01-13-2021, 09:22 AM
What a good question however this question as a whole requires a two part answer, one which is related to paper mario and one which is related to your art, whose flatness has nothing to do with paper mario.
The flat papery effect in Paper Mario (pre-Sticker Star, of course) comes from a number of factors only easy to explain with provided visuals:
The characters are flat of course because they do not have a lot of shading on them and they are 2D graphics. That's easy. What's much more interesting is the environment. Look at the lighting. There is no sense of realistic lighting going on here, everything is lit based on planes of the objects (flat surfaces). Look at the houses. You have light surfaces and dark surfaces. Look at the bridge too, and the stairs, the walls, etc. It's all flat shading that only changes value when there is a change in plane.
When you combine this shading technique with the cartoony textures and - even more interesting - the way the camera position and environments are set up to make it look like little paper dioramas, the game gets its fantastic subtle but there papery look. Much more interesting than the literal paper environments of current Paper Mario in my opinion!
As fascinating a topic as this is, I imagine it has nothing to do with why your art looks flat. This in an intentional flatness that looks really really good and, while flat, does not lack form. I imagine people tell you your art looks flat because it is lacking in form, which is something that really just comes from practicing drawing things in real life and observing how objects overlap. There's not much I can say since it's such a broad topic, but if you want to share one of your pieces of work that you were told looks flat I could give you some advice. Just keep in mind that not having shading doesn't equal not having form. Paper mario characters have no realistic shading, but they still have form to them. In my own work I use only line and pattern, but I still try to create a lot of form by respecting overlapping, anatomy, and by finding ways to compose an image that give it an illusion of depth and do not flatten it out (another can of worms, please share your work so I can comment on it more appropriately).
The flat papery effect in Paper Mario (pre-Sticker Star, of course) comes from a number of factors only easy to explain with provided visuals:
The characters are flat of course because they do not have a lot of shading on them and they are 2D graphics. That's easy. What's much more interesting is the environment. Look at the lighting. There is no sense of realistic lighting going on here, everything is lit based on planes of the objects (flat surfaces). Look at the houses. You have light surfaces and dark surfaces. Look at the bridge too, and the stairs, the walls, etc. It's all flat shading that only changes value when there is a change in plane.
When you combine this shading technique with the cartoony textures and - even more interesting - the way the camera position and environments are set up to make it look like little paper dioramas, the game gets its fantastic subtle but there papery look. Much more interesting than the literal paper environments of current Paper Mario in my opinion!
As fascinating a topic as this is, I imagine it has nothing to do with why your art looks flat. This in an intentional flatness that looks really really good and, while flat, does not lack form. I imagine people tell you your art looks flat because it is lacking in form, which is something that really just comes from practicing drawing things in real life and observing how objects overlap. There's not much I can say since it's such a broad topic, but if you want to share one of your pieces of work that you were told looks flat I could give you some advice. Just keep in mind that not having shading doesn't equal not having form. Paper mario characters have no realistic shading, but they still have form to them. In my own work I use only line and pattern, but I still try to create a lot of form by respecting overlapping, anatomy, and by finding ways to compose an image that give it an illusion of depth and do not flatten it out (another can of worms, please share your work so I can comment on it more appropriately).