Wednesday 10 December 2014

What new game artist's can learn from old



The visual component of games exists in a very special place compared to other visual mediums. While most art exists with no limitations all of the art in games are limited by the technology of the time. A very interesting dynamic comes into play because of this, because while in normal art mediums perfection is absurd because of the infinite possibilities, the artificial ceiling on game art means that while no game can be visually perfect, it can be the perfect game for the specifications, giving the illusion of perfection.

To achieve this perfection, the artist needs to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the machines they work with, making it a blend of art and science. And only once a generation of hardware has been left behind and all creative avenues exhausted, will the strongest works be clear. An obvious example of this is the style of pixel art; when games were in their infancy and artist could not work in detail, and had to convey the visuals through large blocks of colour. In this article I'm going to focus on a different piece of hardware however: the Dreamcast. And the art: JET SET RADIOOOOOOO!!!




The Game

At Tokyo Game Show 1999, Jet Set Radio was revealed to the world. It was a game about the Japanese punk scene that where players fought for control over Tokyo by spraying graffiti and doing cool tricks with their electric Rollerblades. It was vibrant, lively and made you feel cool. It told the story of a small kid gang expressing themselves in the face of oppression from the literal fun police and presented the protagonists it such a way that you couldn't help but empathize with. And before you knew it you were tagging territory and back-flipping over riot police in the craziest future.

So with this high energy story to tell the question remains, how did they pull it off visually?

The Specs

The Sega was released just after the  dawn of 3D for consoles. There had been alot of stumbling before it in the older consoles, but it was still fairly technically stunted. There was a low amount of polygons in models and this meant smooth surfaces weren't quite there (though developers would definitely try and fail on the xbox and playstation 2). But after years of work in 3 dimensions one thing was clear: you could put alot of bright colours on the screen and big triangles.

The Process



The character concept
So with that knowledge the artist's of Jet Set Radio set about the task of translating their punk style to fit the tools they had to display it. They made very deliberate decisions about each edge and face of the models, and used large blocks of colour to distinguish features, much like the days of pixels. They had the luxury of scale with models though this time thanks to higher resolutions, and so characters didn't undergo spatial deformations. In fact artist liberated by the polygonal style contorted their characters to  possess gangly legs and arms so as to convey the athleticism of the characters.














The character in game. Note the cel-shading rendering technique.



























The one liberty they took was in the lighting department. They used some smart rendering techniques to pull off cel-shading, I style of lighting commonly used in animation. This was one of the smartest choices they made in their work, because once people were viewing the art through this lense, they unconsciously disconnected it from reality and stopped making that impossible comparison. Now it was only viewed relative to other animation.

The Results
All these different factors blended to make an art style that stood tallest in its medium and perfectly fitted the music and culture it was trying to portray. If you're into games at all you should check this out; it's cheap its fun and it's visuals are so well tailored to the limits of its time that it still looks great.

If you're interested in picking the game up it can be purchased and downloaded via the Steam game distribution service here. Tell me what you think about it, or any other games that work well within their limits.

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