Team Fortress 2's Francke: Game Art Needs To Grow Up
Talking with Gamasutra, Moby Francke, Art Director for Valve's Team Fortress 2, expressed his feeling that the look of videogames, at least as far as their artistic design, hasn't changed much in the past 20 years.
I think video games are at such infancy in terms of art style, actually developing it. We’re dealing with 4000 years, really, of art and conceptual design. ... For it really not to be utilized, and for the industry to basically dwell in a certain type of genre which has been around the 1980s up to present time, it’s pretty much all they’re embracing. ... It’s the same way, you have Star Wars and the original Stanley Kubrick movie 2001. And people embrace that genre of outer space, so to speak. And it’s continued to this very day. Hopefully people will wake up someday.
In the past few years, more and more people are noticing the dull earth tones that dominate a large number of games. No longer a result of technical limitations, game designers seem to hold on to this limited palette of colors either due to a lack of imagination or out of fear of change. Team Fortress 2, with its bright, cell shaded "cartoon" characters, eschews that tradition. Although Francke avoids naming specific examples, when asked about Grand Theft Auto, he feels the game doesn't really have an art style, and lacks uniqueness.
As for his future work, Francke doesn't go into specifics, but gives details on what he'd like to accomplish.
The next thing I’d love to do is not based on realism, but stylizing with a little more in-depth look to the materials in the world. Instead of just having an impressionistic background, or having highly stylized characters. Making the characters a little bit more believable, even incorporating bold design, getting a little bit more specific.
Valve's Francke: Game Art Direction In Its 'Infancy' [Gamasutra]
Dawdle
Posted to Video Games on 9 December 2007
· Comments (7)
Other stuff like this: art direction, ea, moby francke, team fortress 2, valve
A great read! I guess I need to make myself stop playing Rock Band long enough to finally play my copy of The Orange Box that came from GameFly the other day. I need to hurry before my console RRoD's again, too. Gaming is a little more exciting when you never know what day will be your 360's last. ;)
I absolutely love the art style in Team Fortress 2, and in fact is the only reason I bothered to play it in the first place (now it's what I play the most these days).
I agree, game art needs to evolve. Games like Okami, Killer 7 and No More Heroes are certainly a step in the right direction.
Cel Shading graphics are only really excepted by a small minority. Even Nintendo was humbled to make a more real Zelda that was like OOT
Exactly. People expect graphics based towards realism. They don't want cell-shading, cartoons, or even Shrek/Toy Story type graphics. A lot of people avoided Windwaker for the same reason whether it is a good game or not. It's a shame really.
Make realistic graphics does come at a price because it takes longer and more skill to do correctly.
I avoided Team Fortress 2 because of those reasons.
Heh, honestly, I like that look, and even though I don't play that game, I think that the look looks good on the upcoming Ghostbusters for Wii as well.
Well... I wont disagree, but he didn't really say anything. Sounds like typical modern art crap to me.
Team Fortress's Style is very nice... of course its an intentional rip of The Incredibles so I just don't get what hes saying.