Artistic Styles Used in Games

By Jack Fletcher

Photorealism

Photorealism in games is where the on screen image, be it a screenshot, or gameplay is indistinguishable from a photo.It is becoming a popular graphical choice for Morden games, But is it necessary for a good game?

I think that developers are getting to carried away with making games look real, there starting to miss what makes the game worth playing.We don’t have to have amazing graphics to enjoy a game, Minecraft is the perfect example with it’s 16bit textures

Cell Shading

Cell shading starts with a 3D moddle witch is then put through a rendering filter, To create Cell Shading. Cell shading is made up of blocks of colour with an outline around the edges.

Cell shading can be a good choice for comedic games as the rendered style works better with the genre. Games like Borderlands have pulled this off quite well. Although cell shading can be good it is not always the best option for a game.

Abstraction

Abstraction is a good way of presenting a game with out a storyline, It needs no visual build up, meaning the player can just jump in. The images used in abstraction often hav no meaning attached to them, unlike characters of cell shading or photorealistic Games.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration can be used in photorealism and cell shading But works best with Cell shading as exaggeration on realistic images can often look weird.

This is a good technique especially for fighting games, and pretty much any cell shaded game.