Every art style

Drawn or sprite-based images on flat planes, including isometric 2D and 3D models pre-rendered to sprites.

3D geometry played on a 2D plane, or a 2D world with real depth (side-scrollers rendered in 3D, billboards in 3D space).

A real-time 3D world the camera moves through.

2D sprites deliberately composited into 3D scenes with modern lighting and depth effects.

Images built from a visible, deliberate pixel grid at low resolution.

Worlds or models built from visible cubes (3D pixels).

3D with deliberately few, visible polygons, usually with flat or simple colors.

3D that imitates late-90s console limits: wobbly vertices, warped textures, low resolution (see Hardware look).

3D rendered to look hand-inked or animated: hard light bands, flat color, often outlines.

3D with simplified, exaggerated forms and colors that is not cel-shaded, low-poly or realistic.

Aims for photographic or film-like believability in materials, light and proportions.

Looks painted: visible brushwork, soft edges, painted light, whether 2D or textured 3D.

Drawn or animated by hand: line drawing, frame-by-frame animation, illustrated sprites.

Clean geometric shapes with flat fills and crisp edges, like vector illustration.

3D scenes or characters rendered offline and shown as images or sprites.

Photographed actors, digitized sprites or full-motion video.

Clay or plasticine models, real or imitated, often animated stop-motion.

Looks like cut paper, cardboard or folded paper in layers.

Presented as a miniature physical model or toy set, often with tilt-shift blur.

Dark or black shapes against lighter backgrounds; forms read by outline, not detail.

Stripped to very few shapes, colors and details on purpose.

Built from text characters or a character grid.

Lines along polygon edges or vector-display lines, with little or no fill.

Shapes are separated by color and light only.

A dark, mostly uniform outline around characters or objects.

Outlines in a darker shade of the fill color instead of black.

Outline color changes along the edge with the light (lighter where lit), a pixel-art technique called selout.

Varying line weight like brush or pen ink, as in comics or animation.

Loose, rough, doubled or wobbly lines that show the drawing process.

Lines mark folds, creases and details inside shapes, not just the silhouette.

Little or no shading; surfaces are solid fills.

One hard step between lit and shadow color.

Two hard steps: light, midtone and shadow bands.

Smooth transitions between light and shadow.

Shadow built from parallel or crossed lines.

Shadow or tone built from printed-style dots.

Tone built from patterns of two alternating colors.

A strong bright edge light separating forms from the background.

Lighting painted or precomputed into textures and sprites rather than live.

Physically based, dynamic light and shadow, global illumination or ray tracing.

Flat or gradient color with no image texture.

Textures painted by hand with light and detail painted in.

Small, visibly pixelated or blurry textures, often deliberate.

Color stored on the model's vertices, blended across faces, no texture image.

Textures made from photographs.

Physically based materials: realistic roughness, metal and reflection.

Visible painterly strokes in the surfaces or overlays.

Paper, canvas or print texture over the image.

Evokes 8-bit consoles and computers: very few colors, chunky sprites.

Evokes 16-bit consoles: richer palettes, more detailed sprites.

Evokes 32-bit era 2D: large, detailed, many-color sprites.

Pixel art at high resolution or with modern lighting and effects beyond any retro limit.

Checkerboard or patterned pixels used to blend colors or show gradients.

Hand-placed intermediate-color pixels that smooth edges.

Movement smaller than one pixel, suggested by shifting colors.

Pixels of different sizes mixed in one image (scaled sprites, mismatched resolutions).

NES limits: tiny palettes, small sprites, few colors per tile.

SNES-era look: 16-bit sprites, layered parallax, transparency effects.

Game Boy look: four shades, often green-tinted.

Japanese PC-98 look: dithered high-res illustration, limited palettes.

Early PC graphics: harsh fixed palettes (cyan, magenta) and blocky dithering.

Amiga look: rich painted pixel art, copper gradients.

PlayStation look: wobbling vertices, warped textures, dithered color, no texture filtering.

Nintendo 64 look: blurry filtered textures, heavy fog, low-poly models.

Early-2000s 3D look: higher poly counts, low-res textures, bloom-heavy lighting.

A screen-wide dither pattern applied after rendering.

The scene is rendered at low resolution and scaled up to look pixelated.

Scanlines, curvature or phosphor glow imitating a CRT screen.

Visible noise imitating film.

Color fringes splitting red, green and blue at edges.

Bright areas glow and bleed into their surroundings.

Colors reduced to a few flat bands.

Blur at the top and bottom of the frame that makes scenes look miniature.

Tape artifacts: color bleed, tracking lines, wobble.

Outlines drawn by a screen-space effect on 3D geometry.

A filter that makes the render look painted or printed.

The frame darkens toward its edges.

Two colors only.

One hue (or grayscale) in different values.

Built mostly from two hues.

A small, deliberate set of colors used throughout.

A mostly neutral or monochrome image with one accent color (often red).

High saturation and strong contrast between hues.

Low saturation, earthy or grayed colors.

Light, soft, low-contrast colors.

Glowing, saturated hues (pink, cyan, purple) on dark backgrounds.

Mostly low values; the image reads as dark overall.

Dominated by reds, oranges and yellows.

Dominated by blues, greens and purples.

Transparent washes, soft blooms and paper showing through.

Brush ink, including East Asian ink-wash painting.

Graphite or colored pencil marks.

Waxy or chalky strokes.

Opaque, thick paint with visible strokes.

Carved-block or printmaking look: bold cuts, limited inks.

Cut-paper shapes with paper edges and layering.

Sculpted clay or plasticine surfaces.

Fabric, felt, knitted or stitched materials.

Comic or graphic novel conventions: inks, flats, panels, halftone.

Children's book illustration.

Technical drawings, blueprints or schematics.

Japanese animation and manga conventions.

American or European TV and film animation styles.

1920s-30s American animation: bendy limbs, pie eyes, white gloves.

The clear-line European comic style of Hergé and Moebius: even lines, flat color.

Japanese woodblock prints and Edo-period painting.

1920s-30s geometric glamour: symmetry, gold, stepped forms.

Organic flowing lines, plant forms, decorative borders.

Dark, ornate, macabre: Victorian or medieval gloom.

High-contrast black and white crime-film lighting and mood.

Dreamlike, impossible juxtapositions.

Distorted forms and color for emotional effect.

Primary colors, grids and basic geometric forms.

Soviet avant-garde: diagonals, red and black, propaganda layouts.

Massive raw concrete architecture and its heavy forms.

Mass-media imagery, bold flat color, comic and advertising references.

Travel, propaganda or national-park poster illustration.

1980s Memphis design: squiggles, terrazzo, clashing pastels.

Late-90s and early-2000s futurism: chrome, translucency, street culture.

1980s retro-futurism: neon grids, sunsets, magenta and cyan.

High-tech dystopia: neon signage, dense cities, rain.

Victorian industrial machinery, brass and steam.

Lovecraftian dread: the vast, alien and incomprehensible.

Big heads on small bodies (super-deformed).

Human-scale anatomy.

Pushed anatomy for style: huge hands, tiny waists, long limbs.

Rounded, soft, appealing designs.

Deliberately ugly, distorted or unsettling designs.

Characters with no or minimal facial features.

Viewed from the side; movement mostly left and right.

Viewed from directly above.

Top-down at an angle showing fronts of objects (classic Zelda-style).

Angled view with no perspective convergence, usually diamond-shaped tiles.

Camera follows behind or around the player character in 3D.

Seen through the character's eyes.

Pre-set camera angles that do not follow the player freely.

The world or a location is the subject.

A character or close-up is the subject.

Active fighting or action.

Menus, inventories or interface screens dominate.

A non-interactive story scene.