Comment by jstummbillig
6 years ago
> he most cogent criticism of the original post, I think, was that he was conflating cheap art with bad art. You can (and some indies do) have very cheap lo-fi art that still looks good in context. He does not, which is fine, because it is hard.
You are conflating lo-fi art with cheap and/or bad lo-fi art. "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing, because the talent that can make something lo-fi also look good and, more importantly, provide good art direction for an extensive project is not cheap.
We are not talking a screen full of pixels or two. These games would require thousands upon thousands of art tiles, that all aim for a distinguishable, consistent and unique in overall style.
As you said, it's hard. That makes it expensive, in either time or money, or both.
> "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing
Dwarf Fortress was literally an exhibit in MOMA; it can look downright beautiful, despite being nothing but ASCII letters in different shades of colors:
https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjI1NTc0MSJdLFsicCIsImNvb...
> You are conflating lo-fi art with cheap and/or bad lo-fi art. "Cheap lo-fi art that looks good" is not a thing, because the talent that can make something lo-fi also look good and, more importantly, provide good art direction for an extensive project is not cheap.
And I would say you are conflating art with design/art direction. :)
> We are not talking a screen full of pixels or two. These games would require thousands upon thousands of art tiles, that all aim for a distinguishable, consistent and unique in overall style.
I mean, one of the examples given was ADOM: https://i.imgur.com/d0RpSnY.png
There's a lot of ways of solving this particular problem.