later. It always reached its goal, instead of falling short with every attempt. I would love to only work on fun stylized low res games that require artistic creativity, instead of the next content packed WWII title, or Scifi plastic and clay bloomfest.
Sure that doesn't really matter as much with SP games, but MP games with a long shelf-life definitly benefit.
You know what happened.. there used to be a clear distinction between games and simulators. nowadays most games ARE simulators.. And they forget what GAMES are.
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Crysis is probably the best example of an realtime outdoor environment simulator. They put a game in it somewhere. I read an article once that stated "virtual reality died when john carmack invented a 3d game that moved faster than 5 FPS". Then we realized that the idea of virtual reality wasn't that fun, games were. Now it seems the big marketing minds in charge are trying to push the virtual reality dream again using clever cg movies to convince the consumer to by less refined games, only to have Nintendo come out with a device that makes interaction in games more believable, on top of an already loved Nintendo style.
I do think we need to be careful with potentially making some sweeping generalizations here though. Some comments in this thread suggest that anything that isn't as extremely stylized as TF2 is without artist merit, and who are we to make that judgement? I mean, what is style really? Perhaps its as simple as a rule set and consistency?
Style is subjective. To me at least, Oblivion appears to have absolutely no visual style because it's chock full of poor quality, messy, inconsistent and photosourced Art. I actually feel the same way about HL2. But its world is so unique that most people perceive it to have style. Fuck, who am I to suggest that poorly UV'd photosourced Art isn't style? It's consistent in its inconsistency, or something. So perhaps there's a distinction to be made here between Art asset style and style that comes from the game world lore? Here's what I'm driving at: As artists we mostly all raved about the awesome Art deco feel to Bioshock, but it's render style was actually aspiring to be pretty damn realistic. Assets were lit realistically, they had normal and specular maps. An artist working on a prop for Bioshock, clearly once he knew the subject matter, was simply trying to make it look as realistic as possible within the constraints. So we think Bioshocks visuals sucks now that TF2 is out do we? Because Bioshock looked more 'realz'? I would hope not. If everything looked like TF2 then photosourced would become a style. But what gives Bioshock *style* is the subject matter depicted in its world, not its render style. It starts to get very confusing when you have to differentiate between *render* style and the style of subject matter. Well shit, it does when you're talking to my boss at least. I've had a real hard time making those distinctions that you'd think would be fairly simple concepts to grasp.
To me MGS has a distinct style, due to a particular color palette and hand painted textures. edit: sorry, just read your last post
'Style' is very hard to quantify. In the context of a videogame, consistency is key imo. If WoW didn't come with a texture set looking like it was painted by one person, it wouldn't have been perceived as half as stylized as it is Im certain. How far things are actually 'stylized' really has to accommodate so many many factors on a project though. Something I've been acutely aware of for the last 6 months now trying to nail a look for our game. There are an awful lot of stakeholders.
An interesting thing that just occurred to me, is that looking back upon my 6 years at EA HQ, I never *ever* had an Art director do anything other than wander around saying yes or no to an asset. i.e a reactive versus a proactive approach to Art direction. In that situation things will generally default to 'lets make it as realistic as possible'. I'm currently in the middle of writing a highly detailed style guide for our game, in the hope to avoid that situation, but even then it's just not that simple. It's really hard to get an Art team on the same page, and kick 'em out of old habits into doing something a new way. Your style is likely not going to just 'be' at the outset, but more likely it's an evolving, organic thing that is influenced by many many factors. The different perspectives from the artists on your team, designers, project leaders, marketing people, competing products, target audience, focus testing, time constraints, gameplay, subject matter, camera distance to player, many, many things. It's just never ever as simple or easy as saying 'let's pick a style'.
Placing leads at the beginning and end of the pipeline to establish style and make sure it is followed is one way to deliver on the art direction, but it's not a fun job, cleaning up after everyone else's mess and working with junior artists fragile egos all day. That's the main reason I prefer working on small projects will small teams. :-)
I agree games and their associated art styles are evolving, organic things. I think that just means that you have to try and make strong choices at the outset, and revisit them as the elements on your project change. As time goes on, and hopefully the "look" of your game grows roots, it will be easier to distribute it to the many different people working on the game. However, to be really successful, I think you have to be capable and willing to go back, revisit - and sometimes re-do - every single element that makes up the look of your game from textures to particle FX.
What it all boils down to is that I get horribly frustrated when I see a game that looks like nobody was actively considering these things. The rendering progammer wanted an engine like Doom 3's, the character modeler wanted characters like Final Fantasy, the world texture artist wanted to use this photo he took of an abandoned nuclear power plant, and the producer just discovered this really awesome thing called a "lens flare.' Honestly, if you're just considering and talking about and experimenting with different stylistic elements with your game, you're probably doing it mostly right.
Maybe a good case study would be TF2 vs. UT3? These are similar games in gameplay, but have vastly different styles. Both games have high quality art and cohesive styles. Is it just a matter of appealing to different audiences?
My thoughts:
STYLE STYLE STYLE!!!!!!!!
To me right now it's The imprint on the inside of my eyelids of the light most recently seen.
An itchy Scab that hurts so good to scratch.
And subliminal Tyler Durden-esque image flashes that leave me grasping at straws.
Damn you style. You bitch Goddess. Why do you hide from me? Or have I had you all along?
So we think Bioshocks visuals sucks now that TF2 is out do we? Because Bioshock looked more 'realz'? I would hope not.
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TBH, Bioshocks visuals sucked before TF2 came out. TF2's sound and lighting is much more realistic, and draws you into the surroundings, even tho the colors and proportions are more creative. I had the same bad opinion of Bioshock's lighting as I did of Doom3 before it was released, there is simply more bloom to distract from the ugly spots. It doesn't look real. And the worst part of the game's visuals were clearly the characters. They remind me of the cheap claymation effects from the Evil Dead series. I guess it could be considered a compliment to say FPS games today have reached the quality of a low budjet 70's horror film. It's difficult for something like this to hold your attention visually.
http://news.filefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/bioshock1_large1.jpg
In comparison, I find the Painkiller games more attractive, because they achieve the look they aim for. When your art team consists of a large group to handle an unreasonable amount of content, it's difficult to keep everyone on the same page.
While HL2 may suffer from photosourcing, I believe it makes up for it in believability, and consistency. More time was spend on the tools and animations. I was "studying" the Alyx model in the model viewer, and she looks bad up close. You notice the low res, and the texture stretching, but what reason is there to be that critical? She's one of the most realistic game characters I've ever seen. I often tell friends that if Valve kills her off in the Episodes, I'll be upset. They've given a character a great personality, and that's something most developers fail at. I think part of HL2's style would be lifelike interactions in an otherwise gloomy and lifeless environment. Great writing, along with unique audio complete it.
Another game I'm playing atm, that I think has a very attractive visual style is The Settlers: Rise of an Empire. Everything appears to be hand painted very well, and the lighting is excellent. I prefer it over the more realistic attempts at RTS and city building games.
Good: WoW, TF2, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, Fable and Wind Waker just to name a few.
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gotta totally agree with these, obviously, playing games like this really makes it boring playing a game without any sorts of style, and I could honestly be just fine with ps2 era graphics as long as developers use their head and create something visually appealing with what they have (Okami, SotC), and TF2 just blows me away with its simplicity yet just.. awesomeness
TBH, Bioshocks visuals sucked before TF2 came out.
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How long did you spend scouring the internet in an attempt to find the worst possible screenshot of Bioshock Ely?
Like I said, style is subjective. I also happen to think that TF2 looks awesome, but I really do not share your praise of Alyx. Her face is neither highly realistic nor particularly intentionally stylized and always felt awkward to me.
My message overall is, be careful what you determine to be the 'problem' in game visuals not looking stylized enough. If you're looking for a solution, normal maps=evil is not the correct equation.
What it all boils down to is that I get horribly frustrated when I see a game that looks like nobody was actively considering these things. The rendering progammer wanted an engine like Doom 3's, the character modeler wanted characters like Final Fantasy, the world texture artist wanted to use this photo he took of an abandoned nuclear power plant, and the producer just discovered this really awesome thing called a "lens flare.'
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Exactly. Mish mash is the phrase I like to use here. Here's one of my favourite screenshots that I like to pull up for our Art team and say 'If our game looks like this please shoot me'.
This is what happens when Art direction goes out the window. Mish mash. One guy finds a honeycomb photo, another a nasty random rock, some other guy puts a bump on one of his textures, but the others don't. Someone uses detail maps, but the others dont. Nobody knows what texel ratio is.
The UI artist appears to have never ever studied UI or graphic design of any kind. The font choice is um, interesting. Color or lighting in the overall scene doesn't appear to have been even considered. The performance is horrible, because everyones used insane texture sizes and resources, but it all looks like a dogs dinner.
If you don't pull an Art team together to get them talking about cohesion and consistency, you end up with mish mash, no style and ultimately, 'Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes'.
Wow I am struggling to believe thats a published game.
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Yep....and the company collapsed after it was released
Good read Lucas. I think what it really comes down to is having a tallented artist at the top, who has a genuine stylistic goal in mind, and who is actually trusted to carry out his job without, like you say, the producer or whoever cramming in his lense flares. I'm convinced this usually boils down to the old "Too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario.
How long did you spend scouring the internet in an attempt to find the worst possible screenshot of Bioshock Ely?
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First page Google Images.
Even tho the levels are detailed nicely, and the BigDaddy/LittleSister gameplay is interesting and new...this is a good example of how I view the game overall.
Regarding the above screenshot: Whoa