This week I found an incredibly helpful video by game developer Ryan Stevenson who talked at a Game Developer’s Conference on how the team approached creating a style for their newest game Sea of Thieves. The video goes over many different parts of the design/thought process. Ryan emphasizes the importance of research, references, and concept art so you don’t start creating things blind. He also recommends looking at others work not to steal their style but to try to understand why they did things the way they did (how they use lighting and color for example).
He also mentioned that they chose a more stylized aesthetic instead of a realistic one because those are the ones that tend to hold up better. I couldn’t agree more. While realistic and hyper-realistic games are impressive, it wasn’t really until this console generation that the hardware was powerful enough to handle such detailed models. Even then only AAA companies can afford to spend so much money to make these pricy games. Older games that were “realistic” have aged poorly aesthetically and this is something I want to avoid.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lied to myself and thought I could create something blind without nailing down concept art and a script/storyboard. I agree with Ryan wholeheartedly!! Spend some extra time really fleshing everything out before you go into a more technical frame of thinking when you’re coding everything. I also agree with your style of choice, the only reason why I aimed for a photorealistic feel was because I had an interest in being a VFX artist for films, otherwise I probably would’ve opted for a more stylized look and made it my own. But this is an awesome opportunity to develop your own personal artistic style (if you don’t have one already) and have this project speak for you. I doodled and sketched out a lot of my environments before I started modeling so if you have some extra time throughout the day, start drawing out some of your ideas. It doesn’t matter if you wont use them in the end, every drawing is a stepping stone to that big breakthrough!