That's not a requirement of a handpainted art style. All it really needs is a hand drawn or painterly aspect to the textures. Full bright handpainted textures are kinda their own thing.
We could spend a long time trying to define what a term like "handpainted" could mean in different contexts ... but at the end of the day, the skillset that a studio is after when posting an opening for an artist with "strong handpainting skills" is very specific - and it involves much more than just "handpainting" surface…
I think handpainted has much less of a place in PBR. I'd go so far as to say conventional 'handpainted' is pretty much the antithesis of what PBR is trying to achieve. But if a developer wanted to drop PBR/next-gen lighting/post-processing, and just go with handpainted, I'm sure nothing is stopping them.
Not sure if anyone mentioned it but borderlands looks well, and they from what i know have handpainted textures. And nicely stylized graphics can look better than wannabe realistic graphics.
As a matter of fact, yes :) Of course one skillset feeds the other (similarly to the way traditional sculpting can help someone's drawing skills and vice versa). But it is pretty clear that, say, a skilled Zbrush artist with no previous experience in straightforward "handpainting" techniques would need quite some time and…
this isn't AS fantasy as alot of other aesthetics shown here but i would still consider it stylised (reminds me of syd meads guache paintings) and potentially alot of handpainting going on in there to acheive that style http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_everspace_kickstarter_trailer-35318_en.html
to be honest, it's rather hard to find people who can paint, but i can train anyone to use our tools to create what looks like handcrafted textures from polypaint and a bunch of other bakes. It was this lack of proper artists which forced us into creating workflows to create the wanted results. And i am no exception to…