Style Will Be More Important Than Polish

In the late 1800’s, the camera was invented. If you study art history, you’ll see that the moment this happened, the art world exploded with some of the best artists the world has ever scene: Van Gogh, Monet, Kalinsky, Picasso, Braque, and Dali. All of these artist pushed way past the boundaries of realistic rendering and explored expressionistic style. Essentially, they expressed their feelings, their immediacy, their humanity.

For centuries, to that point in time of the camera, the art world was primarily focused on capturing realism (unless you go way back to the ancient times of the Maya, Polynesians, Egyptians, or earlier where symbolism reigned). The Renaissance gave us blockbuster, epic depictions of the human form and stories of the gods. And by using advances in understanding perspective, shading, color creation techniques (blue was always the most sought after and rare color during this time) artists stove for realism.

To render realism was to be the master artist.

I see a parallel with computer graphics. Since its inception, we’ve pushed towards realism and have fallen in love with the illusion that is created as special effects in movies and now, with amazing advances in real time rendering, photorealistic game graphics. For most of my career as a 3d artist, to be able to capture realism has always been the measuring stick by which you knew your craft and has the most income opportunities, likely because the audience wants the graphics to feel real.

Unlike the moment of the camera invention, computer graphics has had a diminishing experiential curve towards photorealism, so there really hasn’t been a clear moment for realism in CG to be out like yesterday’s news. Instead, it’s been a gradual cross dissolve that the market has been deciding, and especially in the last couple of years.

With game engines becoming more powerful, 3d tools like Blender being free and incredibly powerful, and all the know how you can ever need available for free via YouTube, it’s easier than ever to achieve what was just a decade ago or two ago as a pipe dream.

But if there is a shot heard around the world these days, it’s AI.

AI can render virtually anything photo realistically, though obviously not usable 3d models, but can produce amazing concept art. This tool will allow us to explore more interesting ideas faster, and will give more ideas confidence as AI can create a wacky idea in a way that seems plausible, leading to pour water over those that say “I know it when I see it” when picking projects to fund or green light.

But there’s one thing that all this technology and AI doesn’t have: the human touch. Like the impressionist who purposely had loose brush strokes to capture the immediacy and flair of the moment the artist expressed, audiences will crave the human connection, warts and all. In fact, “bad” art might become refreshing and even more popular than polished, realistic art that AAA studios have centered on since the 90s.

The problem for those AAA studios is that it’s really hard for an entire art team to have a consistent style that is not realism nor is it financially plausible to risk an outlandish style such as seen in indie hits like Lethal Company. Maybe it was a happy accident, maybe it was what the artist on that game could muster, but I can never see a AAA studio agree and champion putting a style like that behind a $20m game project.

I’ve seen players say Starfield is soulless and it could be because it’s a team of veteran professionals who have spent the last 20 years perfecting that realistic style of the big box retail games only to find that they are out of fashion. Like the big hair bands of the 80s that went the way of the dinosaur when Nirvana’s Nevermind was released, style might become more and more critical to establishing that human connection and actually feel something that the artists pushed to express.