Why do We still use lower reselutions?

[Babar]

Why is it that when it was moved towards hi-res, art became extra cartoony? MI3, KQ7, etc. Or it became 3D? Why not go on in the same style of MI2, or KQ/SQ/QfG, etc?

[scotch]

The early Sierra style was born in programmer art and was pretty schematic, not much "style" at all. Green grass, blue water, fixed perspectives, rectangles and character templates. When they hired more trained artists, and when digital art had developed to allow it, a lot of games did go cartoony, yeah.

If you're making a animation that's the first thing you think of I suppose, but I would imagine the deciding factor was the comedy theme of most of these games. KQ didn't go cartoony until very late, right? But for Larry, MI, Space Quest, DOTT, S&M it's the obvious choice. The switch to cartoony style was long before high res came along. MI2 was cartoony! Look at most of the character and set designs, they are low res cartoons, that's all.

[Nacho]

I agree... Cartoony or not is not a decission to be taking considering the resolution you have... For example, Full Thottle was between 2 "extremelly" cartoony games (as for "warping" style) like DoTT and CMI and it was quite less cartoony than the mentioned above... (Still a bit, but not so exagerated). It' s about if the story you want to tell needs cartoony or not.

[Radiant]

As I recall, both Sierra and LucasArts had a few "early" cartoonish titles (notably, Gobliiins and DOTT), but went cartoony with all their titles and series at the precise moment where they switched to high resolution.

[Nacho]

Not sure... I didn' t had in mind that early titles, so, I think that the timeline actually was "Cartoony-Realistic-Cartoony", no? As said... it deppens more of "what is needed to tell a story" better than in the resolution.

[Blackthorne]

Why do we use low-resolutions?

Well... because bigger isn't always better. 


Bt

[blueskirt]

I don't think the cartoony feel is related to the high resolution. A lot of games were graphically cartoony before high resolution arrived: Discworld, Sam and Max, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, DOTT, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.

Even the Monkey Island games, if you look at them carefully, had cartoony characters: Meathook, the 3 Headed Monkey, the cannibals... It also had characters of all size, from Largo Lagrande, to the pirates at the spitting contest, to Stan and Lechuck who were rather tall, to the giant arm coming out of the hidden alley door on Phatt, to the governor of Phatt Island himself.

If a game like Indiana Jones, Shadow of the Comet or Laura Bow was made in high resolution and had cartoony graphics, then I would ask the same question as you. But the thing is, the few dead pan serious adventure games that were released during the high resolution times, like Broken Sword or The Last Express, managed to remain serious and realistic visually speaking, and most games that people accuse of going cartoony with the arrival of high resolution were family friendly, humoristic, borderline or already cartoony visually speaking, in the first place. Using the latest animation techniques and high resolution to their advantage, to add more expressions to their characters and add more visual jokes, was simply the most logical step forward.

[Radiant]

I don't think the cartoony feel is related to the high resolution. A lot of games were graphically cartoony before high resolution arrived: Discworld, Sam and Max, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, DOTT, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.

I think we're going by different definitions of "cartoony" here. Zak McKracken uses a very different style than Gobliiins.

[InCreator]

Yeah. Cartoony graphics can be divided into two also: Cartoony shading and cartoony - er, shapes, geometry? Maybe even third subsection: cartoony animation?

[blueskirt]

I think we're going by different definitions of "cartoony" here. Zak McKracken uses a very different style than Gobliiins.

True. I had Zak's Boss in mind when I wrote that one.

Cartoony shading and cartoony - er, shapes, geometry?

In my previous post I was discussing the shapes and geometry. I suppose we'll have to define what we're discussing here.

If what we are discussing is the animation style or the shading rather than the shape and geometry, then I would agree that high resolution brought cartoony animation and cartoony shading. Like it was previously said, with an increase of resolution, pixel animation is hardly feasible anymore. You are no longer editing a few pixel and filling the holes, you must work with limbs, bodies, the whole character, instead of pixels, you also need more views in order to have a fluid animation. I suppose at that point it was more efficient to animate with cel animation or faux 3D.

So yes, high resolution brought cartoony animation and cartoony shading, but not cartoony geometry or shapes, these were here way before high resolution arrived.

[Babar]

I consider Monkey Island 1 and 2 to have a certain stylistic difference from photoreality (stunted looking characters and such), but I didn't ever really consider it cartoony as such, and maybe it is related to the understanding at the end of Monkey Island 2. I can't think of a suitable comparison to some other medium to explain, though. I suppose you can use art styles: there is photoreality, there is cartoony, but then there is a lot of other stuff.

[lo_res_man]

Sam and max and DOTT had both cartoony shape AND cartoony animation. But they where pushing it as far as lo-res could really go.

[Galen]

My view:
Probably a combination of:
1. Nostalgia
2. Love of pixel art
3. Requiring less conventional artistic skills (less pixels to place)
4. Because everyone else does

[proximity]

 You will understand better why low res games must continue as years passed . Imagine it's 2030 and some people keep making 320*200 games. I think that would be wonderful.