Stop Saying "Stylized..."

Stylized, is pretty much defined as depicting in a non-realistic way.
Cubism is stylized, romanticism isn’t.

So it functions as this broad umbrella term for anything that includes non-realistic elements.

Useing it in games is a bit weird though as actual photorealistic rendering isn’t yet a thing. (kinda) And stylizing is use in most “realistic” games because it is so useful to the design of a game.

Call of duty attempts to realistically render it’s environments for example, but there’s still a lot of stylization going on. (think ui, non-realistic lighting interactions, over-exageration for gameplay reasons, etc)

I think potentialy describing the style from which something lends elements is slightly more usefull.

  • Toony : Rendered to look like a cartoon.
  • Anime(or manga)-esk : Rendered to look like a typical japanese anime.
  • pixar-esk.

Or describing techniques or elements:

  • Simplified.
  • Halfone shaded.
  • Exagerated.
  • Graphic

But that obviously doesn’t sell as well :smiley:

Last thing to concider is that, at this point, stylized has kinda started living it’s own life in the gameing world as illustrated. So maybe comparing it to the general art term doesn’t do us any favors.

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