LOW POLY
For the art style, we have chosen low poly.
Low poly means that every model has a low amount of polygons or faces. These are the flat parts of a model.
Below you can see the same object, but with different amount of faces. More faces gives a smoother object, but will also take more recourses to calculate how it interacts with light.
Above you can see three balls. The ball on the left is actually a cube. This happens when you have a ball with 6 faces. The ball in the middle has 24 faces. Every face from the left ball has been divided into 4 faces. This gives more detail, but gives more calculations for light. On the ball on the right, with 192 faces, you can see that the steps between shadow and light are smaller. This looks better if you want a realistic ball, which we do not want.
We want to model everything with the least amount of polygons, while still being recognisable. The ball on the right is very detailed, while the ball on the left is not recognisable as a ball. The middle ball is, for us, the perfect middleground. You can see this in the picture below as well. The barrel is very recognisable, but does not have a lot of faces.
Having a lower amount of polygons means that our game can run on slower computers as well.
It also means that we are able to make more models in the same amount of time. Modelling detail takes a lot of time. For this project we have chosen quantity above quality. Although our low poly models will still be curated by us, we think it is more important that the world is filled.
Bookcases without books do not feel right, as do empty desks.
Because modelling takes less time, we can also experiment more. We can make more prototypes to test different ideas. This also means that we can test more setups with our players.
Later, we will talk about some specific models. Stay tuned for that!