New videogame art hurts my eyes!

[Keatah]

Does anyone else here have that problem? With overbusy, loud, violent imagery that looks like it was penned by someone being hit by a lightning strike?

 

Looking at this stuff hurts my head and just raises feelings of jittery nervousness. And to top it off, unless you look carefully with effort, its just an epileptic nightmare! You can't tell anything apart in the image.

 

The visual equivalent of that shit grunge music your typical teen seems to enjoy. Noise! A cacophonic assault!

 

 

WTF am I looking at??!?!?

Edited September 15, 2015 by Keatah

[Gamemoose]

When was your last eye exam and perhaps maybe a switch to decaf?

[+save2600]

Agree. It's as noisy and compressed as today's music.

[Atlantis]

geezers... it art can't you tell !!??

[+save2600]

Art that caters to the ADD in all of us.

[Gabriel]

Hmmm.

 

The Shantae image has decent composition. The main character (Shantae, I presume) easily dominates the image and has the dominant color presence. Her sword and the lower arc of her hair nicely frame her. The other characters aren't obtrusive. I don't see any problem with it. It's actually pretty good.

 

The second one is... well it's several books/cases or something tossed haphazardly on a yellow orange fire background. It's not a composed image. So, I don't know what the problem is. Are you complaining random stuff tossed down in a pile is random?

 

The third one is another composition with good focus. the arc of the oriental dragon, the flow of the girl's cape, the wing of the western dragon, the shield, it all draws attention to the lady who is central to the image. She also stands out in the image because of her color composition, with the other humanoid characters of mostly muted shades to diminish their focus. Another perfectly fine image.

 

The next one is just a bunch of poorly drawn shit tossed on a page. Sonic looks particularly bad. It's definitely of the school of thought of throwing a bunch of shit on the page and hoping something sticks. It's the only one of these which strike me as matching your description of epileptic nightmare. Even for the style of image it is, it's just bad.

 

Finally there's the last one. I'd just characterize this one as a poor image. It seems to be going for a pseudo-caricature style. But it does at least have a concept behind it, even if I think it's poorly executed.

[PlaysWithWolves]

I get that way with extended CGI battles in movies these days. Loved Guardians of the Galaxy, but the final battle made my eyes cross.

 

Oh, and:

 

[cimerians]

This is video game art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Atlantis]

I hate manga, so I agree with above ^

[Petran79]

Last time I visited a video games store, I was not impressed with video game covers either. Neither on consoles or computers

Unfortunately cover art does not have as much influence as in previous decades.

 

I mean regarding photorealistic covers, you see exactly the same figure as in the game, eg Far Cry 3 & 4

 

Since you mentioned mostly cartoon art there are few exceptions too. Also there are still differences between the Japanese and the International version in some games. Still saddening

 

compare this:

 

 

to this....a travesty at least the Japanese version was closer to the original

 

 

 

Or this, resembling the classic cover in colors to this

 

 

One cover I liked though was this. At least Nintendo are more considerate most of the times

 

[Reaperman]

My friggin eyes!

 

 

 

To be fair, I think Atari spent a good portion of the early 80's testing out weapons-grade cocaine for the CIA.

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2015 by Reaperman

[CPUWIZ]

That RETRO cover is frigging awesome.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Atari 2600 game boxes without question have the best video game artwork. I also like the art on the Intellivisiom and 5200 boxes. The side art, decals, and marquees on late 70's to 80's arcade machines. I personally think the last best year for great video game artwork was the NES in my honest opinion. Overall best is the 2600. It gave you a good imagination on playing games.

[Keatah]

No love for Intellivision boxes?

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

No love for Intellivision boxes?

Forgot to add that on my post edited to make sure it's on there.

[Keatah]

I love the Syd Mead style art in Slot Racers. And you can see one of the cars in this.

 

I'm not sure if he did the SR box art. But it's packed with his style 2bsure.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Keatah

[HoshiChiri]

I don't think it's fair to judge based on the art the OP picked, really- only 2 of those appear to be actual game art. Bad fanart and a horrible photo of someone's collection of... something on fire doesn't seem like the best judge of a whole industry.

 

I will say, there has been a definite move from soft, watercolor style art to a brighter pop-art style... that's not gonna gel with everyone. There's still good stuff out there, though! Some things I like:

[IrishNerdLife]

This is an interesting subject and one that is highly subjective. Personally I think the composition of the first and third images in the OP are quite good, since they have reasonable focus on the main character, but I'm not so keen on the others. However there are some great examples of modern art, such as those that HoshiChiri posted above, that are very well composed. I think it's a case of taking the good with the bad. There are some terrible pieces of artwork today, but that was the same in the past too. For every Missile Command you had a Pro Wrestling on the Master System.