Tierlisting ARTSTYLES for indie games

[@drewskt1]

This one should be on a 2 axis tier list Visual appeal vs technical difficulty

[@marielcarey4288]

I want to see this

[@SharpDressedBear]

It's really cool to see another member of the Bite Me team! She did an awesome job and it's really interesting to hear some of the more technical details about art styles broken down (as it's not at all my background)

[@digineet8421]

She’s also hilarious “oh my god you just explained drawing” got me

[@lowellcamp3267]

I think anime style is a really interesting mixed bag. Doing 3D anime-style characters that look 2D is mind-bogglingly difficult. Similarly, hand-drawn animated sprites are super difficult for indies by virtue of the sheer number of sprites required. However, anime backgrounds are often a kind of “exaggerated PBR” oil painting style. This means that you can often get away with using premade realistic stuff for much of your (hard-surface) background assets, brush some extra contrast onto the corners, and maybe run it through a filter.

[@mandisaw]

This. Watching/reading articles on how Mihoyo did Genshin & Honkai, or how Intelligent Systems (et al) did Fire Emblem Engage, really makes your brain bleed considering how complex their shaders are and how tightly integrated their design, programming, and tech artist teams had to be. Also because that style is so region-specific, most of the good tutorials, panels, and graphics libraries/plugins are documented in Japanese (or in some cases, Korean or Chinese [Simplified / Mandarin VO]). Engage's eye shader alone had like 10+ fields, and drew gender-specific output 😭 Even if you buy generic anime character models off the Store, you definitely need your tech-art game on lock to make it work.

[@flymacseamus3474]

Alexandra looks very comfortable in front of a camera, pretty impressive for an intern !!!

[@Nefelibatacomingthrough]

Confident about her craft. Great quality in a person!

[@Zizaco]

It was interesting to see the discussion of "easy to make/mix assets vs marketability". It would be awesome to see other themes being covered through this same lens

[@cheesymcnuggets]

Hand drawn art is definitely the one and only S-tier imo

[@bitemegames]

In terms of looks, maybe, but in terms of being able to make the assets in a efficient, cost effective way, not as much, which is why we didn't put it at S -M

[@Soturi_the_paladin]

S tier look - F tier easiness

[@thebeangod7752]

​@@Soturi_the_paladin hand drawn gives the maker a lot of freedom. Some times its hard and sometimes it's easier

[@PutineluAlin]

Agreed it started with Hand drawn pixels very crude then it evolved from there, not in S tier is Bitemegames being overly critical and uneducated with the history of the subject. Art being subjective is a copout and it's artist speak to "I don't know the answer leave me alone." It's S tier because Don Bluth got involved and made an arcade game that stood out from the rest, it's a real swiss army knife of the art style. I could give 100 more reasons to why hand drawn is the goat but for simplicity I will only give this example, Disney.

[@iivan8730]

Until you have to animate sprite by sprite. Trust me, as someone that has always been better at 2d, animating in 3d is just so much easier

[@marnixwyns]

As I voxel art fan, I now know what it feels like to be construct 3 user.

[@monoinyo]

we construct devs are not used to all this attention and are glad to share the ire with the voxel community

[@mandisaw]

No shade to Marnix, but this was like your second-best tierlist ever - having an artist's POV vs "I suck at art LOL" was so illuminating! Stylized mid-poly is the way to go if you have the cash & patience to hunt for and/or commission assets, or the skills to do it in-house. Having some normal textures / simple PBR shaders adds so much more depth & nuance than flat-shaded low-poly, while still not being too taxing on the tech or art side, and [hopefully!] will make it better for marketing. My game is mostly handpainted mid-poly, with Store assets I've customized to match my palette & aesthetic. Lighting is still hard 😅 You can also "cheat" a little by going for gradient-palettes to liven up otherwise flat-color models - still experimenting with this, but it can work well for background environments, crowd-fill NPCs, etc. Great chemistry, welcome to the channel, Alexandra (yes you can curse here LOL)

[@bitemegames]

So, which one was the best then...? -M

[@mandisaw]

​@@bitemegames Features! Funny *and* super-useful, like this one 👍

[@BjornHegstad]

@@mandisaw make a Bite Me Tier List tier list :D

[@mandisaw]

@@BjornHegstad 😂😂 I think they need to make another dozen or so first, build up the pool

[@KhroMcKrakken]

I really liked this. Although I have to correct you. TellTale didn't go down because of their art style. They were notoriously bad at managing their finances. I've talked to some people who worked with them at Gearbox when they were doing Tales from the Borderlands. They were a mess. Hopefully the new TellTale will do a better job.

[@HE360]

I rank pixel art as A tier. I grew up playing the NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, and Arcades and yes, if those styles are done well, then it would draw us in and it was what made us want to buy and play many of those games or spend many quarters on them.

[@noname-zt2zk]

The amnt of artistic stuff that can be done with it is insane cuz it takes tiny amounts of memory and secondary textures like normal maps take little to no time

[@KuroNK]

The thing with voxels, and the reason as to why you don't see many games with voxel art is how difficult it is to make on the programming side. You have to make a LOT of optimization, and memory management, but when done right, the results are astonishing, and i don't mean minecraft like "voxel" i mean john lin voxel game type voxels. When people manage to make really small voxels it lends itself to a style that allows to simulate a lot of things, from real time water simulation, to particles and free form object breaking. All while maintaining a beautiful look, really the best option if you wanna make a sandbox game.

[@ElianeGameDev]

Hi Alexandra, it must be stressful to be exposed to the world like this in a video, so thanks a lot! You're doing amazing with Guild Architect, the game looks really cool!

[@dobrx6199]

Damn Marnix got replaced lmao

[@DeadStawker]

Well, the artist and the programmer were the right choices for this vid, I don't think Marnix was needed in this one.

[@ultimaxkom8728]

She's Marnix's split personality: Marnixy.

[@user-ky4hc1bx7s]

@@DestinedProductions simp

[@ceri1341]

Something that gets ignored a lot with the photoreal style is that sure there are tons of models and textures you can buy but your biggest hurdle is going to be character animation. We've all seen asset flips that look great up until you see a character moving and it suddenly falls apart entirely. The characters are stiff, they move in odd ways, are obviously using canned animations, the animations blend poorly, etc. Even big AAA games like the SH2 Remake were recently torn apart with similar criticism. And unless you have access to an animator/technical animator and a mocap studio, this is going to be a massive hurdle for anything except a walking sim.

[@mandisaw]

Generic humanoid animations are fine for locomotion and most "behaviors", what kills it are the facial animations. They are rig-specific, and many Store assets either have simple facial rigs, or no facial rig at all (maybe neck, jaw, L/R eye, and some not even that). The higher the human face's "resolution", the tighter our tolerance for what looks-good becomes, since of course we are all very familiar with how facial muscles, skin, eyes, etc work.

[@Jeroxia]

Yooo! Marnix grew a beard! Lets gooo!

[@webgr6352]

This tierlisting was different from the other ones somehow... As an indie game developer, I like your tierlistings, because they are giving us, to indie developers, a point of view probably we never thought of or missed it. But this tierlisting has a completely different perspective. Because all of your previous ones are like "Which one to choose if you want to make your first indie game", but this one is like "It can be difficult to make, but still have advantages". In my opinion, it can create misconceptions somehow... Don't take it as a negative commentary though, it shows us a different perspective, how the artists see things! I like it! (I am a developer without an artistic background to be clear)

[@dafff08]

ive spend roughly 1500 hours in blender and i still suck at coloring and lighting. i would say you dont really need high poly/quality assets as long you manage to make the things you work with look cohesive. nothing is a bigger deal breaker than having things that look odd or out of place. this can get especially infuriating when you know the scene looks not right, but you cant pin point what it is.

[@dest5218]

Bro...1500 hours?!?! I got scared when I saw that number lol. As someone who wants to start making indie games I've been doing some research and I'm wondering how hard would it be to animate? Like say a character holding a sword and slashing? Like is it difficult? Does it require a powerful computer?( I'm using a potato core i5 made in 2015-16). Is this something I should undertake or is it too much? Also there are no facial expressions and yeah I plan to use a Mixamo whenever I can. Any reply would be greatly appreciated ❤️

[@dafff08]

@dest5218 it depends. Computer wise if it can also play similar games you plan on making, it will be good enough to make them too. As for the 3d aspect. You will need to spend a decent amount of hours learning blender and 3d concepts just be able to get some basic adjustments done. As for the exporting and importing, prepare for headaches because there's a lot of jank and incompatibilities. When it comes to making use of animations, it depends on the engine. In Ue5 it takes some practice to use the states system, but once you understand it, it's pretty good.

[@bazyt1]

That was a fun one, great job! Also v difficult: art preferences vs programmer requirements vs marketability. Hand-drawn is fun to make, just draw it and scan it in (or use graphics tablet). Like you say, its timeless if done well. One advantage of low-poly is (obviously) performance, you get away with throwing almost anything at the screen.

[@tiredlocke]

I haven't watched any of these ratings videos before... But wouldn't a matrix be better for ranking? They struggle so much to put them into a linear ranking because of attractiveness/marketability vs technical/difficulty. So have 2 axes? Then you can see the sweet spot. Then you can see why something that looks so good got ranked lower. Also, what's the difference between cell shaded and toon style? 🤔 Anyway, great fun video! New subscriber.

[@holacabeza]

Marmix got a glow up DAYUMMM!

[@vast634]

With some small changes (better lighting, ACES color space, brighter sun, lighting from an HDR sky, more natural grass color, beveling-modifier on the low poly poly art) you could make your Forge Industries art look quite a lot more pleasant. Its not really the detailed models that drag it down, just the overall composition.

[@dudedigital]

Hand drawn art is S-tier

[@dinoeebastian]

As someone that's done voxel art, it's honestly pretty easy to make stuff that isn't half bad, I actually feel like voxel art can sometimes be easier than pixel art, plus you can make things like teardown which I would say is more geared toward young adults than children, I personally wouldn't put it in F tier, maybe E tier, but definitely not F. I think people get stuck on the connection between voxel and lego, so when they see voxel games they think, oh that's for children because legos are for children, which are both not true, there are plenty of adults that love legos, and voxel is quite different from lego in many ways, I also think the voxel style is mostly stuck in a box with people thinking it only works in a few areas because that's how it's been used for a while, so most voxel games are very similar and childish, but they don't have to be. It's certainly not my favourite style, but I think it's underrated by older audiences because they think it's too childish

[@WeberMathPlus]

I really appreciate the editor taking the time to put the name of the game on the video footage. Thanks!

[@bitemegames]

Editor => Marnix -T

[@RewdanSprites]

This was a really really good video. Very glad you put this up. I just finished a project and was considering what to try doing next art-wise. I did my first few games in pixel art and it's one of those easy to get into but incredibly difficult to make look professional kind of styles. More recent games in pixel art that want attention are really making use of HD+ screen resolutions which magnifies complexity quite a bit. Which 'can' require multiple artists to pull off. Not ideal for solo dev's as simpler pixel art styles tend to get a lot less attention these days. Lots of competition too. So yeah, total trap. I love that toon style as well but could never pull that off personally. I'm considering doing hand drawn for the next one but haven't done hand drawn for quite some years. Animation can be painful with hand drawn to maintain consistency between frames. Although after hearing about monochromatic that might be a good option for my next one 😅. Lol. I agree with that F tier rating haha. That's way too long (although that initial rating ended up somewhere else).

[@Gregorious4]

9:35 does the art style really matter if the game has trains though?

[@ultimaxkom8728]

"True and real. -M"

[@Chakuri66]

Really like this kind of content. The two perspective from the same thing make it interesting to watch.

[@ToddLortie]

Instead of just tiers you need to graph it Difficulty vs Marketability.

[@philbertius]

Y’all, 3D anime is way harder than you’re giving credit for. Theres a spectrum of detail, but the more you do, the more “passable” it is. One look at Guilty Gear’s tech videos and you’ll see just how insane it is - shape keys for _everything_…

[@khanlakhno2757]

Make a tier list about marketing tools, platforms, what social media we should use etc.

[@bitemegames]

So, the issue is, I'm not a marketing expert, so I can't in good faith make a "definitive marketing tierlist". It's something I want to do where I get someone from an actual game marketing company to cohost it. In the meantime, I did make a "uneducated marketing tierlist" over on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/uneducated-game-107105073 -M

[@khanlakhno2757]

@bitemegames anyway, I'll be waiting for a new upload! I have recently discovered your channel and enjoyed it so far 👍

[@ianbent0n]

37:37 "I know people that don't like the Cuphead style" WHO?!

[@Yener_Egal]

Awesome. This is exactly what I wished for.

[@lorinatzberger3624]

I think considering Minecraft to be a voxel game is wrong. It's a game that technically includes voxels (the terrain) but with a lot of models that aren't made out of voxels. The Minecraft dungeons is also in this direction. Pixel art textures on 3d meshes can yield much more depth than voxels alone. Starmancer for instance uses this more extensively and it looks pretty darned good even if it has a troubled development.

[@protogionlastname6003]

There was a discussion about artstyle, not rendering peculiarities From an artstyle standpoint Minecraft is definitely 100% voxel game

[@lorinatzberger3624]

@@protogionlastname6003 i disagree. From an artstyle pov minecraft is not a voxel game.

[@protogionlastname6003]

@@lorinatzberger3624 What is a voxel game then? Could you give a handful of examples of voxel games so we could see how big are the differences between them and Minecraft?

[@lorinatzberger3624]

@@protogionlastname6003 Teardown, Stonehearth, Staxel. For a game to be voxel based the world needs to be made out of voxels(tiny cubes) not geometry with pixel art textures.

[@protogionlastname6003]

@@lorinatzberger3624 Okay, so as I've pointed out in my first post - we simply got terminology mixed up. What you are referring to as voxel games are in fact voxel physics games or whatever shall we call them. They not only look voxel, they also "work" voxel on the engine side. Minecraft only looks voxel, it does not have it's world comprised of tiny voxels, in fact it's a traditional polygon-based game. But for the sake of artstyle discussion a voxel game is the game that looks cubey, so the authors of the video weren't wrong. Btw if you enjoy voxel physics game you could check out Vangers review by Mandalore. But only check out, I do not recommend anyone to actually play it lmao

[@TheSairenSA]

More important than an art style is READABILITY. Players at all times need to be able recognize at any time what is happening in the game. Art is in the eye of the beholder, so devs if you are reading this, players will love or hate your choice in art regardless - as in life, you can't satisfy everyone. This video is an example of two people that like and dislike different things. Devs, choose the art style you want!

[@bayardmartins]

The best tier classification in my opinion is: S - Should do it A - Probably should do it, but there are downfalls B - In some particular cases is an A, but in most cases is a D C - There are no good reasons to do it, but it also doesn't have many reasons to not do it D - More reasons to not do it, than to do it F - Don't do it

[@ViewportPlaythrough]

the lady in stripes is such a fresh breath of air. she has her marketing opinions on point. also, because shes more of an artist, she has a different perspective that the other 2 hosts. when they started talking monochromatic, you know that shes legit good about what she do

[@andreww2208]

*Him:* Forge Industry and Project Zomboid are the same art tier. *Her:* No. Forge Industry is trash tier.

[@TESkyrimizer]

true, PZ looks great now. but project zomboid started out in earlier betas looking just awful tho. the fun permadeath gameplay saved it. it only got better looking after build 30-something? as for FI I think the color palette is very unappealing and a lot of terrain looks flat and lacking character. everyone is gonna have diff opinions tho

[@tymondabrowski12]

@@TESkyrimizer FI could look great if they fixed the colors, imho. And the shadows are too black. It could've been an easy fix even now, frankly, they could make a setting for it, probably.

[@kthuludev]

@@tymondabrowski12yeah i feel like it wouldnt take that long to make a good color pallette and touch up on the major visuals but also it would kind of be a waste of time since the game is done and in the past now

[@jaredcramsie182]

​@@kthuludevI think it is still worth upgrading simple things, mainly because of the reputation. A personal anecdote: I wanted to give Brandon Sanderson a read. However I didn't want something too long, just in case I didn't like it. So I read 'Elantris', which is a standalone title and his first published book. I hated it so much that, even when multiple of my friends have recommended his later series's, I can't justify giving it a try. TLDR: Your past work can impact how people engage with your current work. Orangepixel made a video about this topic recently called "How do indie gamedevs handle game updates post release?" Where he talks more about finding the right balance between for this, I think it's worth a watch.

[@ryuusaisai]

​@@jaredcramsie182 That's an useless anecdote tbh. They gave some post release updates and fixes, and they are clear about what you are getting. It's not worth it for them to update anything else but game breaking bugs, as I doubt the game even sells anymore. I hate the idea that you imply you aren't able to release a game until it's flawless.

[@MrKingJavo]

Have you guys ever thought about sharing how you even get interns to work for your company? I think this would be beneficial to other indie devs who struggle to find quality artists.

[@channyh.221B]

First step: move to Belgium. That's it. That's basically it.

[@DeadStawker]

Man at least in my country it highly depends on the state and the city and the university and the company that is trying to get an intern. Like there are so many factors involved. So, sure they could make a video explaining how they made it but I don't think it's going to be useful for 95% or so of the viewers as the labor law and the legislation and context may be extremely different

[@schoolofschrock]

Nice video. It's cool to see more of the people at your company.

[@BlueGooGames]

Great! Our game’s art style ended upp in the A-tier! Thanks Alexandra, will send you a free copy of Space Chef when it’s done 😅

[@sakislaspas6176]

A lot of this is as you also said is subjective but also comes down to personal experience. I have years of experience working on realistic games so pumping out realistic props/buildings is really easy and quick for me. At the same time, I really love monochromatic games like Obra Dinn.

[@philipp_mn]

my current favorite art styles so far is rain world and nine sols. both have wonderful compositions that are too me very inspirational. Especially Nine Sols carries a clean, crazy good looking art style.

[@satibel]

voxel is a different workflow from regular 3d modeling, but I think it's something you would only use if you're actually using the voxels (and you basically have to allow player creations if you are making this style of game). and even then, marching cubes exists and usually makes the game look way better.

[@SenkaZver]

My favorite art style is FFT, FF9, Unicorn Overlord anime-2D stylized style mesh. But thats such a high skill to do lol

[@dobrx6199]

Honestly I think retro could have been placed very high if you guys included it because it's relatively easy to make and I think for marketability too it's very solid, especially for boomer shooters or other types of games emulating older ones.

[@bitemegames]

That's a good one actually, since there's been a resurgence in that crunchy/ps1 era graphics for the boomer shooters indeed. Don't ask me when a sequel will release though. -M

[@PrasadOfRA]

It would make it easier for you to decide where to put artstyles and for viewers to agree if you made 2 separate videos, where one is a tierlist about how hard or easy it to make technically, and another is about marketing standpoint. But overall it's a good video with useful info, thnx!

[@Odisseia-hh2td]

There is a great GDC video on BotW art where they explain that its art style was chosen to support the intended gameplay. This looks like an interesting approach.

[@QuietPenguinGaming]

Great video! I didn't realise BiteMe Games had interns - would love a video on this! Especially since you are so open with your finances and process - what can a small studio like yourselves offer an intern, is it worthwhile for them vs trying to do their own thing to boost their portfolio, etc?

[@vladcalin]

Really nice video, especially that it's about an area that I don't really know much about, and Alexandra seems very knowledgeable on the subject! Cheers! The marketability and complexity of producing breakdown for each style is really a game changer, as an indie game dev myself I struggle to find the balance between "looks good" and "the price is affordable"

[@JBurky15]

The 16-bit pixel style is so timeless that it has come back around and people still love playing SNES games because the art style (and gameplay) is just so good and holds up to the test of time.

[@juancarlospaco]

Realistic is easier if you consider Photogrametry scans DIY, you can just take 20 pictures with an Android of things or places or toys and have it in Unreal in minutes with materials and textures.

[@ihspan6892]

I think this is the best tierlisting so far, and with the most surprising results. I think you have achieved objectivity. Very good video!

[@ruaangrobler3035]

Love the channel and thoughts. What I say here is meant to supplement, not argue. I think this is very much based on your art team's capabilities. I've dabbled in all these styles though not really for games. I used to be a 3D artist (VFX, commercial and film), but passionate hand-drawer and painter in my free time (though hardly a pro I've done some work for money, but it was usually for production previz and character design) and had the highest grade ever in my college for a hand-drawn cell piece (old school hand-drawn). When I started drawing (self-taught) I learned from the 'how to draw anime' books. So to me, Anime is easy, they have rules that make it easier to reproduce than something original or realistic - and it's more forgiving than trying to nail perfect realistic figures. 3D takes more time but the tradeoff is once a character is production-ready, animation is much easier and faster. Hand-drawn style animation, to do well, is possibly the hardest one here for me and, product-speaking, a shiney 3D object with passable animation will always look 'higher end' than a good piece of 2D animation. Sad but true (in my experience). Again though, it's personal. I dabble in game dev, and personally I think with my skillset 3D cell/toon is easiest as it requires less detail to be painted (i.e. more time in shading, less in UV and texturing) and a 3D rigged character opens up more possibilities for blending and dynamic animation. That said, I struggle to get exactly the look I want, but I'm still a noob with game dev and think it's down to that. haha - just thought to leave this here as an opinion from someone who's dabbled in a lot of these. I think basic 3D gives you a very high ROI for visual fidelity with minimal input, and cell-shading drastically reduces material and texture time if you have many assets that can share the same shaders (and toon outlines can be done with post-process shaders (at least in UE)). That said, to do anything well, requires significant time. This sht's hard yo. Power to all of us trying to make games. And thanks for all the videos, you always stimulate some thought.

[@mauree1618]

Realistic graphics would be an F for me. Also, to help understand why less colors means more challenge when making good art, think about it like this; you have less tools to convey the same information, like using less words to say the same thing. Doing more or the same with less usually requires some kind of mastery of the medium.

[@LutraLovegood]

Puppetry and claymation are so good they're off the charts!

[@galaksen1699]

Totally agreed on pixel art. It seems like the easiest medium to get into but its a craft that requires so many unique art skills and for somebody who's been making traditional art for a while it takes ages to learn how to make a good sprite. Hell it can be a struggle for beginner pixel artists to even make a decent curved line. I think because its so difficult though the nice looking pixel art games end up being some of the nicest looking games period.

[@marielcarey4288]

Artists appreciating hand drawn art styles and non artists being the opposite is TOO TRUE.

[@syntheater4867]

Guys, she is correct about tier lists 😂

[@sooooooooDark]

i didnt know there was a difference between cel shading and toon shading 🤔 to my noob eyes they look almost exactly the same (cel looks like the less effort/detail variant of the same thing)

[@luctisd1610]

I would rather say that one is more of a technique and that both terms can overlap in their meaning or visual effect. Celshading actually means that lighting/shading is created with less discrete color values (1 or 2 for shadows e.g.) instead of a continuous color blending. You can shade toon/comic with both achieving different effects. Toon style is more like simplifying complex properties and/or exaggerating them. So it can include celshading as a technique to archive this but hasn't to. As far a I know at least. Feel free to correct me, if there is anything wrong.

[@doublej69]

If you have an artist and enough time, hand draw is the style to chose. This style allows creating unique games in term of visuals. Low poly is my second choice because it is much faster to develop. You can concentrate more on the gameplay, however because it will be much more difficult to have original visuals it will be very difficult to have visibility.

[@josueibarra6570]

Yet another BiteMe Games' world famous lists! I hope you do vector art for part 2

[@bcrane86]

Hi both! Thanks for the video. Really informative! One quick question: I am a big fan of Hades and its art style, but what genre would you two classify it as? Would it be hand drawn? Want to know some keywords so artists can understand me 😅 Thank you in advance!

[@iigel352]

I think well drawn pixel art has a good amount (sometime alot) of details but still looks clean or easy on eyes, while bad pixelart lacks at least one of them, like detailed but messy or clean but too simple. I will put S tier if it is well drawn pixelart but they are very rare, and most of pixel art games can be pretty much D or below.

[@vvjj99]

Yay for team anime but the highpoly anime toon style is the hardcore difficult ones … the character face itself is hellish to make

[@_P_a_o_l_o_]

This discussion was super interesting! Very informative and fun to listen to, I loved the insights of the artist :)

[@dancingdoormanable]

It's a shame they didn't make a distinction between Cartoon style and the style of FRANCO-BELGIAN COMIX. Partly because they are a Belgian studio and partly because both styles have very different audiences. The Franco-Belgian style has a more adult audience that also expects more adult themes so it matches more with Steam, which is probably the best Indie platform out there. The Cartoon style is more a kids thing so it matches more with console games Also having Disney and Nintendo as competition isn't easy, while Franco-Belgian style can be unique and as "Metal Hurland" weird fantastical (sci-fi/fantasy/horror) impactful (ero/violent) as you want. If your from Belgium or France you probably get some LITERARY exposure too, as it's considered "high culture" there. While it's true that graphic novels seem to be losing out to games, Moebius never died. He just lives on through his art style. Just ask your local artist if they know of his work and if they think they are influenced by him.

[@TESkyrimizer]

27:48 not sure if anime always sells. If I look at VNs which are almost exclusive anime, YMMV a lot and there are a great deal of shovelware.

[@StarryNightSky587]

And exclusively sell to weebs, so then you gotta keep them busy and include fanservice etc....

[@MadeByStu]

Probably another voxel rant. Two types of Voxel art, 1. The cube (lego look) and 2. The game Landmark mmorpg or more commonly known 7 days to die and space engineers style. Voxels don't need to be square. Voxel art is technically difficult to implement, a lot of compute to calculate and render (what can be) a fully dynamic world, hence a lot of games won't choose this. Really though look at look at Landmark mmorpg to see a great version of this type of voxel, they had the lighting, the smoothing and manipulation perfect.

[@mrrager1409]

she is very good on camera. well informed and percise

[@Yoshi889]

So no matter what you choose, every art style is difficult. Got it.

[@bootedbuilds]

Happy I'm going for handdrawn. Intended to do pixelart, but handdrawn feels easier.

[@ExploreImagineDefineCreate]

26:20 Yo putting Gushing Over Magical Girls too was wild

[@bitemegames]

Someone finally noticed! -M

[@ExploreImagineDefineCreate]

@bitemegames Apart from being funny, it's appreciated

[@gekks]

Really enjoyed hearing Alexandra's perspective on this! Hope to see more from the artists in the future 🙂

[@pamparam3495]

I picked toon shading with outline for low to mid poly semi realistic assets for my game and I like how it looks now.

[@warrenscipio4168]

I really liked this one, I do suck at art lol and the whole time I found myself agreeing with Thomas but then Alexandra would say something and then almost at the same time Thomas and I watching will be like O she got a point. The "but its black and white" and putting a greyscale filter on top, I had the exact same thought. Its cool to think about other areas outside of programming in detail and talk to experts in those areas and how they directly relate back to my own projects. Fun and helpful video!

[@viniciusantonio2253]

Damn Marnix, did you stop hitting the gym?

[@kthuludev]

he's been on a vegetarian diet 🤫🤫

[@mikithekynd]

No to throw shade but judging Anime style and Hand drawn style they immediately forgot this tier list is for INDIE games. Anime style, both hand drawn 2D, 3D and overdrawn 3D are notoriously difficult to pull off. They need more work than Telltale's style, hence they are only attempted by studios with dozens or even hundreds of great artists specializing in the anime style. This is unattainable for an indie studio, so for this tier list I'd put it in B or C. Hand drawn style is hands down the easiest style not only to create art, on par with low poly, but it also gives so much head room you can carve a niche of your own. Sure, people who like realistic looking games will scoff at it, but think again - these people will not look into buying an indie game in the first place, because all the gaming they know revolves around big AAA and AAAA studios, millions of dollars of capital, and scope unreachable by any indie studio - so why even care about these people's opinion? Hand drawn for an indie studio goes to S tier.

[@andranaindra8769]

I've been a gamer since the 90s, and despite being a big fan of Elder Scrolls series, I would pick up Cuphead before something like Skyrim. When gamers valued 2D hand drawn, it's all about the art style, not whether it's 2D or 3D. I think the opinion that the hand drawn art style not being 3D devalued a game, is something that's mostly adopted by game developers, because they saw games more from an artist point of view. Artists usually wants to create something that showcase their capability, instead of what would actually attracts more attention of the target market. Also, 3D is already way too saturated. Lets be honest here, you'll sell 2D hand drawn style games much easier than you will ever sell 3D games...because 2D are simply more niche and give more impression of "high quality" upfront before gameplay taken into consideration. Something like Cuphead is already seen as potentially high quality game by gamers simply because of its art style...it simply an easy sell.

[@JackFoz454]

This was fun to watch! Alexandra did an awesome job.

[@user-dg8zd8hc7h]

41:08 this is so similar to what happen with my friend. He recommend me an idle game and i was like "the gameplay is so freaking boring, why the hell did you play this ?" and he said "the art style is good"

[@themore-you-know]

Cell shader: Jet Set Radio Future. And Bomb Rush (which itself is a remake of JSRF)

[@abhimohan4356]

I ran a gaming cafe for a while and the number of people who refused to play pixel art games was depressing. And these were big production, beautiful games. Definitely feels cheap to casuals.

[@digiross7199]

Graphics is highly subjective. I've played all types. Depends on the genre and gameplay as well.

[@randomdsfhqe]

'More E-tier' is confusing. Is the lesser E-tier towards D, or F?

[@bitemegames]

Should have just put it in between 2 tiers... -M

[@ultimaxkom8728]

@@bitemegames E-Tier is F-Tier. Delete it.

[@gyokzoli]

What is the difference between low poly and low poly stylized?

[@cecile5271]

I think "low poly" just a lowpoly models with very simple color, but "low poly stylized" is more difficult at texture, the focus is on a procedural art style.

[@millkeeko]

-and that they made some very fun games to watch for the youtubers yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah

[@zatzu]

"2D devalues you're game"!? Excuse me!?

[@zatzu]

Self reflection: uh... I haven't comment in any other videos in a while and the first comment I did is a rage (angry) comment...

[@lildgamedev6885]

Is marnix wearing a wig?

[@vast634]

The hair is mostly CGI

[@Odisseia-hh2td]

27:42 at least for me, I just tend to dislike anime-style in games (despite liking anime series/movies somewhat). Btw, where would Skyrim lie?

[@thesinned9736]

I would agree with drawn 2D art on S or at least A Tier and disagree, that 2D graphics devalues a game. A low-poly 3D game usually feels a lot cheaper to me than a hand drawn 2D game. Most of my favorite Indie games have drawn 2D arts. There is also a very high variety in different styles. Even a simple style like in Binding of Isaac is unique and recognizable, which is rarely the case with Low Poly 3D graphics.

[@gsuandre5579]

For some reason first tear list i saw from you guys hurt my eye, and today everytime i saw that tierlist with everything straight was hurting my eye, i feel like the in between tier is more clear to me now, kind of like b+ and b- and so on. Even after the video end i can undertand exactly why they are there if is straigh mi brain just group a as same, b as same and so on.

[@RagnarRockFinder]

For Voxel style, are you including games like Valheim, 7D2D, and other open world survival craft procedural generation games? Because it's more about the gameplay in those, but the art style, while voxel, looks very different from Minecraft and like.

[@neon-lake]

Valheim & 7 days to die do not use voxels Voxels is short for: volumetric pixel, in most cases(not always) an actual "pixel" with volume that inhabits 3d space, these voxels r then stacked like legos to create objects. Shadows of Doubt, minecraft, Cloudpunk r just a few examples, not all r procedural either

[@alexanderstewart9923]

Pixel Art is S tier 👌 its iconic

[@Kvantovy]

How about styles of programming a game now? Styles of structuring the codebase... like, putting the actual code of a certain feature on an object that uses it, like an NPC or a building, versus putting those codes into some separate class, static or a gameobject with this class, where all such functionalities are (Feature Manager? idk) and the actors just call those functions when they need to...

[@agronacilius4584]

Personally my favorite style is something between mid poly realism and stylized. Older games such as Oblivion, Skyrim, Dargons Dogma and so on would look amazing simply by adding more objects to the world. And by having better textures.

[@MichaelGame_Dev]

Nice video. I've been thinking a lot about the art style for my game.

[@sooooooooDark]

what i find looks pretty cancerous is pixel art TEXT maybe with a bold font it can be okay, but if i see big paragraphs in pixel art text i feel like i got adhd or something (which i dont)

[@leonardliebler3510]

The technical explanation by the artist were a wild swing and a miss, but I'm sure she has her heart in the right place ^^

[@satibel]

most of the difficulty will heavily fall on the artist/s you have, if you have a shader specialist, low-mid poly stylized can probably be s tier though I think most of the art's value comes down to consistency rather than artstyle, like scribbles can look way better than an inconsistent realistic game. also I think because of all the asset flips realistic games have fallen a lot on the high quality mark, it used to be that you could only make a realistic game as a big studio with good budget, and so you'd have a decent game if it was realistic, but now that big studios are making cash grabs and asset flips are rampant, it's been devalued a lot.

[@Listoric]

I really liked the discussion, but the rating ultimately felt like you chose a different metric for each type on the fly. Still, the point is less the list and more the discussion around it i'd say. Also, Alexandra is a natural and doesn't mind telling it how it is, good energy.