Hi there!
In this post, I’ll be covering the journey I took towards helping my group decide on a suitable art style for our game.
NOTE: Our game is called Fat and Cat. It is a 2D platformer about a fat labrador, and his buddy cat, trying to find their way home. Some elements of the level will be destructible, and will require you to do so in order to progress. You progress through the levels twice, once as the dog (destroys environment) and once again as the cat (quick and agile).
Research phase
While considering a suitable art style for our game, I decided to dive head-first into research and see what I could find.
Fortunately, I was immediately welcomed by a range of articles on this topic, which I will try to summarize in the next few paragraphs, along with my own perspective.
https://3d-ace.com/blog/2d-game-art-styles-the-ultimate-guide/ Posted on June 14, 2023, by 3d-ace, this article focuses on outlining the different art styles commonly used in 2d games.
The article does a fantastic job explaining a wide range of art styles in a simple and digestible format, which it then enhances by providing examples, both written (game titles) and visual(screenshots).
Vector Art, Flat Art and Doodle Art quickly stuck out to me as potential art styles for this project.
Starting off with Vector Art, it’s simplicity (using mathematical algorithms to draw basic shapes) paired with unmatched malleability (can be freely scaled) would allow the Game Designers of our group to create countless level designs. My main concern for this style is that it requires more creativity from the person designing the level.
Examples include Superbrothers – Sword & Sworcery, Ghost Trick, Vector: Parkour Run
Moving on, we come upon Flat Art, which stood out to me in particular. Without a defining characteristic, other than simplification, artists using this style often bend and break the rules surrounding physics and realism. As explained in the article, “This game art style represents objects, characters, and environments in two dimensions, eschewing depth and volume”. Choosing this style would allow us the freedom to incorporate features found in others, while still maintaining a firm understanding of what we are aiming for.
Examples include Flat Kingdom, Nidhogg, Owlboy, Alto’s Adventure
Finally, we have Doodle Art. The name speaks for itself, as this style focuses on the technique of filling out empty spaces with abstract doodles. This spontaneous art style would allow the Animation side of our project to simply let loose.
My only real drawback from this style would be that it could be seen as ambiguous, as despite being visually pleasing it doesn’t tie the project to a visual standard at any point. This could pose issues when creating an art guide for our project.
Other articles which helped better my understanding of the topic include:
https://dreamfarmstudios.com/blog/game-art-styles-with-guide/#Most_common_2D_game_art_styles
Discussion and Feedback
Once my research was finished, I forwarded my findings to the rest of my team and highlighted my particular interest in Flat Art. Soon after, Amy agreed, followed by the rest of the team.
Around this time we had our Week 2 presentation, where we presented a more developed concept, which came with a short slide about our art style considerations.
At this time the Flat Art style concept was slightly more developed, as we connected it back to the list given to us on our assignment page on Blackboard. The way we explained it was a mixture of “saturday morning” friendly cartoony and “Wacky” animated, with a stronger preference towards the former.
At this point, I decided to take on the role of environment and prop designer for this project.
Gathering references
Matt, our level designer, has broken down the environments our characters will find themselves in. My next step was to take that list and find suitable references for it. Here are my findings, which I eagerly spammed our Miro board with:
Eager to continue my research, I decided to try out Bing’s AI image generator. The AI was fairly hit-and-miss, but with enough attempts I went ahead and cherry-picked the better images.
The group liked these results quite a bit, and I like to think having the levels visualized like this helped motivate us. It certainly motivated me.
Art Style Guide
Moving on, I began preparing for the upcoming art style presentation. At this point we already had a few character concepts thanks to Bailey and Amy, who have both been fantastic up to this point.
While discussing Amy’s cat designs, we singled out a lineless design as our favourite. After a brief discussion, we all agreed that we will adapt this style moving forward.
With that in mind, I finally began my work on an example environment and props.
I chose to depict the Alleyway, as this will be our starting place within the game.
It took a bit of experimentation, but eventually I landed on my feet and found a way to apply our style consistently. What helped me the most were the character designs from Amy & Bailey, as well as the considerable moodboard that I pieced together beforehand.
Once I was happy with this piece, I moved onto the props, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
At this point I was already feeling quite comfortable with this art style, so designing the props was straightforward and painless.
I’m quite fond of the flower pot. I like how it looks when shattered, as well as the element of mystery it has (where did the flower go? Maybe it ran off?).
Thank you for reading through my post & I wish you a good day!