Stylized game art has also changed because of these new allowances in technology. From being limited with low-poly and solely using diffuse map inputs only, to pushing high polycounts and access to shaders and materials, stylization can now flourish.

The methods might seem similar, but due to the loss of restrictions their end results now truly differ. The significant difference between realism and stylized is that with realism you are restricted to making things look ‘real’ while enhancing their visual language. With stylized you are free to play with the shapes and colors, exaggerate or remove details to enhance the look and feel in any direction. Doing so with realism would break the illusion of reality as it wouldn’t be viewed as what we perceive to be as ‘realistic’, it would not belong in our world.

In conclusion, you could argue that realism is a stylisation in of itself and that nothing is truly realistic, but manufactured to appear realistic within today’s technological limitations.

Challenges of creating stylized graphics

The challenge of stylized game art is conveying to the player what the assets, environment, and characters are typical with fewer details and put emphasis on the shape, color and form. Everyone knows what a birch tree looks like, you have probably seen one in real life, a movie or a photo. You can only imagine what a stylized birch tree could look like and this will vary widely depending on the pursued style and artist.

Stylization refers to a visual depiction, which represents an object without a full attempt and accurate representation of an object’s realistic appearance. This can include simplifications in shape, lines, color, pattern, surface details, functionality and relationship to other objects in a scene. Which is why stylization is most commonly used to describe an art style that has more cartoony features than a semi-realistic style that usually adheres to realism in details rather than simplifications. As stylized graphic are so varied, there’s no single set of guidelines in creating an art style for games. I divide stylized game art into two categories: Over-exaggerated stylization and Minimalistic stylization.