Photorealism: this is an art style in which real photographs are used as a reference for a person to draw/paint it realistically. This style of art flourished in the 70’s. An example of this would be a picture is on a grid and each square is painted individually to get the most amount of detail in each part of the painting. When doing photorealistic artwork a photograph is necessary for influence as photograph can capture fine details. The artist studies the photograph with great detail to capture the life likeness of the photograph in another artistic media. This artistic style is very hard to implement in video games due to the vast amount of detail of the pictures, the detail would need a lot of processing power. Photorealism may be used in game trailers of even cutscenes but this would take a lot of money and only games with a high budget could implement this into their games.
Cel Shading: this art style is used in many video games and is applied to 3D models to make them look more like a comic book or a cartoon. This art style is used in may games like Okami, The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, Dragon Ball Z Budokai 1/2/3, Telltale Games and many more. Cel Shading can be used as an art style for a video game to make the graphics look better in the long run, this was mostly used at the start of the 2000’s because games that looked “realistic” then don’t look good now but games like The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker still looks good.
Abstraction: this artistic style is an art style that is more focused on the simplest things such as basic shape and colours, examples of this would be Islamic Tiles, these pieces are focused on pattern and colour. Abstraction in games has been around for a long time, there are games like Tetris and bejeweled which is based on shapes and rows. Within these games the story is nearly non existent. These games are more focused on the visual styles of the games rather than the story elements.
Exageration: This art style is based on non realism, things like over the top mechanics or visuals. Most game are exaggerated as a lot of games used exaggeration to draw people into the game as it makes them stand out more. Games that are very exaggerated are game like Katamari Damacy, Any Anime Game (Dragon Ball/Z/GT or Naruto/Shipuuden.). all of these games have over the top action and story lines which are exaggerated. These are exaggerated to a point where the game isn’t to be taken seriously as the actions/visuals/sounds are so over the top.