Developing a visual style
Welcome back!
The more I think about the tone and atmosphere of this game, the more I realize just how important it is to have a visual style that separates your game world from everyone else’s. A lot of elements go into creating a unique interactive experience, such as narrative and gameplay, but it’s the visual style that predominantly sets the tone and atmosphere of a game. Music plays a huge part, too and I plan on having a fairly robust set of tunes that reinforce the themes presented in the game.
A distinctive use of colour is definitely at the forefront of my mind as I draw up backgrounds and characters. I want the colours to mean something to the player, but in a thought-provoking way. It’s amazing how colours can be used to provoke or guide people through an experience. A few games come to mind when I think of colour specifically:
Killer7 by Capcom (GCN/PS2)
Not to forget Patapon, LocoRoco, Fallout 3 etc. etc.
Tags: colour, tone, visual style
May 13th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Don’t forget Team Fortress 2’s rather interesting style.
It was because of that unique style that I ended up giving it a go, so you might be on to something for at least attracting people to the game.
Then you’ve just got to focus on keeping them playing once they’ve started
May 13th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Yeah, Team Fortress has a wicked style, as proven by the amount of imitators such as Battlefield Heroes - although they prefer to say they’re copying Pixar
May 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Hey Lloyd I just thought I’d jump on your site and see what’s going on. Here’s my 2 cents on the topic, with a game like Team Fortress 2, using a stylised graphic style like that not only makes it appear personalised, but it’s also a cool way of helping the game run on lower end PCs. The simpler graphic style is rich and full of flavour, and it’s also easier for computers to process, equalling less lag and it runs on more computers. A few games implement this well, ie WoW.
So how’s it all going mate, I’m still in the UK, living in Edinburgh for the next few months, strangely enough, I live right next door to Rockstar North! Ha Ha. I’ll be back in Australia come November ish, I’ll need to have a few pints, tell you all the stories.
Catch ya’
Sandy
May 28th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Ha awesome. Did you walk into the Rockstar offices and shout, “No, I’M the sandbox!” and run away? That would’ve been excellent. Hope you’re having the happy times. Cya around November!
July 6th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Hello, can you please post some more information on this topic? I would like to read more.