Stylism vs Realism

Mike (one of the main playables) with the same mesh but two different art directions for the skin.

Another blog, this'll probably the last one for a bit. I'd like to do one every 1-2 weeks but we'll see how things go.

Stylized, Artistic, Drawn, Cartoon, whatever you like to call it we've seen an influx of games coming out sporting this look offsetting the pushed Realistic or Realistic stylized look that the industry has been pushing for years. This was of interest and concern to me so I wanted to put it to the test.

In the case for Eternal War, I wanted some wild characters and designs, the artist I work with drew them with a specific style, not really Stylized but not really Realistic either. I liked the look, it seemed to encompass both aspects but I wanted to see what one of the characters would look like with a stronger Realistic art edge applied to it. So I asked a friend of mine to retexture the character in a more Realistic art focus. After a week he sent me the results and armed with two pictures (much larger than seen here) I contacted everyone I knew at the time and asked them to ask everyone they knew to choose what they liked best.

90% of the feedback I received was all for the more Stylized design, even though the Realistic character was more detailed in the texture and represented more of a 'real life' identification people were quickly drawn to and enjoyed the vividness of the more colourful character. Call it human nature (ooo shiny!), call it what you want, but that gave me the feedback I needed to press on with the focus.

Recreating as realistic of characters and environments for me would have been much more difficult but I know that the payoffs within some aspects could have been greater. For some games Realism works (and is better). Choosing to side with the feedback will allow me to focus on (hopefully) creating some interesting and exciting environments, characters and gameplay moments for the player, rather than stressing about if something looks realistically rendered in the world. Hopefully it'll pay off in the end.