How come these freak-o-zoids are ruining my games? What's with the fat cartoon look? Call it what you want.
WoW - ROTLK has cartoon wolves, fat dumb baby faced 15 foot tall yetti, and other stupid, out of preportion junk.
Torchlight release a dungeon crawler looking like it's made for 7 year olds with comic outbursts.
Settlers 7 went cutesie also.
Elemental just did this too. Avatars and monsters look like dolls, or plastic toys you get @ McDonald's. Why, why, why, why, why, why? Next we are getting circle, triangle, square puzzles, and hanging sing-a-long moblies? Why?
When the evil marking people wanted more girls to play and we got yelling chicks with swords, it's weird, but...ok whatever. Now we get 3 yr olds? omfg? Is this the Chinese? Is this Korean? Where is this baby-fantasy look coming from? Target the nuke and drop it now. This is a HUGE turn off. I can't put that in CAPS large enough. Just stop now. I just puked in my mouth.
I bought the collectors edition when I was into WoW when it came out and I have the Art Book that came in it. The book is actually pretty damn sweet. Even if you just forget that it's "WoW" and look at it as a Fantasy Art Book it kicks ass. From an artistic perspective I'd have to say some of it is indeed "Stylized". I did a lot of art and was in some shows in high school but when I went to college I aimed for getting my AA in Comp Sci and let my art dreams go by the wayside. Sometimes I regret that decision even to this day and wonder how far I could have gone with my art had I the time and inspiration to keep it going throughout my life.
Being someone who knows art then you should understand that there is a difference when it comes to looking at a piece of work from the eyes of an artist, then there is from the eyes of a for lack of a better term, fan. Don't talk this as a insult, but just because you did some art pieces in high school doesn't mean you can and will view a peice of work the same way a professional artist will, just tossing that out there. Moving along with this, like I said I won't nor can't say anything about wow"s style because I haven't seen the concept art.
@Uga-bugga
Talking about Diablo. Are you steaming knowing how Diablo 3 graphic looks like now? Using old games graphic (like Fallout, Commandos, etc) to compare with recent games has flaw in it argument. You still need to take account about game engine limitation. But character concept wise, you are not far off though.
You should post graphic screenshot from Dawn of War 2 while you at it.
I think I know what happened. Metzen and Samwise (artists) had kids and they are watching Saturday morning cartoons. 'That's' the influence. lol. Hey, thanks for the warning on D3. I haven't checked it out for years. /gasp! They made machine guns with roses and tea parties in Dawn of War??? no way, you have to be joking. (WalkerK19)
No you were messing /w me. D3 and Dawn of War do not have fuzzy bunnies with big googlie eyes bonnets and pink bows. Don't do that. I was very concerned.
Um no, a contracted artist working in a studio is hired to do concept art that will fit the them of what the studio, or visual developer decides. A artist that is hire just doesn't start drawing, but instead there is more involved to it then simply just drawing.
Honestly, some of the bigger considerations for developers to go "cartoony" are because it ages better and tends to be easier on the system requirements. WoW is almost a decade old now but it aged so well that it still looks good (in the technical sense, not necessarily personal taste).
Indeed, that's very true and I know the difference. No offense taken. Some of my work has beat out "professional artists" in contests (not that I think it would now). In the art world you can only really call your-self a "professional" artist if you're getting paid for your work. I'm sure you've heard the term "starving artist" heh. That covers a large chunk of people in the art profession these days.
Personally, I don't think a artist needs to be making money to be able to call themselves an artists. My art skills have admittedly definitely lacked over the years. As with many things in life if you don't keep them up you get out of practice or for lack of a better way of putting it, you "lose skill". Still, it's like riding a bike or playing guitar, once you learn it and know it, it never truly goes completely away nor does your love for it.
That's very true. I followed Borderlands pretty closely for a while during development and I was pretty saddened when they decided to go for the cell shaded look over the original gritty look they had to start with. Their main excuse for doing it they said was for "system performance". I think I read somewhere that was one of Bioware's reasons for doing SW:ToR like they are as well and I think they even mentioned because it would "age well" also.
I don't mind cell shaded or cartoon looking games if they're done right and not aimed at kids. There have been a lot of great cell shaded games over the last few years (No More Heroes for Wii). I do get annoyed though when something that could be incredibly cool if done in a realistic style gets cartoonified if it's something I'm really looking forward to.
FPS and MMOs probably have to worry most about system specs. Both are terribly expensive to make, and need to be played by many people. Historically, graphics-heavy MMOs have not done well (Age of Conan, the new Final Fantasy) because they severely limit the amount of people who can play them, and MMOs depend on subscription income. And as an added bonus, MMOs are meant to be played for a long period of time, so presumably they'd want something that can keep looking good. At some point, this "age well" excuse is going to stop flying, because it's been a while since the graphical boundaries for a game have been pushed. Crysis was the last Great Mover. The only reason that "realistic" games stopped looking good in the past is because technology advanced enough to make it ugly. Everyone thought Half Life 1 looked good for its time, but look at how much of an improvement Half Life 2 was. That kind of advancement is, I think, not really ever going to repeat again. We're already playing at insane resolutions and most games designed for PC have PC-grade texture work, meaning they'll still look good even if we're playing on standard 35" monitors at some point in the future. Most of the advancement of visual technology is in shaders now, which is not directly part of the "realistic" style.
Thephrase "Starvng artist" is a misconception that is tossed around a lot. On that note I have ultimately seen it tossed onto the painting community, I have never really heard the phrase being applied to the 3-D community, or even the animation community. On that note, I say it was a misconception because around the time that phrase started springing up, a lot of artist simply tried to make money off their painting, in this day in age it is not the case seeing how an artist can easily get a part time job, while trying to get their name known in whatever world they want to be in. Even with that said there are thousands of factors that can be influenced that so so called starving artist really, it could be anything from the fact that they have literally ruined themselves in the art community, to the point where there work just isn't meeting a standard. There are even techniques and lifestyles that veteran artist have written to help young artist come up to avoid the "Starving Artist" Cliche.
Of course you don't need to be making money to call yourself a artist? Many people have different views on what it takes to be a artist. Alot of people just thinks its painting/drawing what you feel. I for one don't go with that, as you know and understands the theories behind creating whatever piece, whether this be naturally or technically, you are a artist. With this said, everyone knows how to draw, we are all just on different levels, you don't learn how to do it, because you never forgot in the first place.
I do not want developer time wasted on photo realism. I do not want my system resources wasted on photo realism. Or anything close to it.
WoW has always been easy on my eyes. Guild Wars too, although very different style.
Sorry to be the barrier of bad news, but there is nothing wrong with photo realism, in fact its easier for the audience to sympathize and be on the same level of a photo realistic character than a stylized one. Especially in this day and age when stylization has become nothing but either A. the same graphic anime type where every sing character has the same4-5 body types and nothing realy changes, or B muscle anatomy is exaggerated beyond belief.
Not necessarily fantasy stuff though. I think HOMM2's stylized graphics look better now than HOMM3's "realistic" graphics. Fine for a shooter, but I don't see why "totally realistic" applies in a fantasy setting. Especially since photo realistic one day is ho-hum the next...
Best regards,Steven.
Wait, what the hell are you talking about? Whether fantasy or shooter, sports or whatever whether it is stylized, cartoon, or photo realistic as long as there is a good story and DECENT GAME PLAY WTF would it matter anyway? The difference between me and you right now is you are only looking at games, I am looking the whole entertainment art populace. One of the many purpose behind stylization in the first place was because it was easier to animate, and even in the world of 3-D this remains to be true. One thing I respect photo realistic fantasy games for is the fact you have to create what doesn't exist and make the players believe that the creatures anatomy is so believable that it could exist. While this is not always true in stylization there is nothing wrong with a game being made in either, nor a film for that matter. The thing i can't stand about 90% of fantasy games, the majority are stuck in this Celtic ....European, or whatever you want to call it world where it revolves around the same crap. Elves, mages (i love all forms of spellcasters and dragons), and all that other stuff like thats the only fantasy in the world. Now you can counter argue that sci fi fantasy doesn't follow this trend, while I will emit I am not a sci fi fan, I still see the same trend it follows, especially art wise. I can actually go into it but I have spent too much time not drawing already.
Let's just agree that we have differing viewpoints. I expressed my viewpoint and you started to get narky. Anyway, Elemental's art-style is not likely to change, and its gameplay is improving, so I guess that what's really important. I'm looking forward to further improvements.
I've gotta say that I agree with Steven here- I like the art style. But, I do wish my Sovereign's avatar wasn't so thick around the waist. Food is supposedly hard to come by, but my guy looks like he eats McDonald's twice a day!
Because fat cartoony Yetis are easier on the GPU. And Blizzard wants WoW to be accessible both to kids with homemade supercomputers AND their abbacus-wielding grandmothers. And everyone else copies whatever Blizzard does.
I recall playing Everquest 2 when they brought out this massive models revamp. They were called the "SOGA" models, presumably for the company they commissioned to make them, or for what they named their venture to push the game to asian markets more heavily. (This was a while back).
So yeah. To "appeal to the markets" in asian places (specifically korea I think was mentioned), they had a whole different set of models you could see all the non-animal based races as.
Basically, they stripped away all notion of body hair (including facial, except a few mentions on humans and dwarves... although no bearded females!). The skin tone was changed from actually looking like skin texture, to this flat, one-tone, no complexion look. And of course, massively pointed ears, and spiked hair being literally the only option. Oh, and only the barest of scars for add-ons.. some races lost all mention of jewelry or tattoos.
It honestly looked like half the people were going super sayan with the hair they had... never a curl or up-do or any real hair styles other than massive amounts of gel induced waves hanging a foot off the head, or spiked straight up.
What they did to the Ogres' faces was a complete disaster, too.
The models also looked pathetically anemic. To the point that you could see clipping errors where the two poles that were thighs meeting shins were missing a knee completely. A female human went from having an ass, and proportions, and running like she had some weight to her... to this stick figure turned 3d.
When I saw this, and then WoW came out not long after... I knew this was a trend we were going to see for a while. And it made me sad.
EQ2 is one of those games that I'd still go back to if I ever decided to kill myself socially again. Dungeons and Dragons Online is still installed on this laptop for a similar reason (decent free to play and it still lets me play in a non-eye wrenching environment).
Elemental's world seems drab becuase the colors are mostly 'boring' earthtones... just like a desolate, dessicated landscape would be.
Would be nice if reclaimed land (or/and cursed land) became more colorful, and the buildings, etc were, too.
Yeah, I like the style of Elemental but not the colors. The tan UI does no favors, either. Sure, brighter colors with no adjustment of anything else would probably make it look more "cartoony", but I. Don't. CARE.
I believe Blizzard initially went for the "cartoony" look because that requires very low polygon game models, consequently enabling a wider range of customers since everyone can run the game, not just people with top rigs.
Since then, the style has caught on, not in the least because of the massive success WoW enjoyed. Developers (or at least managers of publishing companies which pay their salaries) seem to think that if it looks like WoW and plays like WoW, some of that magic will rub off and there will be plenty monies to be had.
Yeah, you do that.
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