Art that I don't like

I have a page on art I like, and I often have stuff to say about art I don't like, so I guess I'll make this page too.

more i could write about:


 * flashlights in Halo 3 [compare to flashlight in Halo 1 ]
 * the generic "sci-fi" look over the past decade or so
 * normal-land, boring realism [in video games, for some reason]
 * here's a pretty egregious example, it's like a home movie with no budget, nothing stands out (not even a HUD) to give away what game it is.
 * "tumblr ugly" drawing styles [see example], now popular on "every" huge corporate website [facebook, google][of course, those websites were always ugly to begin with]
 * trend of sarcasm, "irony poisoning", audience-"assaulting", all seems very unfriendly and off-putting
 * depression shit [i might not even like Ben Gibbard songs much anymore, despite their many other qualities that are good]
 * synthwave [audio and visual, nearly everything must be purple, teal, pink, and black], people think it's 80s retro, but it's really not. people also think it's cyberpunk, but it isn't hat either.  and people mix it up with vaporwave.  it is not vaporwave.  "it" [personified] needs to stay in its own lane and stop taking over all of these other things.
 * perhaps nearly all references and "easter egg" type things.

not much to say about these ones, i just dislike them:


 * cowboy shit
 * zombies [i used to be really bothered by all humanoid things, like star trek aliens, elves, orcs, etc.]

The current limited conception of "low poly" art
I'll have to check google image search, limited to certain years, to see when this arose. [EDIT: I found this article from 2013 which seems to correctly identify the peculiarities of the style, and traces it to perhaps its source which i think was released earlier in 2013]

For some reason (I think in the past half decade) the phrase "low poly" seems to come bundled together with:


 * a particular cartoonish style
 * no textures on objects, just flat colors
 * for some reason, the "specific polygons used" seem weirdly arbitrarily "chosen" (not sure how to describe that). Like, they aren't chosen to better give the illusion of smoothness or the correct contours of an object if it were real.  They are made to be even more noticeably blocky and strange looking than they need to be.

This is radically different from the wide variety of styles that were ALL literally low poly back on older game consoles such as the N64. For example, Perfect Dark is not as "cartoonish" as Mario, and all objects have added detail through texturing. My speculative explanation:


 * advances in graphics techniques separated a lot of the graphics (such as shading) OUT of textures. So a flat color surface could look like metal if it was given specularity and all that.
 * the "what's the point" philosophy of art, where you only do something in a certain way because of the unique outcomes of that certain way. Specialization.  Like asking:  "why would you paint something realistic if you can just take a photograph?  therefore painting should be even less realistic than it already is, and more uniquely painterly, like van Gogh or whatever".

Checking the trend on google
So, google image search doesn't allow custom search date range like that (I thought it used to?). But regular google search still does.

First result, range of 2000-2008, gives this page from 2006. Textures are present. Surprisingly to me, the comment thread is still going in 2021! And the images there also have a lot of textures and realism despite being low-poly!

2013 is apparently when it happened:


 * How to Get the Low-Poly Look["the" low poly "look"? you'd think if it's low poly, it's low poly]["A reaction to photo-realistic 3D modelling" just as i suspected]["combined with a rendering style which rather than trying to smooth out the polygons, instead renders each of the facets of the model, creating a blocky, angular, look."]["the low-poly look recalls paper-craft or origami" well maybe they should call it "paper poly" or something then]
 * this one actually serves as a bit of a comparison between low poly with textures vs low poly without textures

"low poly" unicorn trophy, 2015, just no texture or smoothing at all, just raw hard triangle edges

feb 2013, sorta realistic, textured

compare:


 * 2007/2009 tutorial for a very detailed realistic character
 * 2012 tutorial, cartoonish, but not weirdly blocky or angular, and still uses some texture. really, this one has a style quite similar to Zelda games from the N64
 * October 2012, cartoonish and a bit blocky, but highly textured, no obvious "weirdly shaped" polygons in final product. this one has a style very similar to warcraft 3.

Offenders:

 * Celeste
 * Kentucky Route Zero
 * Totally Accurate Battlegrounds
 * Voxel Tycoon
 * decentraland
 * sayonara wild hearts
 * combined with two more insufferable aesthetics:
 * synthwave [audio and visual, nearly everything must be purple, teal, pink, and black]
 * vaguely ironic/dead-inside modern urban hipster

i guess these don't count, not all of them have really "weird" polygons or total lack of texture, just a lot of coloring that looks pretty flat, blocky designs:


 * I feel that Minecraft (2011) deserves special mention, having the dubious distinction of being the ugliest game ever created (...that I know of)
 * Infinifactory
 * Hardspace: Shipbreaker