Mobile game art is acquired from the roots of PC and console games. Initially, when games were pushed for mobiles, many restrictions like low powered interface, thumb-sized screen, less memory, etc. stood as a barrier between mobile game developers and high quality games. These barriers boosted up the creativity of developers which resulted into representation of new ways of thinking for art in mobile games. The mobile has triggered a total renaissance in game art design and various method (new and old) are being employed to get aesthetically pleasing experience.
Let us go through some hot and ongoing form of game art development in the market for mobile.
Low poly Art:
Low poly art is all about creating 3d models using low number of polygons. It is a today’s design trend. In low poly art, designers represent first a polygon mesh of a model in 3d graphics, minimizing the number of polygons by using sharp surfaces with geometrical shapes, and at the end, beautifying the model with interesting textures and colours, to make them look real. If we see it technically, reducing the number of polygons in a mesh does give the model a soothing effect, but if we look artistic wise, Low poly is something more than that.
Pixel Art:
Pixel art refers to placement of pixels to create a sprite and fill it with limited palette of colours. Pixel is 2d art. If you are the one grew up playing the games from Nintendo, you will better understand how a model made in pixel art looks like. The character in Nintendo is a 2d character looks like made of so many legos and doesn’t seem real like we see in today’s game.
Cardboard Art
Anything which is made up of cardboard is a cardboard art. Cardboard art is far away from realism. It doesn’t seem real, no matter how much you try to make it. Cardboard art is used to make the objects look unreal. Today in games, it is used in rare cases. You might find some light brown coloured objects look like made up of cardboard. You can combine low poly art with cardboard art to create a cardboard object for mobile games. It’s simply work like you can make mesh of any object and fill cardboard colours in it to make it look like made of cardboard.
Voxels
Voxel is a three-dimensional cube used to create objects for virtual world. It is also considered as an amalgamation of “volume” and “pixel”. In gaming world, Voxel is known as the pixel art of 3d games. So, basically voxel is a depth of pixels. Objects with voxel art are made up of hundreds or thousands of cubes. Minecraft is a great example to illustrate the objects of voxel art. To sum up Voxels can be defined as basic 3D models with pixelated textures.
Programmatic art
Programmatic art is not used to create an object, model, or any environment. It is used to create effects of any object like the sparkle arises when the bomb blasts. Bomb is an object. When this object blasts, it creates the yellow or orange coloured sparkles. Those effects are programmatic arts. Bombs are also there in your favourite game Candy Crush Saga. On exchanging it with a candy, a sparkle arises destroying other candies of same colour. That sparkle is most likely a form of programmatic art. Today, game engines are preloaded with programmatic art, so one can easily create such effects in its games. But if you are not satisfied with preloaded effects of programmatic art in your game engine, you can create your own if you are an Open GL expert.
With these trendy mobile game art styles, creating models for games has become a more fun for game developers. These trendy styles are just a new way of applying old techniques. Models were also created for PC and consoles; today, they are created for mobile games where openness gives a big space for innovation.
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