>>33309954See, I'm not so sure about that.
Cell shading does make them easier to see, but the models all have a contour line that's pixelated, which outright works against visibility, especially when far away. It's always present, always a pixel wide and doesn't have any dynamic opacity, so the further away the models get, the more they obstruct the view. Outside of them being stupid, pixelated, and on a garbage resolution, the quality of their "tracking" (dont know if thats the right term for that effect-- their ability to mimic drawn lines without overlapping or missing topagraphy) is actually really god damn good. If you notice Gengar's back for instance.. it has like a hundred or so individual spikes, but they only show up on it's silhouette, not inside the model itself, which mimics exactly how it's drawn. Official art never goes into detail with each spike.
In addition, the dual-toned cell shaded is notable as well, because the Sugi style rarely hard transitions into a shade. It usually uses 2 or so color transitions very near each other to give a faded look from afar. Look at the way the shading transitions in my image. It has a double band to it. It's a really specific thing to attribute.
This tells me that they planned to mimic the Sugi style in particular, given that part of it works against visibility. But between the contour lines being pixelated and ugly (not smooth like Photoshop lines), ONLY having 2 tones for the cell shading (with no highlights, and no solid darkest shade for harder shadows), and rare use of textures (again, look at Charizard's wings-- you can see leaf textures there to help give it more pop), it came out dry. That's why I think that it has a ton of potential. The contouring rendering is good enough that when applied correctly, I think it could legit look like the official art animated in 3D.
