Game art trends and styles
just wanted to hear different opinions about this. I've noticed so far with game art that the mainstream visual canon is the highly detailed, heavily normal-mapped, going for realism sort of thing (or I could be wrong, but that's the trend I see).
As artists, what's the approach we should take? I mean, I suppose if you want to get hired you would want to strive to reach this, but should we all be making hyper-real, highly detailed stuff all the time? I always wondered how art teams working with the Wii do it; I suppose the Wii's approach to the hyper-real trend is directly opposite of the PS3. But what I'm getting at I guess is that where would the aesthetically interesting, stylized visuals end up? Games like No More Heroes and Okami definitely don't look like UE3 or Soul Calibur, but I think they have interesting potential, and are companies more enthusiastically seeking artists who can do visuals like that?
Thoughts?
As artists, what's the approach we should take? I mean, I suppose if you want to get hired you would want to strive to reach this, but should we all be making hyper-real, highly detailed stuff all the time? I always wondered how art teams working with the Wii do it; I suppose the Wii's approach to the hyper-real trend is directly opposite of the PS3. But what I'm getting at I guess is that where would the aesthetically interesting, stylized visuals end up? Games like No More Heroes and Okami definitely don't look like UE3 or Soul Calibur, but I think they have interesting potential, and are companies more enthusiastically seeking artists who can do visuals like that?
Thoughts?
Replies
If that's the case, then the IDEAL answer would be to make a specific reel per company you're applying for, and cater what you show each company to the kind of stuff they do.
Obviously that's not realistic in the least. Your best bet is to do a few different styles if you can. But honestly, I think most companies are going to be looking for quality. I think most places can look past style, and see the fundamentals of whether you're a good artist or not.
The one caveat to that is to be careful not to only show ONE style. There are definitely some artists who are amazing, at one thing. And really can't do anything else.
Your reel should show that you're a great all around artist, and that you can handle different styles with ease.
One thing to consider is this, if you're really trying to figure out what sort of art style you should try and cater your portfolio, first you need to figure out what company/compaines you are targeting. If you want to work for a studio that does more stylized games, create a portfolio that reflects that. If your goal is to work on more realistic type games, create a portfolio that reflects *that*.
No. Every company is different, has different art styles(to an extent) and different goals. Although i do think its pretty safe to say that not everyone is trying for ultra stylized games, and more studios tend to go down the realistic/semi-realistic path.
If your goal is to get hired at *any* studio, you need to create a portfolio that has a broad appeal, or mainstream appeal at the very least.
[Edit] The last thing *I* think you want to do is try and do multiple projects, each with a tottally different art style, this is a quick road to showing a bunch of mediocre, unploished work, as you're not taking that iteration time from project to project that you would if you were keeping with a similar style. Personally when i see a portfolio, i like to see continuity more than a bunch of different, unrelated stuff. I like to see that an artist has the ability to work in a specific genre, and really keep things consistant. As someone who is hiring, i'm more interested in your ability to make consistantly good art of a single style, than i am your ability to do any/everything possible. But every company is different, and some like to see a wider range.
People here at Polycount came from modding Quake. They kind of like the dark, gritty style.