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What do you think of Chibi styled characters?
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Can't stand it. It's only OK in sprites from the 16-bit era.
This.
Pass for me. I don't mind cartoony proportions and styles but chibi as a design choice instead of limited by technical constraints usually takes it too far into cutesy territory and just doesn't appeal to me.
To anyone who questioned what I meant by how I hate Chibi because of the way female are presented this FF picture highlights it perfectly.I generally like it, but I also generally don't like the blocky styled version. I'm going to try post some examples to illustrate.
The Bravely example is great - rounded lines.
Diamond/Pearl Remake has the blocky style, so I am not a huge fan (though I will get used to it, of course).
Proportions also play a part. Bravely once again does it well. Pokemon XY also does it well, too. The below are actual toy examples:
This one is Trading Arts Kai (I don't like it)
(This one is Trading Arts min, I do like them)
I feel like the DP Remakes look like those cheap imitation chibis that are creepy and not cute, it's hard to explain. They probably look fine as 2D illustrations, maybe.
If I had to say, where XY was like Nendoroids, DP Remake is like Funk Pops - which may not make sense to everyone, but yeah, that's how I am feeling haha!
The industry has a need to sexualize its female designs from the off and will have it in the design, then you turn it Chibi and it makes the issues all more stark.
Overlooking the question of Wing Gundam Lightning's design quality here, you have what was at least an adult looking character who was specifically designed to have large swathes of skin showing, however instead of actually recognizing that they are making the character "cute/whimsical" and changed appropriately you now have that crazy revealing gear on someone that looks like a cute child like character.
Now compare her to everyone else, most barely even show their arms but Lightning? Nah, let's keep having her dressed up like she is sexy cosplaying as a Mecha while she is the size of a child.
I think it can look really good. It's not a style I am inherently opposed to. Like someone said earlier, not all chibi designs are created equally.
I think some of the examples people have mentioned like Wonderful 101 and Viewtiful Joe show that it can definitely work, but I feel like it works best in a comic setting where you aren't meant to take things too seriously.
With sprites it's perfectly good. Not a fan of it in 3D. Just doesn't look as appealing for the most part. It can work when going for a specific aesthetic like the chibi Zeldas (though I still don't care for Link's Awakening's artstyle), but more often than not it just makes the game look worse. Won't kill a game for me, but it's a negative far more often than not.
Like how am I supposed to take Dawn or Lucas seriously when they look like a Potato Heads with legs?
I mean, you're not supposed to take them seriously, it's a game where the primary audience is kids and kids like cute things.
Cyrus is gonna look goofy but his entire existence is goofy regardless of art style.
I'm so tired of this argument. You don't get to say that when the Pokemon Presents started with a trailer that was tugging at young adults who grew up with the series, by showing the history of the franchise.
Furthermore, kids do not have the connection to DP like the ones who grew up with the games back when the DS was the popular console.
That's why I said "primary audience" not "the audience". Kids are who the games are made for first and foremost, there's no argument to be made against that, so it's only natural they'll occasionally dip into aesthetics that kids are proven to like.
Not to mention they announced a game that takes itself more seriously in that same presentation, they're basically catering to a wide audience, which is ultimately what that montage was all about.
It really depends on how they're made. When made well, I really love them. I also have a soft spot for SD mechs (Super Robot Wars, SD Gundam etc.). But when they look like in FF Theatrhythm or World of FF, they're painful to look at. When the head is 5 times the volume of the rest of the body, you're doing something wrong.
Chibi is good when you do something interesting with the proportions, exaggerate certain features... Not when it's used as an excuse to go cheap and not have to actually model the characters.
Surprisingly (given the 2 examples above), what I've seen of Ever Crisis seems to be up my alley in terms of chibi design.
Chibi is good when you do something interesting with the proportions, exaggerate certain features... Not when it's used as an excuse to go cheap and not have to actually model the characters.
Surprisingly (given the 2 examples above), what I've seen of Ever Crisis seems to be up my alley in terms of chibi design.
It's dependent on one crucial detail: Are the original character designs chibi or are they only chibi in the game?
What I don't like about chibi characters in games is that usually devs will have an illustrator design the characters as properly proportioned humans and the design choices will reflect that. But then after that, the devs will create this chibi version which just compresses down all the design elements that were meant to work with full proportions. It just ruins the designs.
Like are you saying kids don't like characters that look like this?
What I don't like about chibi characters in games is that usually devs will have an illustrator design the characters as properly proportioned humans and the design choices will reflect that. But then after that, the devs will create this chibi version which just compresses down all the design elements that were meant to work with full proportions. It just ruins the designs.
But kids like the Pokemon anime and that's not chibi. No one is asking for Pokemon to adopt a realistic art style. They just want the characters to look the way they are supposed to.
Like are you saying kids don't like characters that look like this?
Im not the biggest fan, but chiby is not an artstyle. Its maybe a design philosohpy while developing an artstyle. But You can count BD, DP remake, Lets go and X/Y and World of Final Fantasy...and some of them i like/find okay, others i find ugly as hell.
The DP remakes are an example of "does not work for me at all". XY worked for that time rather well i have to say. BD2 now..im mixed. In some pictures it works, in motion not so much...
The DP remakes are an example of "does not work for me at all". XY worked for that time rather well i have to say. BD2 now..im mixed. In some pictures it works, in motion not so much...
But kids like the Pokemon anime and that's not chibi. No one is asking for Pokemon to adopt a realistic art style. They just want the characters to look the way they are supposed to.
Like are you saying kids don't like characters that look like this?
Of course they do, which is why those designs are in the game too. They're hitting both the cute and cool quotas, much like the Pokémon designs themselves.
There's nothing wrong with going with cuter, lower-budget character models for the overworld of a game with Saturday morning cartoon stakes (and that's no knock on Saturday morning cartoons narratives). It's affordable, and certain audiences are proven to like it.
For what it's worth I'm not even the biggest fan of the direction the Diamond/Pearl remakes took (the lighting's bad, the fact HM's will probably be in is awful), I just think the style has its merits and its appeal to certain audiences so writing it off entirely seems misguided.
Except a remake is not what you do if your primary audience is kids, because as I've stated, kids have zero connection to the Sinnoh games. A remake is what you do when your primary audience is those who grew up with the series and wanted to revisit the games again. Also, the aesthetics matters for kids less than you think it does. Otherwise, we would've seen chibi styling far more in the Pokemon series than just this game (I don't count the handheld games bc of technology limitations).
Sometimes I hate.. sometimes I don't mind.
It all depends on the design choice and feels in the game.
It all depends on the design choice and feels in the game.
The "pokemon is for kids"... do you have numbers that its mostly kids that buy them? i honestly am not shure if kids are more then 50% of the audience. i honestly expect them to be more around 30%.
And even then: kids how old? do kids with 12 perefe chiby or would they want more "mature" teen lookin characters?
I ofthen see the kids argument thrown around, but knowing kids in that age bracket...eh.
They definitely have more tolerance for chipy compared to average era (they also havent lived long enough to have seen a fuckton boring chibi designs), but they also like more mature designs.
And even then: kids how old? do kids with 12 perefe chiby or would they want more "mature" teen lookin characters?
I ofthen see the kids argument thrown around, but knowing kids in that age bracket...eh.
They definitely have more tolerance for chipy compared to average era (they also havent lived long enough to have seen a fuckton boring chibi designs), but they also like more mature designs.
You said it yourself. They're lower-budget. Let's be honest, that's the primary reason they're being done this way. Stuff like appealing to kids is a distant secondary at best but realistically a happy coincidence.
I just think your argument is very flawed. You keep saying how the chibi is cute to appeal to kids but you still haven't show how the correctly proportioned designs don't appeal to the same kid audience. Sword and Shield sold to a bunch of kids just fine - it didn't need chibi to do that.
What's this about a cool/cute quota anyway? Like Lucas and Dawn are already very cute designs. You say yourself the Pokemon designs achieve this but the Pokemon are not chibified. So why wouldn't the same apply to the humans?
Cute
Cool
No chibi required. But I don't think with chibi you're going to make someone like Volkner or Cyrus ever look cool. You can't be as diverse with chibi, it's always gonna be a cutesy or just dumb look.
I'm not a super fan of chibi, though I understand why developers do it. It's important to understand that characters and the world have to be scaled together. For the pokemon remakes, it makes sense to use chibi characters because they aren't changing the maps, it would look awkward to put normal scale characters in there. And for other new games, it makes sense to use chibi if they want to make the world smaller and therefore easier to develop. I also think chibi makes sense for lower resolution pixel art games, since chibi gives you relatively more space to convey information in the head and expressions.
Pokémon is definitely a franchise for children. It has universal appeal but children are definitely the target audience. Lots of adults and teens playing it is a happy side effect more than anything.
Just statistically tehre is a high chance that children are NOT the major playerbase.
Children that play pokemon games go from say 6 to 12.
Thats 6 years.
All other go from say 13 to 6+franchiselife -> 31
thats a way wider field to aim for.
Then looking at the fact that older fans can invest more money and buy more of those pokemon games...yeah. I honestly think 30% children is about right.
Im not totally against being focused on kids (you need to add fresh blood to fanbases so that it does not devolve to a niche product), and children deserve good games.
What im against is dumbing down stuff for them to a degree that i feel like i would not like my kid to play that to not underchallenge (not just mechanics, but themes and artistically). And ignoring the fanbase on the other end when you have a franchise like pokemon that could work on multiple levels and in multiple interpretations...
thats why im happy with the dual solution they proposed. Im not happy with the D/P remake, not because its "to much for kids", but it just kinda looks...cheap.
There are other chibi games for kids that look better, and i would argue even pokemon was better with XY and even if i did not like them Lets Go.
Fake Edit: going by those sources in the reddit post:
Reddit - Dive into anything
www.reddit.com
yeah, most players are not kids anymore. Woudlnt even make statistical sense, except if you expect that most fall of as fans and never play when they grow up.
Not a fan. Nearly any Chibi'd game could be improved in my eyes by not being that way. Japan keeps making them though, so someone must like it. かわいいですね, I guess.
Exception might be something like Fullmetal Alchemist, when Arakawa draws the characters in that form for a panel, usually for a humorous effect.
Exception might be something like Fullmetal Alchemist, when Arakawa draws the characters in that form for a panel, usually for a humorous effect.
It depends on the context. They need a good reason to be used or be a part of a greater overall art style. Sometimes it just feels like a shortcut.
I think in the current situation with Pokemon D/P, on one hand the whole overworld was built with that style in mind, it just (overall) doesn't look very good. On the other you have to compare it to the direction they were taking with all the other recent titles and ask "why this style, why here, why now?"
I think in the current situation with Pokemon D/P, on one hand the whole overworld was built with that style in mind, it just (overall) doesn't look very good. On the other you have to compare it to the direction they were taking with all the other recent titles and ask "why this style, why here, why now?"
As much as I normally love cute things in general, I'm honestly so tired of the chibi look. It was fun and unique when the first couple of games used it, and I also get the hardware limitations being the main factor. But I have such a hard time connecting with the characters when they look like that. It just feels like I'm playing a kiddified version of a normal game. I'm not saying that they need to be hyper-realistic either: just that having more realistic proportions helps me read the characters as actual human characters with agency (also the chibi look makes it very hard to show a variety of facial emotions, too, which may play a part; they always just look so lifeless). I never had a problem with tiny SNES sprites, but stuff like Bravely Default and World of Final Fantasy hit a weird disconnect for me.
Generally it's not something I'm big on, but that's not to say it's inherently bad, just that a lot of games seem to misfire with it in my mind.
I look at the world of FF examples and my word, the characters just look so boring and samey.
And as others have pointed out, Bravely Default made it work well enough for the original game considering its platform and such, the sequel not so much at all.
Now just for fun, let's look at Capcom's numerous takes on chibi styles because they've got some good and bad
Puzzle Fighter 2 is what I presume to be one of the gold standard for chibi game styles
The in game sprites are full of character, perfect use of chibis for a lighter spin off.
Then there's this reboot of sorts? chibis going for the more modern mobile game look, oh the downgrade right here
And lastly some obscure mobile game I remember because chibi Asura is wonderful. This one has some style to it.
Or maybe I'm just easily pleased by its deeper cuts
Hell yeah!
I look at the world of FF examples and my word, the characters just look so boring and samey.
And as others have pointed out, Bravely Default made it work well enough for the original game considering its platform and such, the sequel not so much at all.
Now just for fun, let's look at Capcom's numerous takes on chibi styles because they've got some good and bad
Puzzle Fighter 2 is what I presume to be one of the gold standard for chibi game styles
The in game sprites are full of character, perfect use of chibis for a lighter spin off.
Then there's this reboot of sorts? chibis going for the more modern mobile game look, oh the downgrade right here
And lastly some obscure mobile game I remember because chibi Asura is wonderful. This one has some style to it.
Or maybe I'm just easily pleased by its deeper cuts
Hell yeah!
