FarCry "too stylized," says Crytek art chief

Crytek lead artist, Michael Khaimzon, speaking at the London Game Career Fair today, has described PC shooter favourite FarCry as "too stylized" compared to current FPS project Crysis.

"Three years ago it looked amazing," he said. "Now it's too stylized, too cartoony, the colours are far too much. With Crysis we went for realism."

The 15-strong art team currently working on Crysis — to be published by EA and a game guaranteed to stop any showfloor in terms of graphics — has been forced to go to extreme lengths to model jungle locations, including taking what Khaimzon described as "millions of photos".

"If I was to tell you what I had to do to go from FarCry to Crysis, it'd take me at least an hour," he said. "It was insane⦠We wanted every leaf to have its own shading. It was very important for us. We have to model every leaf separately. There's a crazy amount of polygons."

Hundreds of aspiring game developers watched Khaimzon's presentation at the Cafî Royal on London's Regent Street this afternoon, which also included practical advice to get what he described as the "crazy" world of next gen games development.

"By far the most important thing is your portfolio," he said. "We see about 100 portfolios a week and if I was going to give you one piece of advice about getting into game art, it's to keep your portfolio simple. The last thing we want to see is a very complicated portfolio."