567 réponses à ce sujet

[Mark of the Dragon]

Better and more consistent look then DAO but not as cartoony as DA2

[TheRealJayDee]

Pseudocognition wrote...

If the tone of the art and story must always match or else its wrong and there's no possible justification for it (which there is) then obviously Adventure Time should look like Fallout because it's a post-apocalyptic world.

Support != "match"

Who says every post-apocalyptic world hast to look like Fallout? We still have no complete picture about what exactly happened in Adventure Time, but obviously the world doesn't look like your standard nuclear wasteland. The thing is that Adventure Time looked like Adventure Time from the start and continues to do so.

Dragon Age has no clear look and feel yet, and it reminds me of reading a comic series with artists changing every few issues. I find it jarring and unfortunate. I was content with how Thedas looked and felt in Origins, and although it wasn't very unique or creative I thought it worked well. I can't think of anything in DA2 that I thought was improved compared to DA:O and I wouldn't say it had a more unique or distinct look compared to other RPGs. It was just a weird mash of styles trying to be different from it's predecessor.

Whatever they do with Inquisition, I hope they have made up their minds about how they want Dragon Age to look and stick with it for hypothetical further sequels.

Modifié par TheRealJayDee, 08 janvier 2013 - 11:40 .

[Wulfram]

Pseudocognition wrote...

No.

Contrary to popular belief on BSN, people are attracted by attractive, well designed, unique things, and attracting people to your product is kind of important to being able survive and continue making video games.

Art should be attractive and well designed of course, but that doesn't conflict with bland, at least not how I was intending to use bland.  Maybe "generic" or "not distinctive" would have been a better word choice.

As for unique, it's overrated.  At least for art that is just a part of the whole, rather than the whole itself.  The art in a computer game is not (usually) the point of the game, and thus there is virtue to it being unpretentious and in the background.

Unique might help make nice screenshots, but marketing shouldn't trump the actual game experience.

At the least, it's better than a distinctive style that doesn't support the story.

If the tone of the art and story must always match or else its wrong and there's no possible justification for it (which there is in DA) then obviously Adventure Time should look like Fallout because it's a post-apocalyptic world.

Support != "match"

A contrasting aesthetic can actually make a dark, tense storyline even more dark and tense.

Imagine if the previous 60 hours of the game before the Broodmother hadn't been just as grimy and stupid as the area leading up to her? It'd have been so much more dramatic.

Erm, are you agreeing with me here?  The tone sounds like you're disagreeing, but you're not saying anything I would strongly disagree with here.  Though I don't think all of DA:O was "grimy and stupid" and I'd note that I felt that DA2's art neither supported or interestingly contrasted with the tone of the story.

[Pseudo the Mustachioed]

Wulfram wrote...

Art should be attractive and well designed of course, but that doesn't conflict with bland, at least not how I was intending to use bland.  Maybe "generic" or "not distinctive" would have been a better word choice.

As for unique, it's overrated.  At least for art that is just a part of the whole, rather than the whole itself.  The art in a computer game is not (usually) the point of the game, and thus there is virtue to it being unpretentious and in the background.

Unique might help make nice screenshots, but marketing shouldn't trump the actual game experience.

Well its nice that you think so, but the people who were trained to and actually make this stuff might beg to differ.

There is inherent value in having a distinct, recognizable style despite what you may think and that is what said people are trained and are paid to do.

Also it's terribly boring job for all of said people to execute the most contrived, dull, predictable, uninspired art style possible.

Art should be attractive and well designed of course, but that
doesn't conflict with bland, at least not how I was intending to use
bland.  Maybe "generic" or "not distinctive" would have been a better
word choice.

I believe very little in DA:O is actually well designed, at least as far as it appears in the game is concerned. So even if was of a mind to agree that generic blandness is something to aspire to, it would have to be executed much better than DAO.

Modifié par Pseudocognition, 09 janvier 2013 - 12:21 .

[Wulfram]

Pseudocognition wrote...

Well its nice that you think so, but the people who were trained to and actually make this stuff might beg to differ.

There is inherent value in having a distinct, recognizable style despite what you may think and that is what said people are trained and are paid to do.

Artists like to show off and be arty.  Doesn't mean they're right.  Let artists of the leash and they'll give you shoeless elves.

Most art is done in the most generic style possible - photorealistic.  Because it's actual photos and video.  If distinctive style was so much superior, we'd watch animation.

Modifié par Wulfram, 09 janvier 2013 - 12:25 .

[Pseudo the Mustachioed]

Wulfram wrote...
Artists like to show off and be arty.

And? That's what they're hired to do. Make art. Be artists.

Doesn't mean they're right.

Does not preclude them from being right either

Let artists of the leash and they'll give you shoeless elves.

Sometimes, but that wasn't strictly a bad idea. I liked it for some characters. You don't like it =! it was a bad idea.
Not to mention that artists are rarely "off the leash." Like any other employee in the hierarchy of game development a concept artist is critiqued and needs to have work approved by higher-ups, which can include anyone from the Art Director to the people who own the company. If you don't like it, too bad, enough people on the team did to make it happen.

I do like this fantasy notion that game artists have the ability to conspire, execute and implement wild and nonsensical art shenanigans in a game without having anyone's approval.

Unfortunately they are, more often than not, professionals.

Most art is done in the most generic style possible - photorealistic.  Because it's actual photos and video.

What art are you looking at?

Wait I misread what you said.

Photography != game art.

Modifié par Pseudocognition, 09 janvier 2013 - 01:04 .

[Sakanade]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Xewaka wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...
DA:O didn't have an art style.

It did have one. You can say it was generic, and not DA-specific, but it had one.

[axl99]

Wulfram wrote...
Artists like to show off and be arty.  Doesn't mean they're right.  Let artists of the leash and they'll give you shoeless elves.

Most art is done in the most generic style possible - photorealistic.  Because it's actual photos and video.  If distinctive style was so much superior, we'd watch animation.

What you said is insulting to myself and every other professional videogame artist in this business, and I don't believe anything of what you said holds any significant merit. Especially considering you and others like you pretend to know how we do our jobs.

Take a good hard look at some DnD player handbooks and decades of illustrations should tell you no one's tried to do anything new with a design regardless of how "photorealistic" or not each one looks.

Just because something is approached with photorealism in mind doesn't mean it SHOULD be designed generically. This goes with anything else stylized. Generic in this context meaning something looking like something else. Those of us who work as artists and art directors in the pre-production phase come up with different kinds of architecture, costume design, set design every other world-building element to make a game look cohesive and distinctive.

We slave over this stuff so no one will point at our game and go, "HAY THIS REMINDS ME OF ____."

You let us off the leash? We will continue to design freaking multiverses and mutations and all manner of arty goodness even after you're positively drowning in it. And that is a daily occurance for us. As long as there's an asset list of things to make, we will keep making them and iterating them until the cows come home. We don't all get to choose an art direction, but we will follow it through to the very freaking end.

Artists - like all professionals - are usually right about what they say because what they do is their job.

So. What do you do?

Actually y'know what? I don't care to know what you do. Just to return the courtesy.

Modifié par axl99, 09 janvier 2013 - 01:26 .

[Pseudo the Mustachioed]

Also, protip Wulfram, you do watch animation. There is a metric f***ton of animation in games.

Echoing axl99 *game artist sisfist*

Modifié par Pseudocognition, 09 janvier 2013 - 01:08 .

[addiction21]

Wulfram wrote...

Most art is done in the most generic style possible - photorealistic.  Because it's actual photos and video.  If distinctive style was so much superior, we'd watch animation.

What? Are you aware animation is more then some cartoon, anime, animated movie etc etc etc... Also that a distinctive style does not only apply to what you pick out of a hat.

Modifié par addiction21, 09 janvier 2013 - 01:33 .

[upsettingshorts]

I'm just glad someone is finally speaking out against the insidious menace of so-called artists.

Their alleged creativity is ruining my experience!

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 janvier 2013 - 01:29 .

[Danny Boy 7]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I'm just glad someone is finally speaking out against the insidious menace of so-called artists.

Their alleged creativity is ruining my experience!

Those dirty dirty heathens, how dare they have creativity and imagination. Pssh who likes memorable enviroments anyway.

[Iakus]

Just make armor look like armor, for men and for women.

And keep comically oversized swords to a minimum.

Too much?

[upsettingshorts]

I'd be all for that iakus, but neither Origins nor DA2 is a good example of either.

That said, what little we've seen of DA:I concept art seems to indicate that the armor is looking nice.

[Twisted Path]

craigdolphin wrote...

Have to agree with the OP for the most part.

IMO the redesign of Elves and Darkspawn was unspeakably bad in DA2. The qunari redesign was pretty good, but suffered from a bad attack of clone-itis.

The environments were bland, empty, and uninteresting.

Human character models were pretty good in DA2 though, IMO. (Aside from the rubbish armor).

And the combat animations were irredeemably overblown and exagerated.

I have little hope that DAI will actually deviate from the path they forged with DA2 though. I suspect it'll take another sales-let-down for Bioware to be forced to actually revisit their top level design document that they implemented for DA2. If that happens then hopefully they'll admit the issues are much more serious than trying to paper over the cracks as they appear to be giving every indication of doing right now.

Totally agree with this. Especially about the darkspawn and elves. The origional darkspawn looked like fairly generic Tolkien orcs and goblins and could have been improved on, but turning them into goofy dancing Power Rangers mooks was way worse than doing nothing at all. In Origins the elves just looked like humans with pointed ears and could have used some tweeks to make them more fey looking, but the giraffe people we got were just silly looking.

Also I first played Origins on Xbox and liked it despite the hidiousness, but I later I played it on a decent PC. Just my opinion but I think on a high end PC it's a pretty good looking game, even today.

[tishyw]

I really didn't like the art-style of DA2. Origins may have been a bit generic, but DA2 was cartoony and everything was unnecessarily spiky (even Flemeth hair!). It had a Japanese RPG look and feel to it, and it took me out of the Medieval European world I were supposed to be in.

Any move back towards a more gritty, realistic look would be a big improvement in my opinion.

Edited to add - Sadly I think the devs have already said that they're not going to change the art-style very much anyway, a slight re-design of the elves is as far as their going (as far as I've heard).

Modifié par tishyw, 09 janvier 2013 - 02:18 .

[oui_je_danse]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I'd be all for that iakus, but neither Origins nor DA2 is a good example of either.

That said, what little we've seen of DA:I concept art seems to indicate that the armor is looking nice.

The concept art armor does look very promising. Mostly I'm just excited that the devs are giving players the ability to modify companion armor without sacrificing character design.

It's a great example of creatively moving forward with new ideas that are informed by responses to previous games.

[Zubie]

I don't mind if they stick to the direction they took with DA2's artstyle but it could really use some improvements. Mostly the environments - they looked incredibly dull.

I am hoping the switch to a different engine will remove most of the limitations that hindered what Bioware wanted to achieve in DA2.

[Eternal Phoenix]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

Elton John is dead wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

I'm not. You started this about art style, and now are arguing that DA2 didn't use shaders. That's a pretty clear goalpost move.

Nope. I said DA2 didn't employ effective use of shading.

Elton John is dead wrote...

Is she shaded or detailed?

No.

Elton John is dead wrote...

Those pictures also showed that nothing in DA2 is shaded which is part of DA2's artstyle.

[smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/uncertain.png[/smilie]

Well done at quote mining. Orina still isn't shaded through or would you prefer me to say "shadowed"? When referring to her I was pointing out the fact that there are literally no shadows on her and the other quote above the one about Orina - which was said later - was referring to the fact that shaders aren't employed as effectively as they should have been. I provided the picture comparison between Origins and DA2's enviroments for comparison about what I'm talking about and you have ignored them. Shadows and shading are much more powerful in Origins and while it has more colors it retains a grim look and feel to everything.

Upsettingshorts wrote...

What do you know pseudo? You're just a professional video game artist.

Elton has a website put together by 4th graders and About.com.  Two against one.

The 4th grader website was specifically for you since you seem to struggle understanding the differences between art design and art style. The About.com article was written by a professional artist if you want to throw the old argument from authority card out in a feeble attempt to support yourself. In any case you can find all those definitions (albeit explained in more detailed) on any site explaning what an artstyle is about.

smallwhippet wrote...

Couldn't decide whether it was genuine misunderstanding of the terms of reference, or being wilfully obtuse.

Or perhaps I wasn't even discussing post-processing in the first place. Just look at the touched-up advertising images:



The same style remains. It was deliberate.

Pseudocognition wrote...

Methinks Elton doth value post-processing effects overmuch, also does not understand that post-processing can be one of those last special details added towards the end of development... which there was time enough for in DA:O, but given DA2's development schedule, there was no time for bells and whistles.

In addition, post-processing and nonsensical colored lighting were basically the only thing adding any color whatsoever to some parts of DA:O.

In addition again, I think you are conflating several things when you are talking about shadows. I think you are talking about, in part, ambient occlusion, which is massively overblown in DA:O to accomodate the perspective of the tacitcal camera.

I am baffled by everything you've posted in here, buddy.

If you want DA2 to look as weird fakey-rainbow colored as DA:O, it can be easily accomplished by hacking away at a screenshot of your choice in photoshop.



As an arty aside, postprocessing in my experience does not solve giant aesthetic and lighting problems, it only covers them up. The biggest problem aesthetically IMO in DA2 is how most of the light is white.

Clearly you can't spot the differences then between the artstyle of Origins and DA2. Many people in this thread all agree that the two have distinctively different artstyles. These differences aren't caused by graphical differences or due to post-processing but are caused rather by differences in color, texture and shading technique. The artstyle of Origins for example was clearly designed to give the impression of a dark fantasy universe. It was atmospheric whereas DA2 was designed to be the complete opposite. There are simply no dark fantasy traits.

DA:O uses more colors than DA2 but it can't be likened to a rainbow. DA:O is not as bright as a rainbow it simply has more palette than the water-washed look of DA2. DA2 could have been post-processed to Hell and still wouldn't look as good as DA:O as this modder would tell you:

http://www.moddb.com...-2-re-imagined1



Adding extra bloom or extra sharpness would not bring it to match the quality of Origins. This modder learnt that the hard way. If any of the guys had playyed El Shaddi you would understand that the definition of artstyle for paintings can and does apply to games too:



This has the style of surrealism and water painting. Meanwhile Borderlands is cell-shaded - popularized by comics - but is realistic in the design of objects, anatomy and characters. No one would call the artstyle realism however.



If you think artstyles when referring to paintings doesn't apply to video games too then I can play the card of UpsettingShorts and throw out this article where Valve recognizes what I do about artstyle:

http://www.computera...-plays-it-safe/

Artstyle definition applies to video games too. DA2 was realism in design (as was Origins) but its brightness, plasticine characters and lack of shadows gave it the look of something "cartoonish" in comparison to the realistic look of Origins.

In any case no one has ever compared Origins to an anime whereas people in this thread has compared DA2 to one proving my point.

Modifié par Elton John is dead, 09 janvier 2013 - 02:01 .

[Nomadiac]

Wulfram wrote...

Pseudocognition wrote...

Well its nice that you think so, but the people who were trained to and actually make this stuff might beg to differ.

There is inherent value in having a distinct, recognizable style despite what you may think and that is what said people are trained and are paid to do.

Artists like to show off and be arty.  Doesn't mean they're right.  Let artists of the leash and they'll give you shoeless elves.

Most art is done in the most generic style possible - photorealistic.  Because it's actual photos and video.  If distinctive style was so much superior, we'd watch animation.

Have you played Mirror's Edge? It looks realistic, but it has one of the most striking and unique art styles out there.

[Addai]

Both games are butt ugly, though re-playing DAO recently I can see what people were saying about the generic photorealistic style not wearing well. There were also improvements in armor design and architectural detail in DA2. Plus points for mage clothing and staves.

However, I have to agree that creature design took a turn for the worse, and I would go back to Awakening where the Mother and Children were already more comical than creepy, up through the dubious darkspawn redesign and the ghasts in MoTA. The huge weapons really do have to go- and it appears from the armor concept art that the fat swords are still sticking around. Does it do any good to go from generic western fantasy to generic JRPG?

Also there is support for Wulfram's "artists being arty" comments from the fact that Gaider mentioned he was overruled by the artists on the stupid shoeless elves thing, and that for Fenris in particular it made no story sense.

[upsettingshorts]

How arrogant do you have to be to presume to lecture professional game artists on their job, Elton?  Hoorayforicecream, axl99, and pseudocognition all work in the industry.  

Likewise, that Valve article you linked? Doesn't say remotely what you think it does.  And you're not fooling anyone with your excuse that you cited fourth graders on purpose.  Nobody believes you didn't just type art style into Google and blurt out whatever could be misinterpreted to support your "argument."

I'll let the experts do the rest of the talking, a lesson you should have learned a long time ago.  For my part, I'm through with you.  

Addai67 wrote...

Also there is support for Wulfram's "artists being arty" comments from the fact that Gaider mentioned he was overruled by the artists on the stupid shoeless elves thing, and that for Fenris in particular it made no story sense.

I highly doubt Gaider himself would endorse Wulfram's post, despite his regular conflicts with the artists.

It's one thing to take issue with a particular decision, and wholly another to assert that artists' creativity is annoying and should be kept in a locked drawer away from where it can actually result in someone noticing it.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 janvier 2013 - 04:41 .

[smallwhippet]

Elton John is dead wrote...

smallwhippet wrote...

Couldn't decide whether it was genuine misunderstanding of the terms of reference, or being wilfully obtuse.

Or perhaps I wasn't even discussing post-processing in the first place.

...and the misunderstanding continues! I was merely concurring with @Pseudocognition's assessment of  what you had written in your previous posts.
Specifically, I was referring to the fact that you didn't appreciate the point @Upsettingshorts was making about an artstyle and an aesthetic being the same thing. Even when he tried to explain it, you doggedly held on to the notion that he was talking about armour design, and insisted that he was contradicting himself, when, in fact, he wasn't. 

For what it's worth, I agree with @Upsettingshorts's last post. I would be inclined to drop the subject.