Cel Shading

Re posting my post from /agdg/ because the board is basically dead.

Hey guys, I'm trying to achieve a cel shaded art style.

I started out using solid colors in my environment. Thinking that simple was better. However I wasn't happy with the effect I achieved. So I looked at other cell shaded games. And for the vast majority, the only cell shaded things in the game are major objects and characters. The environment is as detailed as it normally would be.

My question is, how detailed do I have to make my environment for a cel shaded game to look good?

Other urls found in this thread:

vgchartz.com/game/71347/killer-is-dead/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Is_Dead
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Look at Killer 7's design, it's an excellent example

It looks interesting, but it came out 10 years ago.
It wouldn't be something acceptable to release today

Yes it would. The game is dark and the artstyle fits the tone.
The reason it looks a bit dated is because of the relatively low polycount, but graphic fidelity doesn't matter nearly as much as using an effective art style.

And yet there's so many faggots here who can accurately tell you everything wrong with modern games but who will not apply this knowledge to making their own games.
It's like watching someone who has at least a basic knowledge on how to cook, eat microwave meals and then bitch about how much it sucks.
If my post describes you, fuck you. Stop proclaiming vidya is dying while doing fucking nothing to make it better.

I already know how to code (I use Python and C for my job), and I'm good enough at it that I could probably make a video game.
I choose not to because I want the industry to burn. Helping it will only make it last longer.

I'm going to continue wasting my time complaining about shitty video games and when I get bored, spend it on my better hobbies.

Ive been trying really hard actually.

I mean my efforts look bad but I've been trying.
That's why I'm asking about art style. If it don't look good then it wont sell

Cell shaded looks bad.

Use Killer 7 as a reference to it done right.

Don't pull cheap animu shit looks. Do everything as only gradients. No textures except intentional details. Light and shadow to emphasise geometry.

Lots of geometry.

Gradients can also go to the distance, eg bright close, dark away.

Use decals to show changes to environment such as blood.

Ground can be a few as in three shades of brown. Rocks geometry. All gradients. Trees a different shade of brown, bright leaves. Colours don't have to be common. Eg white leaves purple trees.

All is structure. Clean of history, it exists as is. Characters can be complex.
A lot of world. Should be infinate. Characters determinate. All hard set. Things changing your presence. Doing so in hope of satiating that need and avoid further change. Like fire through trees built to burn fast.

All things adult. No exceptions, no allowances. All is complex, denying that is enemy. In self and of others.

Have objects to make alive eg birds chirping, but don't see them. All performance on essential geometry, colour mostly to seperate it isolating differences. Every object is individual that has succeeded in existing. It has no one to thank and it lives for itself. It has already helped you by existing.

Depict what is relevant to what you are doing. Different missions may see different things in the same locations for example. World can be entirely different by what you are looking for, seperate worlds. Enter everything commonly enterable such as buildings. Buildings to occupy space are fine as well. Seperating locations by distance.

Not a lot of wasted time except by choice.

Animations can too be essentials. Can be less complex the more pressing the problem such as pedestrians moving without walking in the distance. Characters not important not existing. Something wrong in seeing things that don't matter. Could be part of a place.

No sky except in colour or gradient matching colour of buildings and landscape.

Edges imposed not essential but if so similar to detail texture. Black. Seperation helps form but wastes attention. Don't detail things that don't matter. Nothing is dirty. lines and shadow point out geometry.

No specular or bump maps. Geometry. Gradients imposed replace specular.

No katanas, samurai or anything else Japanese. World is not a caricature.

Serious, nothing wants to die. Death out of place and showing so, remaining. Done by you or to others. Something remaining to be fixed. Gunplay if any combat. Possibly with casings distinctly left. Combat confined to confrontations, like death it is littering. Danger is not important it can be demonstrated by characters.

Casings show a trail. Gone when followed.

Game not about combat. Not seeming to be about anything. Geometry should look large in all cases. Camera close to ground, looking up by default. Feet of character touching bottom of screen head touching top. Not the top of buildings shown occupy more than the screen.

All impersonal. Things are meant to be seen breifly. The whole scene meant to be seen, already seperated. No need to look at things. individually. Strange stands out but in unopposition does belong.

No environmental sounds. Except while exploring or initial surveying, while decisions haven't been made. When something is urged to do music explaining what is plays. Suiting the character and the land they have chosen or been condemned by. Of having and loss. How eternal longing is a greater truth lived in. Windmill in Killer 7 is a good example. Music different and long. Changing or ending when someone dies. Mission over place is empty without them, frozen in time. Location switch and situation switch. Camera switch eg getting out of a bed.

Change in play. From combat to something else. Previous events distant, from another time and era. A different world that has nothing to do with this one.

World may be different, seen like the last character would now added to a hub in addition to previous ones. Breifly then dissapearing returned to bare essentials.

What is commonly accepted isn't good.
Conforming to that strips all depicted of worth.
Intentional actions can be more impressive, taking credit denies their existance.

I'm still trying to figure out if you just have a serious speech impediment or are some sort of bot

Killer is Dead.

Also, people could care less about the art style if the game itself is FUN.

Game got a near perfect score in Famitsu, yet most of it's sales came from America, and ignoring the press because they're exceedingly corrupt here, it was received well.

Source on sales vgchartz.com/game/71347/killer-is-dead/

Source on Famitsu
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Is_Dead

Here's a fucking idea, show us your cell shaded result, be it an object or whatever, and we'll tell you if it looks shit.

forgot pic

Also note that indies have been getting away with fucking 1 pixel characters and pixel thick arms, Cel-Shaded isn't a bad style, it's how you fucking use it.

Wind Waker used it to lighten up areas and give a sort of solid feel by using clearly defined borders for coloring, and Killer 7 and Killer is Dead use it as a exaggeration of shadow, to give the game a serious feel, which clashes nicely with the weird ass tone.

It's all in how you fucking use it.

Bashing a style just means you're looking for an out when you plain just suck. Get good.

Also if you're experimenting with it, SHOW US.

Show us your results and we'll judge it so you can get a better idea of what's appealing and what isn't.

Wind Waker HD or Cel Damage HD might be worth referencing

Try this.

I guess I was mainly thinking of wind waker.

I just want to make sure if I put time into an art stlye like that I can have enough competence to make it look good.

Killer is dead looks phenominal

Surely you're joking, right? Those kind of graphics in video games make me want to stab my eyeballs out with a screwdriver and throw said screwdriver at Honduran street children, with my eyeballs still stuck on the tip.

it's not about style.

IT'S ABOUT DOING IT. That's all. Care less about style and more about gameplay, art assets are only one aspect of a game and not the main one you should focus too much on or beat yourself up about.


Shut up nigga it looks good.

find.polygons (edge)
color #000000

I love how this post starts coherently enough, but quickly descends into cryptic rambling.

Alternatively attach the cel shading to the model. As a model.
That's what I did for everything I cel shaded in gmod.

Don't. I don't think there's a single way you can make it look decent, let alone "original." It always ends up looking like it's out of a cult Gamecube game.

That's not true. You choose not to because you're too busy posting here all day. You making a good video game isn't going to help the huge vidya businesses you hate. It's going to help you make money and give people something actually good to play.

That was great, thanks user.

I'm the art guy/ director.
I have some other people coding and doing music and sound. I know exactly what game play I want and I have all the technicalities written down. But I don't want a product with my name on it to look like garbage.

I've been learning modeling/sculpting/texturing/rigging/animating and all that for a while between work and school.

Knowledge of what makes a game bad =/= ability to make a good game. I know why the Michael Bay Transformers are bad, but that doesn't mean I can make anything better. Games take a lot more work than complaining on the internet, what else do you expect from a bunch of Holla Forumsirgins?

Also OP, there's a recurring AGDG thread in v: >>>/9937184/

Agreed

Personally, I've never seen an ultra-minimalistic cel shaded background that looked good to me, I think stuff like that Transformers game has the right idea with cel-shaded characters but relatively more detailed backgrounds. I mean, that's how actual cartoons - the origin of cel shading - typically do it. I'd just say the important thing is to keep the backgrounds more detailed/naturalistic than straight cel shading, but not realistic either. You know, animated background style. Alternately, I always thought that, limited palettes and super rigid tile sets aside, the style old 2d game backgrounds went for was pretty good. It wasn't all about flat colors, but there wasn't any GRITTY LIFELIKE TEXTURE either, you know?


I focused on learning art, because I love vidya art. I do art every day. Maybe characters, maybe backgrounds, sometimes 2d, sometimes 3d. Learning and getting even competent at all that, and doing art to pay the bills, is already a lot of work. Mastering coding on top of that would be impractical, and besides that, I've tried.

So the point is, without a coding partner, all I can do is complain since all the art it takes to make a game is already at least a profession in itself, but art alone can't make a game.


New to his special brand of rambling? That's how that guy always posts.

Out of curiosity, do you have a website or something to show off your work? I'm coding a game, but using dev art placeholders until I get most of it done so I don't seem like I'm trying to get an artist for vaporware. So I'll be looking for someone down the road.

Hmm, that's funny.

If somebody who was unfamiliar with anime were to look at this screenshot, he would likely mistake it for something from a real anime production.

The background's art design is interesting. I've been theorizing for a long time that anime has switched to 3D backgrounds long ago and this seems to confirm it. At the same time, there are certain elements missing from the screenshot that betray it's a video game, I just can't put my finger to it.

just make everything in threes, so the rule of thirds will be enabled by default

There's too many indie games where a lack of textures is handwaved as a "style".

Just sit down, think about what the best style would be for the content of your game and move on from there. Banjo-Kazooie isn't Jet Set Radio, Portal isn't Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Everything must be influenced by the game's gimmick.

Speak for yourself.

Yeah, that's GDC alright.

You want to make it detailed enough that it looks good, but not to the extent that it directly clashes with cel-shaded entities.

Because I don't know if I should focus on art or coding first. It'll take me years to get as good as I want to be at them both, and I'll probably never reach the level I want to be at either of them

make it cartoony textures

remember the PSX games like Spyro?

Just higher res.