Cover Art

(Quoted from Artful Gamer)

Wölfflin wanted to distinguish between artistic styles based on a handful of objective principles. The most important, to me, is his distinction between linear and painterly. Wölfflin himself writes, in a linear style, ”stress is laid on the limits of things; in the other the work tends to look limitless. Seeing by volumes and outlines isolates objects: for the painterly eye, they merge. In [a linear painting] interest lies more in the perception of individual material objects as solid, tangible bodies; in [a painterly painting], in the apprehension of the world as a shifting semblance.” In my own words: linear styles tend to define sharp separations between objects, while painterly styles tend to allow things in the scene to flow into one another. Linear paintings also tend to have “flat” surfaces, make use of photorealism, and are often seen in comic-book style artwork. Painterly works rely upon visible brush strokes that give the piece a “textured” appearance, usually use wider brushes, and mix together uniform colours in the same region for expressive effect.

--- From the comments:

I too appreciated the old illustrated boxes/covers – while they were obviously made to market the game and make it appear flashy, I now realize that they also served to invite the player into the world via rich illustration... While the in-game graphics were of course a different story, the cover always gave me that “wow! I want to live in that world!” feeling.

Today game designers (and players) value “representational realism” or pure representation over emotional or aesthetic realism. We see the cover/box art as a representation of what’s inside (perhaps gamers have always been like this), rather than an expression or idealization of the game’s meaning. The end result is that many games have moved toward a representational/photorealistic realism that values high res pixels over emotional expression.

If I play with the terms a bit, the move from painterly (literally: ‘paint!’) to linear (pixels) has been accompanied by a move from the imagination (all those old abstract blocks/symbols in Atari games) to representational realism (the perfect skin and lighting of Heavy Rain). Computer artists tend to use pixels to “represent” things rather than express things, and I think part of the reason is because gamers demand games that push their new video card hardware to the limit. But that’s a whole other conversation – I just found it interesting that you noticed the link between linear and representational, which is another strong part of modern aesthetic theory.

You bring up something I had not thought of much: what does ‘box art’ mean when it’s just another cover in your iTunes folder? I doubt people spend much time looking at covers when they’re digital. I remember staring (for minutes) at my boxes when I first bought boxed games. That is no longer done, I suspect.

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My afterthoughts:
The stylistic choice of any game illustration (or cover art) should be done with full consideration of the content of the game. It can be either a complementary representation or a direct representation of one game. It’s equally essential, however, to treat a game cover art as a piece of art, carefully designed so that it should be able to tell a story clearly by itself.

Maybe I should create a "downloadable DIY box art" for my games too? Lol.