Character ideas - stylised or realistic?

Stylised vs realistic art has always been a topic to discuss in every field of art that include drawing/modelling. In my opinion, they both have their important place in the art industry. Different people find different things more appealing to them. Although I like both styles and the or last two years at the university I have tried to stylise my style of drawing I still keep coming back to my original realistic drawings even though I do not spend several dozens of hours doing realistic shading as I used to, due to lack of time. I have always enjoyed drawing realistic portraits and slowly rendering all small details of the skin, hair, or other textures.




Hyperrealism in 3D has been mainly used in the film industry, creating fantastic animals and creatures or environments we do not have on the Earth. Because hyperrealistic models and have so many details, it was impossible to use this technique in the game industry as well.

Comparison of CGI in the film The Lord Of The Rings and the game From Dusk Til Dawn (both from the year 2001)




However, nowadays technologies are much more powerful and they are able to render realistic models with less and less problems. That is why many game studios have started creating games with hyperrealistic characters and especially human characters, which were not needed in live action films. Hyperrealistic characters create more believable, almost real experience for the player of the game and with more games coming out with VR options hyperrealism is more needed and wanted.

Examples of games from 2017-2019

Cyberpunk 2077




Uncharted 4





Call Of Duty WW2



Death Stranding


Detroit Became Human





Ghost Of Tsushima



The Witcher


Overkill The Walking Dead






Red Man Redemption 2





The Last Of Us (Remastered)



Shadow Of The Tomb Raider 


I chose to create a character based on a book description based on a fantasy medieval land. The character could be made for a potential game based on the book the same way as The Witcher. My two preferred options are Katsa from Graceling or Fire from Fire, both written by Kristin Cashore. Those books used to be one of my favourite fantasy books during my teenage years and even nowadays I re-read them at least once a year when I come back to Slovakia. Both of the characters are strong women, warriors, have complicated backstories and I think it could be a good opportunity to gave a game with the main character a woman and also an opportunity for a female game character, that will not be oversexualised when it comes to character design, as most of them are.

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