Color, saturation, & cartoony-ness

Mr Turnip

I have to confess that I am more of a coder than an artist, but needs must as they say.

Anyway, the big problem I have with my game art is it comes over as 'too cartoony' & needs to be 'more realistic'.
I've had this alot, so I really want to do something about it, but it doesn't help that I am a big fan of Mario & the bright colourfullnes.

The first problem is, what is 'too cartoony'? The comments I get are 'bright, colorful, saturated' . But if I just take my source art & bump the saturation down, it ends up looking flat, lifeless & washed out - almost as if a light gray has just been alpha'd over the whole screen. If I whack up the contrast again, the colours pop out all saturated once more.

I figure Im missing something - how can I make game art that looks 'fun' but not cartoony? Realistic but not washed out?

Any advice will be appreciated immensely

BuCC

That's a really hard question to answer without seeing any of your work, but here's a wild guess;

- Build more detail into your diff, spec and normal maps. Overdo it a bit even, just for experimentation.

- Play around with the light you use in your scenes? I feel this has a major inpact on the style of anything done in 3d. It really sets the mood.

vik

can you post some examples?

fade1

same goes for me. show us some examples.
usually it's a combination between a couple of things. cartoon tends to be very saturated, less detailed with exagarted sizes, too clean, a little flat, etc...

Mr Turnip

Well here is our latest webgame which shows the kind of stuff I seem to end up with:
TS2-Smoothie Shack
The TS2 game itself suffered from 'too cartoony/childlike', as did the previous one, Captain Bubblebeard:


Ok, so it IS very brightly coloured, but I also tried in this to get the detail in. If I try to reduce the saturation, it just ends up looking washed out
These are definately 'casual' games (no blood, guts, cyborgs or zombies I'm afraid) but Im struggling with getting a light-but-not-cartoony style.

PS: I have tried looking for decent references & tutorials but not found much of any use.

Neox

if you where heading for a plastic toy look than i'd say it's pretty realsitic and definitelly not toony like a disney movie i think it totally fits for that kind of game to get it more realtistic think it's more a question of proportions, shaders and lighting rather then just colors

claydough

when werking with grey, think in terms of warm and cool and light and dark.
even with zero saturaration your composition should have contrasting values.

even with low contrast, greys can hold interest depending on warm and cool contrasts
I like Diebenkorn's greys as inspiration:

ivars

Lowering the saturation will not make it look realistic.
I hate all these brown and gray games that are supposedly realistic looking. The world is full of colors!

I think your biggest "problem" are the proportions and the shiny materials that make it look like toys. Then like Neox said, if that's what you were going for, it looks very realistic.

The lighting could also do a lot for your scene. This lighting doesn't really look lie an outdoor setting.

frubes

i can, hand on heart say, this is the best $50 i have ever spent. Completely changed the way i percieve light and colour and would instantly recommend it to anyone regardless of what they do. Its a great view and really really informative.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/jvi01.html