A Change in Style

This happens quite rarely for me, when I get a sudden need to change the art style of something I'm in the middle of creating, but when it happens, it always leads to fantastic results. This time is no exception. I was in the middle of creating the set for my 3D animation, and I was trying to create the colours for the walls. I was also going to include all the little details, such as window frames, floor textures, etc. Suddenly, as I looked at it with the solid grey-scale colours, I noticed it actually looked pretty darn effective the way it was, considering the themes of the animation.

This is how it was originally designed:

There's a lot of detail and several props here. Everything would have been mostly symmetrical and realistically coloured, with dark blue lighting.

This is how it looks now (with extra lighting added so that you can make it out):

It works extremely well the way it is now, I find. The simple look makes the distortion translate very well. I'm using a camera with the Lens Squeeze ratio set to 3, since the set is rather small, and how it distorts the setting gives the solid textures more character. It also fits the rather comically bleak tone I was going for, because the bleak colours and over-the-top distortion fits the theme of broken mentality, and the comedic tone. This style also automatically draws the eye towards Moom, since he's the only coloured model, and the distorted imagery fits his emotions and current state of mind. The shadows also stand out pretty well and look fantastic, since shadows are symbolic of a darker side I really wanted them to be emphasised in exactly this manner.

I'm glad I chose to stick with this style. It actually has kind of the same effect as the video game Killer 7, which used a very similar style, which added a lot to the game's dark and surreal tone: