It took me five hours to write this crap so please don't skim through it, read it in it's entirety. So yeah, thanks...
Recap wrote:Nervicide wrote:So if we can't really blame the producers and designers (we can call them names though, as we should) for their staff-hiring methods, since, by the end of the day, they are thought out to their best interest, who can we blame?
Blame me, because I fail to see your point once and again.
Ok, first off I would like to apologize for my apparent twitch-insane way of writing, it is that age, thanks for understanding.
What I am trying to say in that paragraph is that you cannot
blame anyone from the dev team for their decisions regarding the way their games look (they are perrrrrrfectly calibrated for western consumption), and of course, the way they hire staff. This topic is a disguise, you're actually more interested in
blaming someone than discussing about style and stylization (and technique) even if you don't know it (I think icy figured it out since page 2 though). I think I do, from the general vibe I get from this topic. If you want to blame anyone... you have to blame the US of flippin' A... and their parents (LOL!) Because that's why they don't make games that are stylized, it goes as deep as the entire hivemind of their nation. It's not "the western incompetent devs" it's not the "western incompetents", it's simply "those meddling kids and their westerners". You are admiring the ENTIRE nation of japan in your posts, but you are hating only on the western DEVS, instead of the ENTIRE Amerikas.
Recap wrote:Nervicide wrote:A JAPANESE gamedesign company! oh boy. This really takes the "when in rome" shit to a whole new level.
And yet, they have revealed themselves as the only ones capables of good art/stylization/abstraction/whatever. !
Ok, what I meant with the whole reggie fils aime reference is to further illustrate the atmosphere, of the western culture gaming scene, and how it affects the way western games look, to some extent atleast. We are talking about a country that can
convert the utmost stiff and HO-NO-RA-BLE type of human (japanese businessman) into hiring a guy that sold pizzas angro for fuck's sake.
So if someone like Nintendo can be assimilated so easily, what can you expect from a dev that was rasied and grew up in that culture if not total submission to it's whims?! Even Deus Ex, an
amazing game, is built on all that is american (it ooooozes amerikana from every seam), just like Fallout, that is why they are so fucking amazing, right? They are honest up to the point where one can say they are the product of an entire continent... you cannot expect these people to make something that is not linked with THEM. Whereas stylization, as in the visual technique of rendering things, is LINKED with Japan down to it's very fucking roots. You want western devs to fucking
lie to you (all devs lie, and they must do a damn fine job of it, but we are not talking about tricking you into thinking that their game is the only one that realistically depicts the piloting of a ten ton giant robot, we are talking about something much deeper, something they should never fucking lie about) , and then you want to spit in their faces for daring to
lie. Oh come on...
Let's talk a bit of semantics...
Gears of war is not made in a different style from, let's say, killer7. As most people would think. It is made in a different TECHNIQUE. Style is something that is grafted to one's composition, intellect, genetics, etc.
An artist's style will evolve over time, but only after he has reached a critical point in his artistic growth will it truly begin evolving. Until that critical point he was "learning", after the process of learning slows down to a crawl, and he is no longer conscious of the fact that he is learning (he thinks he
knows how to draw, he doesn't, no one fucking does) he starts learning without being fully aware of it when it actually happens. Ok, really retarded, I know, bare with me.
When a student sits down and draws a sketch in class, he does it in an awakened stance, he knows he is here to learn how to draw and he struggles to
learn. He draws his figure carefully, he watches his lines, his proportions, etc. He si fully awake. Style cannot evolve when you draw in such a stance... although, most of the solid concrete block from which the artist will cut away eventually is materialized while in such a stance.
The block is built out of many other things, it has been with him since the beginning, but t.v., junkfood, fucking, fighting, etc will also enlarge the block. In order for style to evolve though, one must ensure that something in particular in which style can manifest itself is dominant in the block. In order for a combat style to evolve, one must study fighting in some way, in order for a flute singing style to evolve, one must study flute-ing (lol) etc. How one identifies the shit which should be dominant in said block, means one must know oneself very well... or simply make a lucky pick. One might say beethoven knew himself, whilst hendrix was just one darn lucky sunnovabitch.
When a student is at home, and starts doodling (without having the worry of
learning), and then finds he likes his doodle, and begins working more seriously on it... he will gradually leave the awakened stance and enter the Zone, like a Tetris player does. Only when within this semi-retarded stance kicks in can style evolve. It is NOT concentration, concentration is needed when learning. semi-retardation is needed when actually drawing.
But the evolution of style needs more, the kid has to be tricked in thinking he knows how to draw (this happens when he graduates college and gets a cookie in the form of a diploma) so he can begin the more subtle learning process, so he can begin developing his style... this can only happen after he chills the fuck down, finishing college will give him the necessary confidence to do so.
That's why teachers tell you not to try and create your style, or steal/imitate someone else's, because they want you to learn. Problem is.... they are fucking morons. Firstly because one cannot CREATE style, he can only dig it up from within, and one can "steal" or "imitate" another's style as well as one can steal or imitate another's FUCKING SOUL... and secondly, because they teach you all the WRONG shit. But that goes without saying ROFL!
HOWEVER! (hah, always wanted to say this, ever since I started reading dinosaur comics)
Style needs something deeper in the long run, It needs the aging of the body, and the mind of course, style can evolve only with maturity, and oh boy, who the fuck can say what maturity is (those older and far smarter than me, basically)? I'll try and take a crack at it anyway...
As an artist grows older, he will start searching for purity in his work, we are talking about a truly good artist, one that will gradually shed what he admires and steals (steals in technique, you cannot steal style, we've already established that) from other artists, and he will begin STYLIZING his work. As Icy says, style DOES equal stylization. But this stylization is very hard to observe, highly hard to identify. As an artist lobs off all that is unnecessary from his paintings, be they created in any technique, hyperrealist, surrealist, whatever the fuck, he is stylizing, he is searching for a purity of form and color relevant to
him (his aesthetic sense), so yes, he is stylizing, even though he may not be drawing in a stylized technique, he is drawing in a stylized
manner. Also, to people who have a very close composition as him, he seems to be drawing better and better. Critics who click! with him, will recognize his evolution, and they will probably be the only ones to recognize said evolution...
Maturity is needed for one to search for something that is relevant to
him, not for his peers, or for the chick he really wants to fuck. I'm not so sure, but I think maturity, is linked to purely not giving a fuck about anything but oneself. The thing is, it is very important one learns to not give a fuck, not just... not give a fuck from the beginning.
So in order for this maturity to exist, one must give a fuck about something other than himself in the beginning, be they parents, family, friends, pick your own. People that simply don't give a fuck since birth, will be merely assholes and dicks and as we know from Team America, assholes only shit and dicks only piss...
In order for an artist to evolve, he must learn to be honest about his love for those he admires (if it's someone from the present, it is probably comic book artists; they are pretty much the only ones worth loving these days, question is
which ones) in order to learn from them not just by jealousy, but mainly by adoration (jealousy itself will only impede growth due to a constant state of uneasiness)... and honest about his hate for those he loathes (college teachers, mainly) ... and learn from them mainly by hate, not only by obligation (college teachers rock at teaching by being a counter-example).
All these feelings that insure growth can be felt only if the kid is built to care about others than himself (how to hate, love, and subsequently, be indifferent towards) . As he ages he will care less and less about other artists and their techniques, and concentrate more and more on finding his own formulas of rendering... whatever shit he thinks is worth rendering in whatever way his entire composition (age,life,country,global economics,etc) dictates to him.
Note that all this applies to civilized man only, fucking cavemen inspired themselves directly from mother nature. Shit is more complicated now. You don't see icy re-discovering shit that has already been discovered, he is pushing things forward from where others left off. That is why savages, as noble as they may be with their masks and wooden statues or whatever, don't really fucking count in the grand scheme of things. None of those motherfuckers will design the next moon rover or space shuttle or ipod for you to shove down your urethra.
Stylish is a word used to illustrate a lesser form of stylization, it is stylized to "some extent", but not so much as for it to be considered stylized. It's because those fucking retarded bretons like the thought of being able to put a fucking ISH at the end of any word. We don't have it in romanian, and I'm quite sure other latin based languages don't have it either, because there is no use of it. Something is either stylized or not, for fuck's sake. One could use the word stylish to illustrate his admiration for the newest fab skirt designed for white trash and preppies, I think, but those people aren't worth talking to anyway so fuck them.
Icy likes Gears not because it is stylized in it's visuals per se' (it's not, it has merely some exaggerated proportions in anatomy) I think he likes it because it's stylized in the more subtle way, it is testament to the evolution of a company's style. Because companies, just like people, have a style of their own, built and meshed from the minds of the many within it.
Read Pauline Kael's extract on the site, she'll tell you about the look of movies coming from various studios, and how studios have a certain way of flushing out flicks, flicks that you can tell come from THAT studio, even though you didn't catch their logo in the intro. And just as then current technology affected the way the movies from these studios looked, so does current tech affect how games from various companies look. But just like in the movie biz, it was more apparent in the beginning than now. In the end, only style will be the true factor of diversity.
He also likes the game because it shows PASSION from it's creators. Passion that somehow you think is available only to the japanazis or some shit lololololol! Gears may be retarded, it may be utterly moronic, but it's a work of passion. You cannot fucking doubt that, those people put all their love and sweat in that game. It was the day Epic Games stopped wanting to be Id software. Every fucking game they made was them
wanting to be Id. With Gears that stopped. A tip of the virtual hat to them... they grew up, basically, now you will see them evolve more and more in style (look at gears, then look at gears2).
How does a company reach the Zone and grows in style you ask? Crunch times, that's how. They are indispensable for a studio's evolution, they also shorten the employee's lifespan considerably, and they pay that price willingly and lovingly. During the Crunch the most mind blowing shit goes down, some games are completely scrapped, some games are completely re-routed in design. Also, as the people that work in the company age, and evolve, so does the hive along with them, makes perfect sense.
One must be seriously challenged in the mental department to say that companies like Id, or Valve, or Epic, or even Bungie, do not have passionate people that click their fingers to the goddamn fucking bone for their work. They are as hard working and as dedicated as the utmost loyal japanese developer. Every one of their games is THEM, Halo is Bungie, Gears is Epic (indeed it is) , Half Life is Valve, and Id... man... Id is all of the previous and then some. What more can you ask of men and women that are themselves in a day and age in which everyone tries to be someone else, oh right... you can ask them just that, to be someone else. Well shit. And you're supposed to be the gaming elite.
So man the fuck up and admit that western devs aren't to your liking simply because their technique is not to your liking. Not because they are incompetent, or because they aren't passionate, or because they don't have that mythical japanese capacity of working.
Even if comics and the like are stylized in western culture, that is not enough. Because AMERICA has more in common with Whistler's Mother than goddamn fucking WOLVERINE. And games siphon that shit out, they siphon it from the fucking veins of everything that is their country. They are the most honest stuff that has been barfed out of that continent in the last century besides tomahawk missiles.
But that's not enough for some elitists, you want more, some sort of ultimate fucking game designer that doesn't siphon shit from his life/nation/whatever. The only way something truthful that is not-linked to any nation or time-frame could come into existence is very simple, you're basically asking for a designer who knows himself so well that he needs only to siphon shit from within...