The Borderlands "Mutiny": Is This The Future Of Gaming? (Let's Hope So!)

[Elwell]

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/200...-was-a-mutiny/

Back in 2008 when Gearbox decided to make the game bigger, the artists working on the game were left twiddling their thumbs because their part was pretty much done. “So, a couple of them - without me knowing about it - went back and looked at all the original concept art we’d done for the game and they found there was a lot of character and personality that was cool,” CEO Randy Pitchford explains in a recent interview. “They started tinkering, putting the concept art in (the game) running real time, working with the programmers to figure out a way to render it so it would look like that.”

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_...?story_id=5192

“Something more akin to a sketch or a type of rendering technique used on the page of concept art. We are using normal maps to give us form, depth, and specular information to accentuate what is happening inside of the lines of the ink like outline. In additionally we have taken great pains to get ink lines in the defuse map. The textures are more akin to a gauche under-painting with ink on top of it. The interior lines in the diffuse art coupled with the line drawn outside of the model give it a completely hand drawn concept art look that is jaw dropping, especially when you see it move!”

Before and after comparison, and further discussion, here: http://www.offworld.com/2009/09/ragd...oncept-re.html

Going against the prescribed direction of the project, the team had begun to prototype the concept art in the game, ultimately delivering a build that knocked the socks off their boss, and blew away the drab vision of Borderlands that they had been working on previously. Brave stuff. And I couldn't help thinking: Well, about time! Isn't most concept art actually better than what we get in the final game? Isn't it, perhaps, about time to let the concept artists take the lead?

Give us watercolour FPS games, painterly RTS games, oil-painting strategies.

Ultimately, I think there needs to be much more mutiny in the art ranks. The concept artists need to fight back and conspire with the graphics programmers to bring about many more revolutions of the kind that started with Borderlands. We've heard years of rhetoric about videogame design tools putting power back into the hands of the artists, but clearly it needs to go further. If videogames want to be taken seriously as art, then they need to be art.

[Randis]

production budget is a big problem in many cases....

Making a game on PSX and making the same game for PS3 will cost you x times more. The hardware gets better and better and people expect to see more for their money. Tough job for small developers.... On the other hand the small developers don't really hire the HQ concept artists....
working in large teams is not always as easy as it seems on the outside, while some artists may have visionary ideas and concepts there is a long and curvy road to get those approved and sold. The concept artist may do this but the inhous art director may want that and then the boss comes and wants a change of this and then and his publisher might say no go, we do it that way and the marketing will flip it all in the end for a better layout.

game dev can be a very stressful industry.

[Dorkthrone]

I really hope more games start to take this kind of style and run with it. It's much more interesting than about 90% of most games visually.

[kelly x]

great style!

[KarylGilbertson]

Looks like at least SOMEONE is fighting the brown... jk it's a great style though... much more interesting and eye-catching.

[Carnifex]

finally more painterly textures to come up...this could get interesting.

[Jabo]

Next, cut down on the bloom.

Nice articles tho, especially the Offworld one.

[Qitsune]

Carni, actually, a lot of artists would like to do more painterly textures, but you would be surprised to see how low res many textures still are. I don't know about next gen, but it's not rare to see textures 128x128 px and below on DS and WII. Hard to be painterly with that.... It really requires some shader love at that point to get artsy effects.

[s.ketch]

I don't like the black lines, they kill the look for me. I rarely see fully rendered illustrations or concept art with heavy dark lines. I like Valve's solution for a painterly/illustrative look without being a toon-render. Use rim lighting instead of black lines!

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publica...mFortress2.pdf

In general, the texture maps used on the 3D world are impressionistic, meaning that they are painterly and maintain a minimum level of visual noise. This is consistent with the style of painting used on background plates in many animated films, particularly those of Hayao Miyazaki, in which broad brush strokes appear in perspective, as if present in the 3D world rather than on the 2D image plane [Miyazaki 2002].

In the early stages of development, many of these 2D textures were physically painted on canvas with watercolors and scanned to make texture maps. As we refined the art style of the game, texture artists shifted to using photorealistic reference images with a series of filters and digital brush strokes applied to achieve the desired look of a physically painted texture.

This last expression is merely the per-pixel normal
dotted with the up vector, clamped to be positive. This causes the
dedicated rim lighting term to appear to add in indirect light from
the environment, but only for upward facing normals. This is both
an aesthetic choice and a perceptual decision designed exploit the
human instinct to assume that lighting tends to come from above.

[jmascho]

I'm not completely sold on the Borderlands look, but I totally admire what they are doing. There have been a few other games released lately (Prince of Persia, Street Fighter IV, etc) that have moved away from the norm. It's also been pretty evident in the animation world (3d at least). I honestly think on the 3d tech end, artists can utilize that look much easier than in the past. The more comfortably an artist can dabble in shaders/comping techniques, and show that to his AD's and marketing VP's, the more of this we'll see IMO. Not too sure how that is changing with games, but I'm sure it will be on the same page at some point. Either way, there are some amazing looking things coming because of more artists/designers playing in the sandbox.

[JBurrough]

agreed jmascho... I say keep em varied, keep em interesting. SFIV did a great job taking 'Windwaker' -esque art to another level. I hope they keep hitting the illustration button in the future, from time to time.

Borderlands looks fantastic. Fallout did too. Oblivion too. It just gets better and better, as it should. Wish someone would have kept 'Rise of the Kasai' going in like fashion... that game was a stunner when it first appeared. Still is.

Anyrate, variation means more artists and more styles... creativity peaks and we bounce off eachother, changing as we go. This is a good thing.

[Ian Barker]

Looks cool, but not all that new. Reminds me a lot of No More Heroes.

[Burtzum]

I'd rather see world design, story, and game play pushed more. The cries of the author of that article for more and more "artsy" styles is just as shallow as pushing for more polygons and bloom. Giving a game a more "artsy" style wont make it art. It will give it a gimmick.

I personally prefer a more realistic look over stylized. I just wish more effort would be placed into the artistry of the content. Interesting designs, interesting story, interesting mechanics...

'World War 2 Game Brand #2 Sequel 3' done in a painterly style still wouldn't be able to coax me into completing it. Id still get bored of gunning down the ridiculous waves of German soldiers. Same goes for that game with the space marine that kills the aliens...



By the way, I am in no way trying to put down Borderlands. The weapon generation system is intriguing. And they are giving the game Co-op if I recall correctly. Co-op! That long lost game play mode. Bout friggen time.

[Ian Barker]

I'd rather see world design, story, and game play pushed more. The cries of the author of that article for more and more "artsy" styles is just as shallow as pushing for more polygons and bloom. Giving a game a more "artsy" style wont make it art. It will give it a gimmick.

I just wish more effort would be placed into the artistry of the content. Interesting designs, interesting story, interesting mechanics...

Amen. Games like Okami and WindWaker worked because the style worked with the gameplay. In the case of FPSs, a realistic style is more likely to fit with the gameplay. Not saying they shouldn't try, but in most cases I would prefer that they try to come up with innovate gameplay mechanics rather than a "artsy" skin.

[blueknightfox]

Anybody know where to find concept art for this game? A video of the artist working? I would like to see that.

[Dile_]

I'd rather see world design, story, and game play pushed more. The cries of the author of that article for more and more "artsy" styles is just as shallow as pushing for more polygons and bloom. Giving a game a more "artsy" style wont make it art. It will give it a gimmick.

I personally prefer a more realistic look over stylized. I just wish more effort would be placed into the artistry of the content. Interesting designs, interesting story, interesting mechanics...

'World War 2 Game Brand #2 Sequel 3' done in a painterly style still wouldn't be able to coax me into completing it. Id still get bored of gunning down the ridiculous waves of German soldiers. Same goes for that game with the space marine that kills the aliens...



By the way, I am in no way trying to put down Borderlands. The weapon generation system is intriguing. And they are giving the game Co-op if I recall correctly. Co-op! That long lost game play mode. Bout friggen time.

The thing is that they are actually putting out something that is taking somewhat of a new direction, whatever it will fit this game perfectly or not.. who knows.. But at least they are being innovative. Let other games try it out and see where it goes.. I'm so tired of seeing the same games all over with different titles. Empiricism ftw

[squidmonk3j]

From a gamer's point of view, I'd rather see more focus on Mythos. As an artist - GO OPSIS!

[Kan Muftić]

The main problem is that concept artists are a breed of low-creatures in the game's food chain. Forums can make you think you would be more than just a guy who draws stuff.
I am sorry to say this, but that's what it is at the end of the day.

[Jackwhat]

I dont think that highly of Borderlands at all, its a bit of a throwback to a cellshaded kind of era while retaining the blandness of this current generation. Now a good use of style would probably be Brink, surprising it hasn't been mentioned yet.....


http://www.brinkthegame.com/

[Jabo]

Also, the gameplay, which is the really important part of the game, looks extremely boring. Hold down LEFT MOUSE to kill. If you press too late, the other guy will kill you.