The debate between realism and stylization has been going on for a long time in the history of video games, and both art styles have had a profound influence on countless classic games. Realism aims to depict the world as closely as possible to reality, striving for photorealism and an immersive experience. Stylization, on the other hand, is more creative and expressive, including techniques such as cell shading, hand-drawn textures, and comic styles. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at the differences between realistic vs. stylized art, highlight the key features of both philosophies, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses to create visual engagement in games. Understanding the intricacies of each method allows us to realize the vast possibilities of the art of video games.
What Is a Realistic Art Style?
Realistic art style aims to show the world as close to reality as possible. It has accurate depth, light, and realistic rendering of everything. Games in this style include global lighting, ray tracing, and unique textures to make the environment more realistic. For example, games such as The Last of Us allow players to feel deeply connected to the game world with the help of realistic feedback.
What is Stylized Art Style?
The stylized art style is more creative and artistic, where unrealistic, bright colors and unique textures are used. It involves creatively designing lighting, shadows, and other visual elements in games to fit the theme of the game. Examples of stylized art styles can be seen in games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Overwatch, where each element is rendered in a specific artistic style.
Realistic vs. Stylized Art
Lighting
In realistic games, the concept of lighting is closer to reality, as global illumination, ray tracing, and lightmaps are used to create a realistic depiction of lighting. In stylized games, lighting is used artistically to create a certain mood or emotional impression, such as bright colors or long shadows that are detached from reality.
Textures
Textures in realistic games reflect reality with the help of photo resolution, while stylized games use hand-painted textures, colors, and simple lines to highlight the creativity of the art.
Materials
In realistic games, content is depicted with complex shading, reflective surfaces, and realistic material properties. In stylized games, the content is made more simple and prominent, where light and more highlights are used.
Volume and Proportions
Realistic games reflect reality in the proportions of characters and objects, such as the physical proportions of humans being shown closer to reality. Proportions can be creatively altered in stylized games, such as larger heads, longer hands, or more subtle details.
Animations
In realistic games, animations are smooth and lifelike, often created using motion capture technology to ensure natural movement, weight, and speed. In contrast, stylized games feature more exaggerated and expressive animations, using dynamic poses, snappy transitions, and eye-catching effects to enhance visual storytelling.
Camera Effects
In realistic games, camera movements and effects are modeled realistically, such as lens flare, motion blur, and the use of depth of field. In stylized games, these effects are used for artistic purposes only, and their intensity is less than realistic.
Differences in the Player’s Perspective
The realistic art style immerses the player in a realistic and immersive experience, where the world, environment, and characters all look close to reality. The stylized art style gives the player a creative and emotional experience, where everything appears in a unique and artistic way.
Pros and Cons of Realistic and Stylized Art Styles
Advantages of Realistic Art Style
- Realistic Experience: Players feel like the real world.
- Depth and Atmosphere: Deep atmosphere and detailed worlds strengthen the player’s connection.
- Dynamic Narrative: Best for making the story appear closer to reality.
Advantages of Stylized Art Style
- Artistic freedom: Games have more freedom of creative expression.
- Different platforms: Stylized games can run well even on less powerful hardware.
- Engaging and Unique Experience: Players get a unique visual experience.
Disadvantages of Realistic Art Style
- High resource requirement: Creating realistic games requires a lot of time and resources.
- Game Limitations: Highly realistic graphics require more powerful hardware.
Disadvantages of Stylized Art Style
- Occasional low realism: Some players may find the experience lacking in close to reality.
- Limited detail: Stylized graphics do not show much detail.
Stylized vs. Realistic Art Styles Examples
The Last of It – Realistic art style
Naughty Dog’s iconic post-apocalyptic adventure uses modern game art styles to achieve the emotional photorealism necessary for a mature story. The Last of Us Real-time is the cutting edge of photorealistic rendering, but more creative styles have also succeeded in seducing audiences.
True Truth: Diffuse global illumination, ambient occlusion, and volumetric beams simulate the complexity of real spaces and off-camera light sources.
Real Structures: Debris and The Last of Us photographic details on the decaying world of Tell a compelling visual story. High-quality facial textures show emotional nuance through flawless pores, shadows, and skin imperfections.
Genuine Material: Fabrics, water, mud, and plant materials exhibit advanced properties such as translucency, subsurface scattering, viscosity, and dynamics. Weapons and items feel realistic.
True Fit: The characters have extremely detailed meshes, with over 100,000 polygons used for Joel. The geometry of atmospheric debris is commensurate with the complexity of real destroyed ruins.
Real Motion: Advanced motion matching blends scene and keyframe motions so that they appear extremely fluid. Euphoria Physics presents anxiety-provoking responses to human concerns with alarming realism.
Real Camera: A physically modeled camera captures lens imperfections such as flare and chromatic aberration. The fall of the film deepens the realistic atmosphere.
Read more: Step by Step 3D Animation Production Pipeline
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – Stylized Art Style
The Adventure Nintendo’s 2002 GameCube surprised fans by eschewing realism and adopting a charming cel-shaded aesthetic, which is loved to this day.
Stylized Light: Clear distribution of light, where diffused ambient tones and bright, colorful point lights are used. Long shadows show the direction of the body rather than simply reflecting reality.
Stylized Structures: Clean contours and hand-drawn lines describe textures rather than details extracted from photographs. Graphic color fields adopt a storybook style.
Stylized Content: Matte shading for a painted look. Outlines and highlights highlight the shapes rather than the actual response of the content.
Stylized Proportions: The character models used simple, mostly hard-edged polygons, rather than natural sculpting.
Stylized Motion: Exaggerated character movements use the principles of squash and stretch. Link actions are always clear and easy to read.
Stylized Camera: The game mimics the fixed camera of classic animation. Shaders refine outlines and remove any artifacts.
Key Considerations for Choosing the Best Art Style
When a game art company decides which art style is best for the genre and vision of its game, it evaluates several factors:
Budget:
Realistic AAA games require much more financial resources than stylized games. Indie games generally tend towards stylization.
Target Platform:
Photorealism requires powerful modern consoles and gaming PCs. Stylized games can support more platforms, and can be a great art style for mobile games as well.
Target audience:
Young players generally prefer stylized looks, while older players value realism more. A realistic style works best in genres like shooters.
Technical Intent:
Studios that have a strong and consistent vision can use stylization effectively. Realism is best in its originality.
Objectives of Immersion:
Realism enhances immersion in a vivid world, but stylization can also succeed in immersing players through symmetry.
Conclusion
At Innova Designz, we believe in the distinction between realistic and stylized art. Both 2D character art and 3D character art have unique features that can enhance the creative vision of each project.
On the other hand, stylized designs, whether 2D or 3D, are always persuasive, freeing from reality to bring ideas to life boldly and creatively. Every design choice, whether it leans closer to realism or takes artistic liberties, is a means of elevating the player’s experience.
At Innova Designz, art direction is essential to turn any idea into a living virtual world.
