Low poly is a technique, originated for creating 3d models, objects and scenes for mobile games, in order to make them look real. Low poly art is comparable to what a mobile game player is expecting from its mobile game like a real looking environment, characters, objects and much more. But how this low poly art actually gives a real shape to all things? No matter whether it’s a model, tree, water, clouds, mountains or any other object, low poly easily replicate them in animations.
Let’s take a brief look on the major factors that affect low-poly art and the basic art types that are churned out in common. If you are new to low poly art this post should be quite helpful.
Factors:
Shapes: Low poly uses various forms of shapes including triangular, rectangular, square, cylindrical, etc. The most commonly used by app developers is a triangular shape. It’s possible as well as extremely easy for developers to control the size of the shapes and their distribution in low poly art.
image by Sicaida http://sicaida.deviantart.com/art/Low-Poly-Planet-339431107
Colours: Low poly object is a collection of polygons in a well-defined shape that can be coloured in different manners to visualize the object better. Colours add realism to any character or an object. For low poly which uses a minimum number of polygons, in order to create an object compatible with mobile devices, colour is a crucial component. Most of low poly art is filled with bright colours which play a crucial role to make it look and feel real. Colour selection depends on the choice of the artist.
Image by Vitality Prusakov http://www.digitalartserved.com/gallery/Low-poly/10678293
Lights: Low poly art relies heavily on lighting. Light from specific directions are used to illuminate and exaggerate the game environment. Since low poly does not have a realism, light comes as a great tool to draw the attention otherwise. Just like instagram effects, which are enjoyable but not realistic-low poly art does that with lighting and colour.
Image by Will Zhang
Basic art types :
Faces: A face consists two eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, cheeks, chin, head, and hair. If the face is stylish, it will add some extra components like earrings, cap, etc. Artists can differentiate various parts of the faces and their colours as well in low poly. For instance, a nose is small in size while cheeks are big; one can use small-sized polygons for nose while big sized polygons for cheeks. Regarding colours, low poly has an endless choice. Artist is free to choose different colours for hair, skin, eyes and even a different colour for the iris.
Trees and Vegetation: Depending on the shape of trees, leaves, grass and other vegetation, an artist can form numerous structures. A straight trunk of a tree with a cylindrical shape of a polygon, a bent trunk by reshaping the mesh, creating leaves by using bigger or smaller shaped polygons, etc. Likewise, a whole environment can be created with a few numbers of polygons for each object.
Image by GforGannon http://gforgannon.deviantart.com/art/Low-Poly-Tree-334877892
Landscape & Water: Combining low poly pieces with the water and you get a fantastic landscape. Polygons with the mixture of light blue and white colour forms a perfect shape of water that looks real and breathtaking. On other side, a landscape can be a mixture of many objects including mountain, water, waterfall, trees, routes, snow, grass, clouds, etc. Landscape also depends on the season and time like mid time, day time, winter, monsoon, etc. Low poly has numerous colours as well as special effects for different types of landscapes with seasonal waves.
Conclusion
These days, low poly art and its illustrations is a hot trend. Developers find it interesting to triangulate the mesh in low poly. Beginners as well as experts have put their amazing low poly game art development on web to show how far it has gone and how far it can go with the extreme feel of realism within the environment created under the low poly art.
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