Cel Shading

I'm going to talk a little bit about cel shading today because a couple of my favourite games were in fact cel shaded.  I'll go through 2 examples of cel shading done really well and why I think this style of graphics added a lot to the games.  The two I will be referring to are both for the Gamecube, namely Cel Damage and LOZ: Wind Waker.

Cel Damage, released in 2001 had rather groundbreaking effects for its time.  It was a vehicle deathmatch type game, where you drove around collecting power-ups and weapons, and then ultimately using them to blow everyone else up.  The game featured 10 characters, 13 maps, and a ton of wacky weapons including shrink rays, giant baseballs bats and harpoon guns.

While not received very well with critics, I personally played this game to 100% several times; its just so much fun.  It was unique in that the physics engine was not based on reality at all.  It was a custom engine built to make all the animations seem cartoon-like in nature.  The most notable effect is some characters' vehicles would actually bend noticeably when turning sharply.  This type of warping along with the vehicles being frozen, lit on fire, and thrashed around made the game seem really alive.

For me the cel shading really made the cartoon world exciting.  All the ecentric effects combined with the hilarious weapons and interesting characters created a unique atmosphere for Cel Damage.  As you can see in the video, the cel graphics are very simple yet effective at conveying the range of effects in the game.  If this game was done with normal graphics, it may have suffered from a poor frame rate and still not looked very good because of the amount of things going on at once.  The cel shading gave it life and was certainly used to complement the game's style.

The second and more controversial game is The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, also for Gamecube.  There was a huge ripple of everything from disappointment to doubt to outrage when Nintendo unveiled their new art style for Wind Waker.  Launched in 2003, cel shaded graphics were still new for this time and people were having trouble accepting that a mainstream Zelda game would be using them.  Everything changed once people actually got their hands on the game demo.

People soon realized that the cel-shaded graphics opened up a world of possibilities for the game.  Link was more expressive than ever, the world was a beautiful tapestry of colour and light.  The visual effects that at first seemed almost childish drew people into a level of immersion never experienced before with a Zelda game.  The Wind Waker went on to being one of the top selling games for Gamecube ever, and is my favourite Zelda game of all time.

Every detail of the game world, from the turbulent ocean to impressive bosses was given a certain spark of life by the cel shading.  Like Cel Damage, the visuals are technically simple, but open up so much possibility for creativity and the artists did an amazing job of creating a cohesive game world.

Maybe one of the best things about cel-shading is that because its based on expressing colour and artistic style, these games still don't feel outdated to this day.  They are just as vibrant and and whimsical as when they first came out.  I really enjoy this graphics style and hope more developers see its awesome potential!