blazehedgehog
@blazehedgehog

This was also my knee-jerk reaction, but somebody framed it to me more that pixel art is actually really expensive compared to using 3D models. Which is true -- look back 20 years to the Gameboy Advance, and that platform established pre-rendered sprites as something that was quick, cheap, and easy. Having a pixel artist paint a thousand frames of animation costs a lot more than just keyframing a single skeleton and then running an export script.

Hand-drawn sprites on the left from Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga vs. pre-rendered models on the right from Mario vs. DK

Like, look at Superstar Saga against Mario vs. Donkey Kong. MvDK has 2-3 times as many frames of animation as Superstar Saga, and it uses pre-rendered graphics for its sprites.

Iizuka even touches on this a little bit, noting how easy it is to attach cosmetics and change out skins entirely for a 3D model. If you wanted to give Mario there a new hat, you'd have to modify ~120 individual frames of animation, one by one. Whereas with a 3D model, you just remove the old vertexes and attach the new ones.

This is less "pixel art as a medium will be dead in ten years" and more "2D animation as a whole is less cost-effective than 3D animation." It's the same problem as Disney ditching ink and paint for CGI (it's just framed with pixel art, given Sonic Mania is still a fresh memory).

All of this is to say: it sucks, because 2D animation looks wonderful, pixel art looks wonderful, and these people need to stop thinking so much with their bank accounts. At the same time, though, as someone who is a Sonic fan and looks at basically every single game under a microscope, I'm not alone in saying the last 3-4 Sonic releases have felt very low budget. Even (and maybe especially) Sonic Frontiers. And Takashi Iizuka, despite being the head of Sonic Team these days, has spelled it out that he's still beholden to Sega's corporate whims and isn't actually allowed to make the games he wants the team to make.

Ergo, I can imagine the dude is looking to save a few bucks wherever he can, because he has to work with what he's given.


MOOMANiBE
@MOOMANiBE

I'm speaking here as:

  • Someone who has professionally done pixel art for games
  • Someone who has professionally done rigging and 3d animation for games

"How expensive" an art style is is heavily, heavily depending on the production in question and its needs. Not just "are there alternate cosmetics" but stuff like:

  • Do you need alternate angles, and how many?
  • What kind of frame count are you going for for standard animations?
  • How much bespoke art is in the game vs how much standardized art?

Generally speaking, 3d is very good at minor variations on a theme. Retextures, small outfit additions. 3d is very bad at bespoke additions. Pixel art, meanwhile, is expensive for very large, complex animated pieces and variations on large-frame-count anims but VERY cheap for bespoke additions.

Things you can do very cheaply in 3d art:

  • Add props to existing characters
  • Retexture existing characters
  • Create new model variants for existing characters - as long as the body type is similar or identical
  • Vary animations procedurally
  • Have physics interactions
  • Have many camera angles

Things you can do very cheaply in 2d art:

  • Create wholly new assets/characters/animations extremely quickly
  • Create sequences that would be complex and difficult to animate in 3d, like complex prop interactions, character-linked effects, etc
  • Create games with a minimum of staff (the cost bar for pixel art is lower than 3d art at the low-budget end, due to 3d art's large wind-up cost - making and animating a single model requires at minimum 3 different disciplines. That sunk cost becomes lesser on larger productions that need huge numbers of assets per character)
  • Create animations without worrying whether body mechanics are an issue or dealing with technical know-how for issues like gimbal lock

They're different mediums and they have different requirements and strengths. There is no hard rule about which one is going to be pricier, it's 100% needs-based.


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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:

They fucking WISH pixel art won't be a viable art style because Indies can do it just as well as they can and they want a fucking moat around their castle. A wall around their garden. They want gamers to eat whatever slop they make.

Blender's getting better and easier to use every year. We're coming for your cutesy poopsy 3D style next, Sega.

in reply to @blazehedgehog's post:

As a former pixel artist and professional animator, I kind of disagree; the relative expensiveness of pixel art vs 3d models is HEAVILY reliant on the production methods used and the kind of game you're making. Which one is pricier depends a LOT on those factors. There's no one hard rule.

in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post: