Art style - which way should I go?

[Phil Steinmeyer]

http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/images/banana_bay_art.htm

Realistic (images 1 and 3)
or
Cartoony (images 2 and 4)

[lennard]

normally I'd go with hand rendered (in fact we are pondering this on a game in a dev. here right now and will probably go hand rendered) but the not quite realistic palm tree and dialog are pretty cool.

[Nexic]

The realistic palm tree looks better than the hand drawn, but the hand drawn menu beats the realistic menu. Overall I'd go with hand drawn.

[impossible]

I like the realistic background and pieces more, and the cartoony dialog. A realistic dialog with the same shape as the cartoony one (not square) would be nice.

[Cartman]

I like them both, but I'd go with the cartoon look. To me it seems more inviting and fun.

[Geom]

I like the realistic dialog - it's prettier - but if you could make it's shape wavy like the cartoon one, that'd be even better.

For the gameboard, I like the realistic one. Maybe if you made just the game tiles more cartoon-ish (while letting the contained icons stay realistic) it would give the overall screen a slightly lighter mood?

Geom

[Bmc]

i say cartoony all the way

[Greg Squire]

another vote for cartoony. I prefer that style in most casual games.

[Tom Gilleland]

Cartoony would be more unique.

Tom

[Daire Quinlan]

totally cartoony all the way.
The realistic stuff looks .. bland ?
the cartoony stuff is distinctive, has a nice look to it.

D.

[Larry Hastings]

Cartoony! And, isn't there a "poll" option on this board?

[Christian]

Cartoony. It gives you more freedom to play with it, wich goes well with your kind of game wich is not realistic simulation, but an abstraction, just like cartoons are.

[mooktown]

for me, I found the realistic one a shock when it loaded up, it is the best looking graphics ive seen in a casual game. Nice.

Then when I saw the cartoon shaded one I found it hard to focus on the board, as the black outlines of the tree were fighting for my attention, making it harder for me to see the board and the menu buttons.

Everyone has their own tastes but I cant believe everyone else prefers the cartoon shaded one, are you guys trying to nobble phil?

[Midnight Synergy]

I think the cartoon look is more "complete", i.e. the various pieces fit together well - and hence the whole looks better.

I like the realistic background quite a bit, but the foreground (e.g. the playing field) doesn't quite seem to match the graphical style.

[Christian]

We are talking about styles only, im sure he will retouch those other things when he decides what style he is going to use.
Also that cartoony doesnt look real cartoony, its like a very good blend between cartoon and realist, wich im sure he is going to fix too, these are just too see the effect im sure. There is a lot to be done.

[papillon]

strangely, to me, the 'realistic' one looked cheap and bad. it reminded me of very very old shareware mahjong games that relied on photography rather than artwork. This connection might not occur to modern casual game players who didn't play shareware mahjong games ten years ago, though :)

[Sean Doherty]

Cartoon based on your samples.

[soniCron]

The cartoon pieces and menu look better, and the realistic back looks better. Overall, however, my vote is with the realistic one. It's more mature and more soothing -- two things I think your audience would appreciate.

[Sybixsus]

I agree with Papillon, it had exactly the same connection with me, as games that use photographs or highly realistic art often do. The game board, pieces and background are much prettier on the cartoon version. I marginally prefer the realistic menu, but there's so little in it, that I would have to vote Cartoon overall, by a large margin.

[svero]

I dont think either variety of graphics here will be a huge draw or turn off. It'll come down to how well the game plays. Personal preference is for the more realistic in this case, but if you really want to catch people's eye with graphics, you probabaly need something a lot more stylized. Both these images fall into the cateogory of solid, won't hurt the games sales, but nothing to write home about.

[svero]

One small note though. If you do go cartoon try not to make it childish-cartoon looking. These sorts of games aren't targeted at kids. I think that's a mistake and would hurt sales. (the shot doesnt look kid-aimed but UI graphics and other things might) That might be an argument for realistic overall. The problem with realism is that it tends to be harder to stylize that art so it has to be really really fantastic to stand out.

[JPGinLA]

Why on Earth are you asking these people?

Ask customers who purchased and enjoyed your other game.

-JPG

[soniCron]

Why on Earth are you asking these people? He's not asking for our preferences, he's asking for our professional opinions. :)

[Alex Hanson-White]

image 1:
It's a nice approach, but I felt it was hard to focus on the actual game area. One thing which was probably the cause of this distraction is way the leaves on the left palmtree fans out like a star, this effect cause your eye to get pulled into it's center due to all the lines moving towards that location.
It seems a bit blurry as well. If the style were more crisp, I'd like it more.

image 2:
I think this image is stronger than the first. It is much easier to read and focus upon the game area. Things are clearly defined so that you may quickly recognize everything. I found this image to be more visually sound.

image 3:
I like this menu alot. The placement of everything seems great and balanced, yet there are some spots which seem blurry like the first image.

image 4:
The shape of the menu is great. Better than the 3rd image where it is just rectangular. But, I believe the black outlineing of everything is overwhelming and takes away from the image.

As for which style to go for.. I think you can go with either one. It's just the matter of optimizing one to be the best it can be.

[Polycount Productions]

Cartoony. (realistic is not bad, but Cartoony si sooooo nice)

[Ricardo C]

I vote for cartoony, but the background doesn't look cartoony, it looks like a realistic rendering put through a cel shading filter in Photoshop. It looks too realistic compared to the playing pieces.

[Glen Pawley]

I prefer the cartoony UI hands down. I'm a bit more torn on the backgrounds - I prefer the realistic one, but that could be because the cartoony background feels a bit quick and dirty.

[Sharpfish]

This almost 50/50 and combinations thereof voting is exactly why you should choose what YOU want to go with and what works best for you. It is obvious that both styles have merits.

I prefer "cartoony" in general but the cartoon backdrop looks a bit busy. The question is which (as the game's designer) do you prefer? Feeback is good but design-by-commitee sucks the personality out of a game in my opinion. Don't try and please everyone, know you are on to something right if there is no definite hatred towards one style and just go for it.

I do think developers just can't analyse things without bias or over-analysis so you really should show it to a bunch of strangers or casual game players and see if they take offence at either style. If the answer is still 50/50 then just go with which you prefer. :)

[Rubs]

I like the cartoony one a lot! Definitely vote for it. The realistic palm tree looks better because it is smaller and integrates in the bacghround more organically than the hand-drawn one. Making the cartoony palm smaller will fix the issue imho.

[Savant]

Why on Earth are you asking these people?
Bingo. Ask people who buy these sorts of games. Asking programmers their opinion on art work is not the best idea.

[Grey Alien]

yeah ask real customers.

Anyway, as a non-customer I say Releastic, maybe.

[Mr.Blaub]

I like the cartoony menu, more because it's not a perfect rectangle than anything else. I also like the cartoony background, but the lines are too thick and are somewhat distracting. If you could lighten these up but keep the game board the same way it is, it'll be easier for people to focus on it.

For those of you who are finding it weird posting this question on a developer forum, we're not all just programmers.

[Christian]

Hey dont insult me! im not a programmer, im a graphic and game designer :mad:

Edit: well, in fact im also a programmer... im ashamed...

[svero]

But who are his customers anyway? I mean he could ask people that bought his last game and it was cartoony so maybe they like cartoony. Does that mean the last game wouldnt have sold 50% or 200% more if he'd made it realistic? Maybe the cartoony group of customers that bought the last game are the worse possible people to ask. All this trying to predict what customers want is kind of crap anyway. Some people have a radar for it and some don't. Just make the best game you possibly can. Something that's worth owning, and then hope you vision corresponds with an audience. IMHO trying to design by comittee whether it be peers or target audiences leads to blander less interesting, less marketable work.

[Christian]

I think that if he is asking, its because he needs the help... i would prefer that he takes his own decitions... but i also thinks because he lack the knowledge to be sure to take the right decition... and the only thing we can do is help i guess.

[Sharpfish]

The question is which (as the game's designer) do you prefer? Feeback is good but design-by-commitee sucks the personality out of a game in my opinion.

IMHO trying to design by comittee whether it be peers or target audiences leads to blander less interesting, less marketable work.

This shows 1 of 3 things to me:

1. Svero and I think alike (that is "great minds" ;) )
2. Svero saw my original point and wanted to re-emphasise it!

or... the hot favourite:
3. Svero has me on *IGNORE* or doesn't bother to read my posts ;)

Vote now!

[svero]

I probably did read your post a few days ago and maybe that is where the phrase came from out of the subconcious memory of my mind. But I wasnt purposely re-emphasising your point.. although I think it's probably true. Thing about professional opinions though.. I mean sometimes it is logically possible to work things out. If you make a game with kid art to sell to adults.. does that make sense? I mean.. its possible outside of subjective artistic opinions to be swayed by reason. The argument may be wrong but at least you have something there to weigh that isnt just .. I dont like the colors or some such.

[Phil Steinmeyer]

I may be throwing too many things out there (design-wise) for the world to comment on. So be it. That doesn't mean everything I put out there comes down to majority vote of those who respond. For instance, the game mechanic is not the one that was the most popular from my prototypes of a couple weeks ago, but the 2nd or 3rd (depending on how you count).

That said, I do think public feedback is helpful (but not decisive) for issues like this. Like some (many?) of you, I'm working in a very isolated environment - just myself coding away in a spare bedroom, with no other physical game community around to speak of. When it comes to aesthetic judgments, I certainly have my own, but soliciting others' opinions is both a way to validate that I'm not on the edge of the bell curve on some of these, and also a way to get interesting ideas for improvements (various suggestions about integrating different aspects of the art approaches, people pointing out why this one or that one is a little shaky, and thus suggesting how to improve it, etc.)

In the end, of course I'll make my own decisions. And yes, I have my ideas as to both what I like (easy to discern), and what the market likes (harder to discern). I'd love to be able to do these polls against an audience perfectly representative of the casual game market (i.e. ~60% women, older, etc), but that's not possible - I don't have a communication channel to that market. Still, there is value in seeing if a large community of people reacts positively or negatively to something.

How many times have you seen a game come out that is about 80% of the way there, and the developer just made a small number of seemingly glaring (yet simple) design errors, that everyone else complains about? All of us, as individuals, have a degree of tunnel vision. In the absence of a work environment with a bunch of colleagues that I can bounce ideas off of, I'll try the same with various virtual communities, including this one.

Finally, I'm not out to design a cartoony game, a kids game, or anything else. I want to make a fun game, that hopefully sells well. There are secondary considerations with regard to the art - how long will the various styles take to produce? What secondary licensing costs will be involved? etc. But I can combine both my perception of how good the two approaches are likely to turn out (i.e. my own opinion, modified by the input I've received), with cost and production issues, to make what is hopefully the best decision.