User:Valenoern/9k/chip realism (Q618)

Main entry

618. chip realism -> The concept of creating realism within a highly unrealistic art style strictly by "taking something appealing and balancing it out with strange or unappealing features".
     This was used in order to make the very simplified Pokémon Red/Green art style better match up with the rugged appearances of rubber-suit kaiju meant to be filmed in at least really convincing fake diorama versions of natural settings. Rubber-suit kaiju are made with "strange or unappealing" features as part of the definition of being monsters, as well as rough rock-like textures to hide the potentially-unnatural appearance of the rubber beneath textures that look more like natural objects such as boulders or the surfaces of particularly hard-shelled animals. But the same tactic happens to also work decently for simplified cartoon styles. A simple enough cartoon style will make everything look like plastic especially when you attempt to render it onto a three-dimensional model. But one way to partially counteract that is to just throw rocky edges and strange enough features onto the design. Pidgey is a perfect example for chip realism: take a relatively generic drawing of a lark and throw on a lot of chips and tufts to make it look less flat. Later generations tend to forget some of the principles of chip realism used in earlier generations, but it is still partly intact. The strange proportions used on Pikipek or Fletchling accomplish the goal of making the Pokémon stand out against some kind of simple beach or jungle background and making it feel for just a moment as if no human being would deliberately design an animal so strangely so it must be "real". [1]

Ideologies, fields, or genres

• Fy / fantasy
• Fy / kaiju-of-the-week series
• Fy / Pokémon