Best art styles for a juicy mobile gameplay

Hello,
After finishing most of the prototype of my game, I am planning the art phase, since don't know much about it, I was wondering if anyone could suggest some game art suitable for a mobile game with a cartoonish theme, but at the same time won't affect the gameplay too much.

Some details about the game:
-Characters and some props(like guns,trees..) will be 3D. mountains,cliffs etc (background geenrally) are 2D.
-Fast paced, basically an FPS but with just few enemies and a fix camera (only looking forward ).
-Cartoonish style, most of the characters won't be humanoid (animals/moving plants..).
-I need the gameplay to be very juicy (FX for almost every player movement) and colorful (Slime rancher is a close example to what I am trying to achieve)

Thank you

 

Low Poly?

 

That was the first one I thought about too, but I am not sure if it will look good with many fx and fast gameplay..

 

Here is my low poly with cel shading:


You can definitely make it even better.

 

One thing I've learned (or thinik I've learned) about art is that, it doesn't come together until you force it to.

What I mean is, you can't go into it half ass. You gotta use the full-ass, as they say. This doesn't mean that you cannot experiment and discover a style organically, but you have to understand that it's really not going to look good until you bring it all together at the very end. You have to trust in your process of adding layers and layers of polish. So long as the basic foundation is straight, that's all there is to it. Just putting in the time.

I say this just in response to, "I don't think low poly would work cause its gotta be fast." But of course it can work, so long as you are willing to put in the time to make it work. No matter what art style you choose, its gonna look like kaka for a long time. This discourages people a lot of times and they quit too early -- that's why I mention this at all.

Art is art, it's not programming or science. It really just takes a lot of trial and error. You can of course speed things up by copying others... but if you wanna make a fast paced low poly game, there really is no rules. I'm sure you can make it work. And find plenty of examples of games that have already done so. Like PS2 games. Okami comes to mind.

 

@II_Spoon_II
I'd say a cartoony art style, might suit that game.
Cartoony looking 3d character models, with cartoony coloured textures.
If you want, maybe a cartoony cel shaded look, might work too.

 

Thanks! I have no experience with this kind of art tho, can you tell me how it will perform on a mobile? Any games that use it if you already have something on your mind please?

 

Thanks, really appreciate the explanation , and Okami is a very encouraging example, I will discuss details with th artist I am working with

 

T

This looks so good, really well done, I didn't about the cel shading but now that you mentionned it I really like it's look, Thank you for your valuable feedback

 

@II_Spoon_II The question is...will you do the art yourself or you will contract another to do the Art for you?
I will be more concerned about this than "style" if there is just code with ui and gameplay or fx working. Because you can try to inspire yourself in another game, but as another user noted, Art will take layer after layer after layer and too many iterations until it looks something different than kaka. @BIGTIMEMASTER Haha. That was a good one.

@Volcanicus WOAH! Unique.

Show some gameplay!

 

I am not much of an artist, I am noob at it, I was planning on giving it a shot, if the models I come up with don't satisfy me I would have had clearer ideas of what I want and then I will be looking for an artist to hire, I've starting saving the money for that matter, even tho I am not quite sure how much it will cost me.

 

The Art for a game can cost from usd5 up to usd50 or more per hour, it will depend on the artist skill.
Maybe you need to prepare a GDD to describe the Art you really want first or have stable references
for the Artist to work on them. You need to tackle step by step: UI, Character Design, Props, Locations,
Backgrounds, Animations, Inventory. You can even start a Sketchbook with your ideas on paper.
Like building a house. Attach to this Sketchbook (or inside a Folder on your computer) pictures
for everything game related. This will gain you time of the Artist (even if you do it yourself).

You can use free assets too, as long as you credit and ask for permission. That will move you
forward.

If you go the 3D path, free assets can help, but they will need to be reworked for the platform
and hardware you're aiming for, retopologization, poly budget, texture atlasing, skinning, rigging. You will need 3d Max license or Blender it's free. You will need more hardware for 3D game than for a 2D game.

If you go the 2D path, then you can do it Pixel Art or Cartoon, you can use Gimp it's free
or Photoshop License.

About Art, there are free books from Andrew Loomis on the net that can Start Up
your drawing and painting skills. Even for 3D or 2D you will need Concept Art
or some system with pictures to have as stable reference, for example: this is the Dragon
or the Orc i want to look like.

It just takes time and practice, references and resources.

You can put an AD inside Upwork, Unity Connect looking for an Artist Rev-Share.
Or you can ask inside DeviantArt (or other site with Artists freelance) for quotations.

To do it yourself and to have an appealing product, you really need to know what
you are doing if you never did art before.

This looks juicy and you can use it as a base it seems:
https://opengameart.org/content/voxel-town-pack-lite

Anyway, you need to be IN LOVE with the Style you will do
because it takes too much but tooooooo much time to do it,
even contracting a part time artist.

Lol, what a wall of text it's to do art.

And, what about the MUSIC? That will help you decide what style you want.

 

Sorry for my delay, I couldn't log in any earlier.
Thank you for you valuable response, really cleares alot of things out, I decided to go for a low poly look since I already had some environement assets, I decided to use existing ones because the camera have a small angle look and just repetetive props on the street side, I modified them to reduce thei performance cost, and even used some 2D props that matched well with the low poly.

Mainly I don't have any "hero" charcater, the player will be seeing the game from a FPS camera view which reduces the high cost for creating a main character and his different styles. On the other hand I will need a dozen of ennemies for the different levels (if not more). And different variations for the player's main weapon.

I made most of the sketches, still need to work on the UI and inventory, store...

I am planning to send the artist the scene I've already creates with the existing prefabs to give him a better idea of what I want to achieve.

For the music, I wanna add an adventures theme, nothing loud, and some liquid like sound FX, but still no clear ideas

 

Sounds good! Keep it up!

 

Art can be expensive, and if you don't have super clear vision for what you need that could be dangerous (i.e. you may end up blowing money).

I think with a good grasp of key art fundamentals and the basics of a few 3d apps almost anybody can make appealing art with some practice. Not great art, but okay art that gets the job done. If you got the right attitude you gonna have a ton of fun with it too. Especially if you spend a lot of time fussing with frustrating technical problems, it can be nice to just sit back and have fun banging out some art.

Marco Bucci has youtube channel with very in depth but easy to understand introduction to fundamentals of art. Main things you'd want to be interested in is composition, color theory, shape theory, lighting, and also how these might have specific application in games.

Even if you not an artist, if you're designing a game it's good stuff to have an idea about as it's one of the main ways you communicate with player.

 

@II_Spoon_II
Sorry I took so long to reply.

That all depends, on the polygon count of your 3d objects, and less about artstyle.
And the shaders that you use, on your 3d models too.

If the characters in the game, have too many polys/polygons, it could slow down the game. So I'd say as a starting point, to make the characters and some objects, with about 1000, or 2000 quads/polys each.

After making them, put them in a test game scene, and if you can have many of those objects and the mobile game doesn't slowdown, that is good news, and you might probably be able, to raise the polycount of your cartoon characters and objects.

Note: This takes a bit of trial and error to, but all of that, is part of making a game properly.

 

Thank you for the recommondation, the videos are really interesting, I guess I will try to do as you said, I am gonna stop the programming for some time and start the art (since I don't have the time for both because of college).

 

I just discovered some shader techniques, they really do make a difference. About the cartoony art style, can you please reference an example? an image or a game?

 

Okay. There are so many different types, of cartoony artstyles.
Here are a few examples:

Jet Set Radio aka Jet Grind radio
Legend of Zelda Wind Waker
Animal crossing ( Nintendo gamecube)
Viewtiful Joe (gamecube)
Evolution: World of Sacred Device
Evolution 2: Far off Promise
Guilty Gear Xrd
Virtua Fighter Kids

 

@II_Spoon_II
I hope you accomplished your goal, with the cartoony art style thing.
Good luck!

 

Yeah actually I've started learning some art, even if it's hard to do with school tasks

 

That's very good. You'll be surprised, at how good you'll get at art, as the months fly by. I know from personal experience, because I went through that same process myself. And now, I can draw and do 3d modelling, really well.

 

Thanks for the motivation, it is really helpful, I appreciate the advices

 

Yeah. No probs! Glad I could help.