Mixing art styles in a project

[thebackup]

I'd like some thoughts on this - is it viable to create a VN that mixes art styles? i.e. having two character artists, or even having two background artists. Can it potentially work out, and not jar the overall look of the game? Especially if you're, say, reusing BGs from a previous project to shave a bit to the budget, and hired a new BG artist for its sequel (because the previous artist can't exactly work full-time on your current project)?

[SundownKid]

Two different art styles will definitely be jarring (in a bad way). I have had complaints about marginally different art styles with the same shading, so two totally different styles will be a kiss of death if you want your work to be popular. I'm sure there's some "artistic" way that people can pull it off, but for the majority of projects... no. At least not without good reason - crossovers like Wright vs Layton are probably the most notable example of when people are okay with a bunch of different art styles brought together.

However, two different artists will not necessarily be jarring if you can get artist 2 to mimic the work of former artist 1. Granted, that won't necessarily work, as it's extremely hard to perfectly mimic another artist's style.

[Mammon]

If it's split in sprites, CGs and BGs for example, it will work. If there are a multitude of sprites from different artists though, that's indeed jarring as Sundownkid already said.

You might want to try having the one artist give you their colour scheme, brush sizes and anything else that might help the other artist copy their style best. And of course give a finished example of what art style to strive for. There will always be differences, but they can minimise these. Or spread out the tasks such as artist 1: outline artist 2: colouring. Or that the first artist makes sketches for the second artist to use so that the base style at least matches. It is of course the question whether they'll both agree to it.

[TheJerminator15]

Assuming you're referring to sprites and BG or even CG, that's quite common anyway. Granted, it is jarring, especially if the art style between sprites and CGs containing the same characters look vastly different.

I think if you purposefully mixed different art styles to enhance parts of the story/writing and overall narrative, it could work out well. After, all VNs are heavily reliant on visuals. But that is also why trying that would be potentially damaging, as the lack of art consistency without proper context will just hurt the player's enjoyment. So such a thing would entirely hinge upon the execution of the narrative.

As Mammon also said, there are other methods used to minimise the inconsistencies as well.

[thebackup]

Thanks for the responses. I pretty much agree with most of what has been said.

If one were to reuse art from a previous project and decide to hire a different sprite / BG artist for a current project, unless there's a good reason to do so, it can be considered poor work ethic (lazy / unprofessional?) on the developer's part. It seems worth it in the long run to spend a little more and work with a new artist's style, as opposed to reusing assets and burdening your artist trying to closely mimic a style from said assets (and end up having jarring sprites and BGs in the end).

[sasquatchii]

I'm going to go against the grain here and disagree with everyone else. I think it is viable, especially if you have a good reason for doing so (maybe it is story related - for example, what if your VN had 2 different worlds that use 2 separate art styles for contrast?).

I think the best example I've seen of multiple artists working together on game art is Saving Zoey, which was created for a month long game jam called Asylum Jam. When I first played the game without knowing anything about it, I was blown away that they were able to create that game in such a short period of time because I thought only 1 artist had worked on it. That's how cohesive and well done the art was! 4 different artists worked on the art for this game - though if I'm not mistaken, I believed one artist created the sketches, another worked on coloring, another worked on backgrounds, etc. They split up the work that way to create consistency and also to save time in order to create a large breadth of art assets for the game.

So to answer your 1st question, yes, it can work out, and yes it is viable.

To answer your 2nd question (would it be considered poor work ethic) - I think there are a few things here you have to consider. Is your game commercial, or just a free hobby game you're releasing for fun? If it's the latter, no one is going to care or think twice about you reusing art assets. Some may notice if you have a following of people that enjoy your games, but since it's free everyone is usually pretty forgiving (or at least, that's what I've found to be true for all my free games that I've released. YMMV).

If your game is commercial, and people are paying money to play it, then I probably would advice against reusing art assets. People will notice if they've played your games, and to be honest if I paid for a game and saw re-used art assets I'd probably feel a little annoyed. It might also ruin the experience for me - because I have associations of that artwork from the other games - and it would remind me of that - and work against telling the story and creating the character/world that you're trying to create with this new game.

One other thing I think you should ask yourself is, why do you want to re-use assets? If it is to save money, perhaps you could work with an artist with pricing to meet your budget for this game? If it is because you absolutely adore the art style of the art you currently have on hand, maybe you could re-hire that same artist? I think it's important to consider your motivations for why you want to reuse assets and plan accordingly.