Stylized Character Design & Art

We have been managing the continuous delivery of these stylized characters designed by our art team to maintain PIMD's in-game regular activities and events throughout more than 3 years of collaboration with A Thinking Ape.

‍

Stylized character design essentials

Stylized character art design doesn't aim to have a realistic appearance and proportions. While the stylization might be of various scales - from slight and selective like on this project, to exaggerated like in other games, by breaking free from the strict limitations of realism it relies on adjusting shapes to achieve a unique aesthetic that wouldn't be possible otherwise. While current technology allows us to design stylized game characters that look surprisingly "alive", the final art puts aside realism in favor of expressiveness and results in having an original art style. Overall, stylized graphics vary widely from game to game, ranging from semi-realistic characters with slightly exaggerated features to cartoonish cell-shading. 

‍

Key advantages of stylized Character art

Stylized characters are popular because they're charming. And that's because stylized art can be incredibly expressive. When done properly, the unrealistic proportions of a stylized characters reflect their personality: Instead of simply showing what that character looks like, it also reflects their essence, their mood and definitive features of their personality. This makes stylized art a very effective tool for portraying characters in the game development industry.

Another appeal for game developers is that stylized character design does not age quick - in fact, an original art style of some games can live for ages and never get outdated. And this is the key advantage of a stylized art. While realism strives to achieve the highest level of detail possible with the currently available technological tools, it becomes inevitably outdated once the technology leaps forward. Even if the realistic character is made by the best of the artists, in a few years it would likely begin looking "aged" since players get used to the further advanced graphics of the moment. For example, the realistic graphics of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City arguably look older nowadays than the stylized graphics of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and both games were released in 2002.

‍

The challenges of designing 2D stylized characters

Creating a stylized character is about playing with shapes and textures, and adding or removing details to achieve a certain look and feel. This presents a different set of challenges compared to designing a realistic character. On one hand, realistic designs normally require more source material to ensure that the result is realistic enough to be believable. On the other hand, designing a stylized character usually requires more creativity from the artist, especially if we talk about concepting stage of the pipeline. While realistic-looking characters might seem more difficult to make or look more "expensive", the almost infinite artistic possibilities of creating a stylized character mean that the artist has to be skilled enough (or there should be a strong 2D art lead giving the directions) to make the right creative decisions. 

Given these possibilities, an issue that can easily appear in games with stylized graphics is a lack of consistency: by being able to stray away from realism, it's easy to get out of control and end up with a collage of characters whose designs don't mesh well together. Ultimately this can lead to breaking the immersion of the player. To avoid this, a good practice is to design an Art Guideline or an Art Bible as some call it. Thinking and writing down in advance the approximate look we want to achieve for that character and checking our notes through the creative process will help us stay on track. First planning on a vision and then executing it will give us better results than improvising on the fly. This allows not only to adhere to the unified art direction, but also to design stylized characters in a larger scale - by having many artists working simultaneously on various assets.

‍

Creating Stylized Characters in RocketBrush Studio

In the end, all the artistic choices in a game boil down to the question: "What do we want the game to feel like?". Sometimes the answer is "like real life", but many times in video games that's not what we want to achieve.  In this case, stylized graphics can depict the essence of the fictional world and its characters better than realism ever could. In RocketBrush Studio, we have 6 years of experience designing stylized characters for mobile games. There is a strong team of 2D artists and an experienced art leads that help us achieve the needed level of stylization and convey the original feel of the character required by the project. Reach out to us if your game project required designing stylized characters – we'll be happy to help! 

See also: 3D Stylized Character Design & Art

‍