Game art refers to all the images, animations, and video sequences making up the visual side of every video game. Many players view concept art or footage from a game before getting a chance to play it, so the artwork makes up their very first impression.
Game art comes in as many varieties as the rest of the artistic world. Earlier games were mostly presented in 2D, so they used pixel art to convey emotion and narrative using minimal processing power. Once we reached the N64/PlayStation 1 era, 3D modeling took over, adding new steps and considerations to everything from environment design to character modeling to UI art. As gaming platforms became more powerful, tools like feature-rich shaders and advanced graphic design software became commonplace. Link and Zelda are essentially the same characters across thousands of in-game years, but their graphical presentation sure has changed.
The medium of choice can also impact a game’s artwork. Mobile games, for instance, usually don’t aim to be more complex than is needed to appeal to a wide audience on many different devices. Indie games tend to be made under tighter budget constraints but also have more pressure to stand out from the crowd visually, so they tend toward a more experimental, stylized look. AAA games typically aim for a highly polished look with extensive animations and environments populated with countless overlapping art assets.
There are layers to both the way game art is stylized for a particular game, and how visual themes connect different games and features across the wider medium. Likewise, there are many ways to start learning to make game art, from messing around in the industry-standard software to taking online courses specifically directed at beginner game artists.
Long story short: creating 10/10 game art is often just as complicated as making a 10/10 game. Let’s dig deeper.
What is game art?
Game art is any form of visual artwork created for a video game or feature. Every visual aspect of a video game was created by an artist: the character and enemy models, the environments, the UI, and even smaller icons and VFX. Artwork permeates every piece of every video game.
Game art always serves the game’s overall design. Dark, moody lighting can convey danger or inspire fear. Brightly lit open fields feel natural and inviting. Clean UI is fun to navigate; messy or disorganized UI is enough to turn some players away from the game entirely. Likewise, the artwork has to mesh cohesively with the narrative. A carefully rendered water slide fits perfectly in a sandbox game about exploring a water park but would be hilariously discordant in a Victorian-era Bloodborne alleyway like this.
To make sure the artwork interacts properly with the gameplay, narrative, and environmental design, game artists often work closely with other relevant departments. The first draft of visual artwork can be made in relative isolation, but as soon as the art has to be placed into the broader context of the whole game, it needs to be considered from those other departments’ perspectives. And with so much information to take into account, it’s no surprise that game art tends to follow certain style guidelines across countless games and platforms.
What are different game art styles?
Different game art styles are repeating aesthetics across genres and gameplay types. No two games are exactly alike, but there are clear patterns that repeat endlessly throughout the medium.
Game art styles are informed by the needs of each game and the expectations carried by its genre. An artist working on a 2D character design has to consider how to express emotion and intention in fewer dimensions than real life. A 3D modeling artist has to account for 3D character models wandering around 3D environments without, for instance, part of their body getting stuck in a wall. Which can sometimes trigger…more noticeable glitches.
Genre conventions also play into game art styles. Designers make the same stylistic choices over and over both due to conventions (of course this Castlevania game feels like a Victorian Dracula nightmare) and convergent evolution (it’s just a coincidence that this new spooky metroidvania happens to look exactly like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night). Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, for instance, clearly pays homage to Symphony of the Night, but it’s not doing so gratuitously; looking, feeling, and playing like Symphony is a clear selling point, and makes the whole experience feel like a “love letter to the OG fans”.
Certain design choices just make the most sense to create a specific mood or experience, like using shadows and dim lighting to add mystery or suspense. In games where combat and gameplay are extremely important, such as The Witcher and Dark Souls, characters are illuminated (i.e., they light up their surroundings a little) or a very low level light is given from behind the camera so that the player can get the experience better. In contrast, Tomb Raider games emphasize the experience of treasure hunting and getting lost in nature, so helpful extra light would only make the experience feel less down-to-Earth and reduce the tension. In FromSoftware games, the player is the main character; in Tomb Raider games, the environment is.
There are several reasons why game art conventions form in the first place. Convergent evolution sometimes leads different kinds of games to adopt similar art styles because they serve a similar purpose—there are only so many ways to bounce off an enemy’s head or climb a steep cliff, for instance. In other cases, genres build up player’s expectations over time through repetition. It’s immediately intuitive what “life points” mean, but instead we insist on calling them “health points” and “HP” 100% of the time.
Below is a quick comparison of many popular game art styles and designers’ reasons for choosing them.
Pixel art: The only option, once. Pixel art is artwork composed of colored squares—pixels. Older arcade cabinets and consoles had next-to-no processing power, so they could only display a small number of large blocks at a time. Pixel artists have more blocks to work with today, but the principle is still the same—imply a more complicated design from a simpler one. Originally, real-world limitations forced designers to get creative with the tools they had. That first era of video games left such a strong impression that, now, pixel art is deeply nostalgic for many potential players. Indie games stand to benefit the most from a less expensive, immediately nostalgic visual art form, which is probably why the indie game market is overflowing with pixel art right now. Shovel Knight carefully replicates the look of classic NES games, which fits perfectly since the gameplay is basically Mega Man With A Shovel.
Pre-rendered 3D: Popular in mobile games—think of the visuals surrounding the shape-matching zone, or the landscape behind a tower of very upset poultry. Pre-rendered art is static, meaning it typically doesn’t move or interact with other visual elements. Static artwork doesn’t need to constantly re-render itself, so it uses up less processing power than the alternatives. Pre-rendered art is perfect for adding background visuals, making it popular in mobile game dev but equally well-suited to fixed-perspective sections of otherwise 3D games, like Final Fantasy 7-9. In this Royal Match! puzzle, the pre-rendered part is the courtyard, lake, mountains, and sky.
Cutout: Less popular art style; mainly used to distinguish games from their peers visually or for narrative reasons. Cutout games feel like playing around with a digital diorama. Rogue Legacy 2 uses cutout art and bright, vivid colors to make everything seem to jump out of the level, emphasizing enemy and character movement.
Minimalist: Minimalist game artwork aims to prove that “less is more.” Minimalism is about simplifying and smoothing out visual features to emphasize certain aspects. It doesn’t require a low amount of polygons or a retro presentation—just that there’s nothing extra beyond what visually makes the game’s point most effectively. Baba is You doesn’t need anything more than what’s seen below to get its point across; its minimalism helps players focus all their attention on solving the puzzles.
Low-poly: Low-poly art leads to a heavily stylized look, for better or worse. It’s less resource-hogging than more realistic 3D models, but doesn’t age as quickly, either. Low-poly artwork is a handy option for indie or smaller teams working on a budget, but it can also be used stylistically in big-budget games. Dredge uses low-poly art to create relaxing maritime coastlines, like this one.
Monochromatic: Simplifies the visual elements in terms of their value and color, focusing users’ attention on the few remaining ones. Suited to more cerebral games that want to make players think or solve a puzzle in their head, and don’t want to detract from that experience with flashy, colorful visuals. Monochromatic art is reminiscent of old black-and-white TV shows, giving it a nostalgic feel. The reduced color palette automatically emphasizes the contrast between dark and light. Games like Limbo lean into this effect, using lighting to variably hide or indicate danger, depending on the amount of tension desired. (Below: high tension.)
Flattened: Flattened game art offers a limited perspective on the game world. The player views the game as if they’re in the audience and their character is on a stage, always viewed from the same angle. Many older games and most 2D platformers used flattened art. GoNNER uses the lack of depth perception to enhance its sense of mystery and whimsy—the whole game feels like running through a surrealist painting.
Realistic: Realistic artwork aims to get as close as possible to the real thing. This type of artwork tends to be more resource-intensive since the real world is in a ridiculously high resolution. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 continues the FPS trend of trying to authentically represent military combat scenarios through extreme attention to detail.
Geometric: Simple blocks, shapes bumping into each other, and other predictable interactions. This is what grandparents picture when they hear “video games.” Tetris is a game that needs no introduction—it’s still the #1 top-selling video game, ever—but for the somehow uninitiated, the gameplay is all about pure geometric efficiency.
Hand-drawn: Hand-drawn art uses the old-fashioned method of drawing each frame separately then combining them to create animation. Computers usually handle this repetitive work for us, but originally, hand-drawn animation was the only option. Cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Disney and Studio Ghibli movies were completely hand-drawn, so the art style feels nostalgic even for people born after this era of animation. It’s also extremely inefficient and requires tedious attention to detail, making it feel like an extravagant visual gift to the player. Gris takes this a step further and can only be called hand-painted.
Cel-shaded: Cel-shaded art makes any game look like a comic book. It serves as a happy medium between realistic 3D models and creatively stylized 2D art. The cel-shaded art style has been used in as vastly divergent contexts as Viewtiful Joe and the Telltale Walking Dead games, which pair the comic-like artwork seen below with impossibly dark post-zombie-apocalypse scenarios.
What is 2D game art?
2D game art is flattened, two-dimensional game art. 2D game art is most common with older games, since earlier consoles weren’t powerful enough to handle 3D graphics. Indie games and those going for a retro/nostalgic style often use 2D game art. Many RPGs and platformers are entirely in 2D.
2.5D games sit inbetween 2D and 3D games, with 3D character models moving along a 2D plane. Ori games and some fighting games, like Street Fighter V and VI, are 2.5D. Games with 2.5D artwork show the amount of organization and synthesis required between the art department and the rest of the development team. Without 2.5D pixel art, Octopath Traveler never could have achieved its signature look.
2D game art is important for 3D games, too! Character portraits and UI elements are often 2D in otherwise 3D games. Early concept art is typically 2D (it’s just the fastest way to get the ideas down on paper). 2D art is used to flesh out new concepts, before the designers choose whether 2D or 3D in-game art is the best way to represent that visual concept.
What is 3D game art?
3D game art tends to be more complicated to produce—not more artistically complex, necessarily, just more resource-demanding and often requiring more steps.
Modeling: Modeling is the process of transferring a design from a 2D environment to a 3D world. Adding the Z-axis tends to highlight smaller errors that were less noticeable on a 2D plane. When modeling involves combining multiple 2D designs in a 3D environment, it also entails working within the limitations of each platform. PC games can show more detailed models and simultaneous high-res animations without slowing down than mobile games, for instance. Modeling is the art of transforming concept art into a finished, interactable 3D model, as seen below.
Rigging: Rigging is creating the skeleton of a 3D model. Whenever more complex movement is needed, such as with a 3D character model that has to bend or move multiple limbs, rigging comes into play. The more information available about the thing being modeled, the more accurately the rigging can be arranged to represent it. Rigging, in short, controls how the lizard warrior below actually moves its limbs to reposition itself around the game world.
(Credit: Olenka Denis)Games aiming for a higher degree of realism typically use extremely detailed 3D art to represent the real world as accurately as possible. There are also countless examples of exaggerated, unrealistic 3D characters and game worlds, though. No one expects Minecraft sheep to closely resemble the real thing, or questions how Yoshi produces eggs so quickly. It’s debatable which gives a stronger impression of realism: a 2D pixel art game like Blasphemous (below) that tries to capture more realistic visuals, or a highly stylized 3D game like Fortnite.
Luffy in One Piece is the perfect case study in unrealistic realism. The player knows his super-stretching power doesn’t exist in the real world, but it still has to feel realistic. Rigging is a designer’s most important tool for making impossible physics seem intuitive and believable. Luffy’s movements don’t have to be consistent with reality, but they do have to be consistent with themselves and the parts of the game world with which they interact.
Lighting and shading are always important parts of a game’s aesthetic, but they become much more complicated with 3D modeling. 2D games and assets often use clever tricks to avoid the performance drain of carefully rendered lighting effects. League of Legends primarily uses hand-painted art, so the lighting effect is incorporated into the color choices.
Lighting and shading in 3D games is another story. Following the refractory patterns of light while the camera is constantly rotating within a three-dimensional environment simply takes more code and more thorough design considerations than earlier alternatives. Well-designed lighting is critical both in making realistic games look more realistic and fleshing out the look of heavily stylized games. Journey, for instance, uses lighting to drastically alter its relatively simplistically colorized low-poly environments.
Some franchises have to maintain a certain art style while transitioning back and forth from 2D and 3D. Link has to look fairly similar in every Zelda game, regardless of the release platform or device, for instance. FPS games are nearly always in 3D, and the older 2D ones feel noticeably dated now. Games like Super Smash Bros. animate the characters in 3D but only let them move along a 2D plane.
FromSoft games highlight the way 3D art and environments can affect the gameplay experience, since they’re otherwise very similar to many 2D RPGs. Enemies hide behind door frames to ambush you, and archers perch themselves in high-up spots where impatient players forget to look. Designers simply have more factors to take into account. Architecture like immersion-breaking invisible walls just isn’t necessary in a game like Chrono Trigger; the only thing to worry about there are Back to the Future-style time travel paradoxes.
Super Metroid vs. Metroid Prime is a useful case study. Both games want to achieve the same overall player experience (exploring a mysterious alien planet while upgrading her space suit), but they go about it very differently thanks to the distinct needs of 2D and 3D environments. Below is essentially the same enemy in essentially the same early overworld area of each game (though they’re canonically set on different planets).
What are examples of unique video game art styles?
Examples of unique video game art styles range from spooky to inviting, 2D to 3D, minimalist to highly detailed, 2D RPG pixel art to 3D photorealistic WWII reenactments. Most game art styles end up looking similar to other games with the same goals—no one is dreaming up a bright, colourful, relaxing version of Resident Evil. The truly unique game art styles are the ones that go where noone has gone before.
On a scale from stylistic to realistic, most games fall somewhere in the middle. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 are all about authenticity and creating a completely immersive world, so it’s about as close to real life as most games are willing to get. On the other hand, Cuphead throws realism out the window in favor of trying to look as much as possible like an old-timey cartoon. Its super-stylized hand-animated artwork is one of Cuphead’s biggest selling points. Then there are games like Astro Bot, which mix highly stylized shapes and characters with textures closer to a real-world level of detail. Pick any game and try to figure out where it goes on this line.
What are common indie game art styles?
Common indie game art styles range from low-poly to pixel art to highly stylized or abstract visuals. Hollow Knight exemplifies the visual trends associated with most indie games—it’s clearly got its own style, but it uses modern technology to recreate the same feeling as its metroidvania predecessors.
2D art is common in indie games or those aiming for a retro/nostalgic appeal. Indie games sometimes take more risks artistically to distinguish themselves from AAA games/other well-known games in the same genre. Budget constraints can be a factor, leading to heavily stylized aesthetics rather than expensive nice-to-haves like detailed 3D animation sequences.
What are popular mobile game art styles?
Popular mobile game art styles mainly include pre-rendered 3D and low-poly art. Especially after the runaway success of Flappy Bird (right), mobile developers have tended to emphasize simpler artwork. It’s incredible how well it did with visuals like this and gameplay borrowed from even older Flash browser games.
It’s more financially efficient to make sure the artwork looks acceptable on most phones and tablets and spend that design effort elsewhere. Pixel art is a niche option used occasionally since it’s easy to work with and adds a retro appeal, but low-poly and pre-rendered 3D art are still much more popular.
Mobile games have to work on a wide range of phone hardware, so overly complex artwork or animations are actually a drawback. Complex designs and extra overlapping 3D model interactions carry a greater risk of visual or gameplay glitches across so many different devices. Clash of Clans makes its pre-rendered images feel 3D by rendering each character at 8-16 angles, giving the illusion of three dimensions while using far less processing power.
How to make game art?
The process for how to make game art varies depending on the project’s and team’s needs, but these are the critical steps Efe Ecevit takes when creating any game artwork.
1. Create the moodboard: Brainstorm all early ideas with the design team, including the big decision between 2D and 3D. Ensure everyone understands the overarching theme/aesthetic/setting. Use the moodboard below as an example.
2. Do visual R&D to clarify the overall design: Research other games’ artwork to see how other designers present similar ideas, then confirm the visual details with the whole team. Do small-scale experiments to test how textures and lighting/shading interact with models. The goal is to end up with concept art to be used in the next step.
3. Prepare the actual artwork: For 2D art, extract the necessary assets depending on the animation style (rigs are made in 2D; games like Cuphead draw individual frames, the old-fashioned way). For 3D art, both 3D models and the world around them are being built. The example below shows how developed the artwork ought to be after step 2.
4. Assemble the rigging: This affects how the model moves. The more meticulous the rigging setup is, the more smooth and realistic the in-game movement feels.
5. Finalize the animation: With the rigging and most design details in place, it’s time to decide exactly how the model moves around. Add polish to the basic movements laid out in the previous step.
6. Prepare the final in-game version: Finish adjusting the lighting (though it should already be mostly planned out in the R&D step) and check if there are any remaining rendering issues to resolve. Put on the finishing touches to help it reach the team’s vision. This completed blue treasure chest animation is based on the concept art above, both from the game Sort Express.
What is a game art designer?
A game art designer creates all sorts of artwork for video games. Game art designers usually specialize in more than one type of artwork—character design, UI visuals, etc. The specifics of working as a game art designer depend on the studio and specific role in question. Here’s an example of a game art designer job post that highlights what development studios typically look for.
A video game artist’s job can be divided into two main types: the creative part, and the crafting part. The initial creative and innovative part of the job, like most of game design, is a team effort. Whenever something new is to be added, all relevant team members discuss the technical side of the visuals and specify how to achieve the desired look and feel. There’s usually a lot of back and forth and experimentation at this stage.
The second part is actually crafting the agreed-upon designs. Execution is a painful step to redo, so it’s important to plan everything out carefully to maximize the team’s efficiency. An illustrator, like a blacksmith, sits and draws for days to finish an illustration, consulting with others only when absolutely necessary. While 3D artists have to pay closer attention to aspects like the rigging and environment texturing, they’re also glued to their computer monitor until the model is both technically and visually accurate in every way.
What tools and software do game art designers use?
Game art designers use a range of powerful game art design software, depending on the type of art they’re producing. For 3D modeling, the most popular choices are Maya, Blender, and Marmoset. Popularity is a key factor when choosing which tools to work with. All else being equal, it’s a perk for potential new hires to have already mastered the same software the rest of the design team is using. Spend some time researching the tools major studios prefer, and why.
Maya, Blender, and Marmoset are typically used for the simpler parts of the modeling, animation, and rigging processes. For more detailed and especially organic models, use programs such as ZBrush and, again, Blender. Think of these as sculpture modeling programs. Sculpt the artwork in ZBrush, then use retoplogy in more feature-rich 3D software to get a version that’s actually usable in game engines. (Maya also has sculpting tools, but they aren’t as good as ZBrush’s.)
For 3D modeling, Maya and Blender are the top choices. They’re very similar tools, but Blender has the distinct advantage of being free—making it the wiser choice for indie devs and teams working on a tight budget. The screenshot below shows what early 3D model artwork looks like in Autodesk Maya’s interface.
Substance Painter is the go-to choice for model painting. It’s fast and excels at character and prop painting due to having extra features aimed at these purposes. Since model painting is actually done by reducing a 3D object to a two-dimensional plane, it can be painted using Photoshop, Marmoset, or ZBrush—the last one being the most time-consuming. Whatever tools the designer uses, this part is called texturing.
Environment texturing is more of a procedural process with more, smaller iterations, so it’s common to make shaders directly in engines like Unity or Unreal. Programs such as Quixel and Substance Designer are more specialized tools for creating procedural textures, but many game artists don’t feel the need to introduce more software when Unity or Unreal can already handle this directly. Imagine creating an in-game wooden wall by simply repeating the same rectangular .png of a wood grain—it would look terrible while using up extra processing power. A well-prepared shader provides a far more optimized version that looks closer to the real thing.
Across the wide world of game art design, though, Photoshop and Procreate are used most frequently. These high-functionality generalist art programs are especially useful for illustration and designing UI or concept art. Most assets used are in a raster (bitmap with set pixels) format rather than vector (mathematically calculated curvature), so vector art programs like Adobe Illustrator, while powerful, are rarely used. With concept art, the most important aspect of the software is whether it helps designers iterate quickly.
2D animation can be divided into cutout animation and traditional animation. With cutout animation, software like Spine is used to break down 2D images and apply the skeletal rigging correctly. The result is a fully capable movement system achieved with minimal drawing effort. Below is the style of cutout animation used in Cult of the Lamb.
Traditional animation requires drawing each frame individually. It’s more resource-intensive, but creates a unique aesthetic that often feels worth the extra effort. Photoshop and Toon Boom are useful tools for traditional animators, as the work mainly consists of creating appealing individual frames. Games like Hollow Knight and Cuphead use traditional cel animation and draw each frame individually, which is how the latter manages to look so much like an old-timey cartoon.
Programs like Aseprite that are used to extract flat assets are a life-saver for creating the animations in pixel art games. Dead Cells (below) took an interesting approach here: the game has a pixelated art style, but the assets were first made in 3D and animated, then converted to pixel art.
Motion capture animation is another option game artists can use to make the animation look as realistic and fluid as possible. Even with stylized assets, it’s hard to get closer to human-like motion than just actually recording someone acting out every fight scene. This mocap footage shows how the development team choreographed Kratos’s fight scenes in God of War.
All that said—many video game artists use more than one of these programs on a daily basis. Each piece of software is another tool in an art designer’s toolbox. Try them all! There’s more than one way to turn a game artist’s vision into reality.
What is the difference between game art and game design?
Game art design is a subset of game design. Game design covers all aspects of creating a game or feature, while game art design exclusively concerns the visuals. The two are still closely related; it’s not like game art can be designed in a vacuum. Each part of the game—mechanics, environments, narrative, etc.—has to fit together seamlessly with the artistic elements. Game art is ultimately created to serve the game’s design, but it does have its own autonomous structure and separate considerations. Game design determines what to say in a game, while game art concerns how it’s said. (And game art has to maintain its aesthetic integrity while doing so).
Take Gnar from League of Legends, for example. Gnar’s earliest iterations were based on dinosaurs, lions, rhinos, and other animals before the team decided on his final gorilla form.
Gnar’s design and implementation prototype was created by combining existing Nautilus artwork with Syndra’s basic attack animation. His initial character design (below) was cobbled together with art assets and animations for Huntress Sivir’s boomerang, Vayne’s Silver Bolts, Master Yi’s Highlander speed lines, and Ziggs’ Satchel Charge excited yell.
The basic concept for a character starts with an overarching understanding of how the character fits into the gameplay and environment—the game design perspective—then the more specific and polished artwork is layered on top.
