Shmup visual aesthetics: prefer hand-drawn or rendered?

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:46 pm

"Low-res give objects more 'weight' too and it's easier to get a more overall lively, organic look. It's like the difference between cell based animation and clay/doll based animation."

An interesting but nethertheless totally subjective observation.

"Of course high-res could potentially be both more detailed and give objects more weight, but that's not what the argument is about. In the real world this has yet to happen."

In 1988 Taito released (in the real world...) "Syvalion" running at 512x400 which was considered hires back in the days. While I don't know whether this resulted in objects having more or less "weight" it definitely allowed them to come up with some pretty detailed bosses.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:04 pm

You're omitting the fact that 2D games were popular enough back then to warrant a larger staff or development time, good 2D artists existed, and there wasn't much animation.

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 2:54 pm

Good 2D artists do exist today and getting in touch with some of them via messageboards etc. is way easier than it used to be back in the days.
Besides that there's hope that the 2D stuff on the DS (Contra4, 07Commando, Castlevanias) create enough of a profitable niche market.

JoshF · Post by **JoshF** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 3:02 pm

I honestly believe you could show someone a great looking 2D game for GBA and they'd be impressed, and show them the same 2D game on a console with higher resolution (+ more detailed graphics) and better animation and they'd be "wtf is this gears of war pls." Too bad this experiment is impossible to set up.

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 4:40 pm

Necronom wrote:In 1988 Taito released (in the real world...) "Syvalion" running at 512x400 which was considered hires back in the days. While I don't know whether this resulted in objects having more or less "weight" it definitely allowed them to come up with some pretty detailed bosses.

Good example. They managed to avoid the flatness syndrome in the characters at least, but the backgrounds are rather flat looking. Could be because of time restraints. My experience is that even at that resolution you have to develop new techniques to get the same results you used to get at a lower resolution. All to often a move to a higher resolution is done without spending time to develop these new techniques. I have been trying to make the leap from 320x240 to 640x480 myself lately, but haven't got the skills yet to produce something good.

Hopefully the artists will be able to explore high-res in the way they where able to explore low-res and we will have some groundbreaking 2d game graphics in the future.

Ps. Mass convey what I mean better than weight.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:28 pm

I might as well link to a popular pixel art sit. My work is there too. Many people there have been taking a crack at shmup art (I'll take some credit for that).

http://www.pixeljoint.com/

Do a search for DoDonPachi there was a challange to try to mimic the style in original designs some time ago.