Style combination · Pairs well
Cel-Shaded Game Graphics × Graffiti
Spray tags and wildstyle pieces onto toon-shaded walls for the street register that Jet Set Radio set.
Mix them and make something Cel-Shaded Game Graphics Graffiti
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D) Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics
- Type from Graffiti
- Colour from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics
- Form from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics
- Composition from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics
- Surface from Graffiti
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Cel-Shaded Game Graphics
A look for real-time 3D video games in which normally lit models are quantised into two or three hard bands of flat, saturated colour and ringed with ink outlines, so a freely moving 3D world reads as a moving cartoon, anime cel or comic panel. Each game pairs the rendering with one borrowed graphic idiom: graffiti in Jet Set Radio, comic balloons in XIII, sumi-e brush and parchment in Okami, hand-drawn comic textures in Borderlands. It carries into key art, box art and logos.
Zen Maru Gothic; Cel-Shaded Game Graphics used Graffiti handstyles and hand-drawn logo lettering and Comic-book onomatopoeia lettered in bubbles, popping up over the 3D scene
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Cel-Shaded Game Graphics, with a counter-accent from Graffiti. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D) Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics
-
#f4e9d0ground · 36% -
#111111ink · 14% -
#e8402aaccent · 18% -
#e4002baccent · 14% -
#1e88d8accent · 10% -
#3fae49accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f4e9d0;
--ink: #111111;
--accent-1: #e8402a;
--accent-2: #e4002b;
--accent-3: #1e88d8;
--accent-4: #3fae49;
--font-display: "Sedgwick Ave Display", cursive;
--font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Cel-Shaded Game Graphics (Toon-Shaded Real-Time 3D): The characters, worlds and logos of these games (Link and The Wind Waker, Okami's Amaterasu, Borderlands, Guilty Gear, Eric Haze's Jet Set Radio logo) are owned by their publishers and artists, and Okami's gods and brush art draw on Shinto myth and Japanese ink painting: draw original characters, logos and tags in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for a named game, character or artist, and never present a generated picture as studio key art.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Cel-Shaded Game Graphics
- Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints Pairs well · Borrow woodblock outline, flat colour and paper tone to push the bands towards the painted register of Okami.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Pairs well · Add panel insets, sound-effect lettering and halftone to make the 3D frame read as a comic page.
- Low Poly Illustration Contrasts · Both stylise real-time 3D, but low poly shows faceted polygons with no outlines; contrast inked silhouettes with bare facets.
- Claymorphism & Soft 3D Contrasts · Soft gradients and blurred shadows on inflated forms against hard-edged light bands and ink lines.
With Graffiti
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Put a single tag or throw-up over a strict Swiss grid to stage the clash between institutional order and a street voice.
- Corporate Identity Modernism Contrasts · Use graffiti as the foil to corporate identity: a painted name over a logo makes the ownership of public space visible.
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Pair letter-pieces with Ben-Day comic panels and bold outlines, as 1980s gallery graffiti often did, for a street-meets-gallery look.
- Hype Streetwear Graphics (Box Logo to Quotation Marks) Pairs well · Streetwear grew out of New York hip-hop dress; pair a set geometric wordmark with a hand-drawn graffiti piece for a back print, but keep the logo flat and centred so the tag reads as the decoration and the box as the brand.
- Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto) Contrasts · Both write names on walls, and Pesquisa FAPESP lists hip-hop among the 1980s influences on pixação, but graffiti builds the letter into a coloured, outlined, three-dimensional piece with characters, while pixação keeps a flat black straight letter in level rows and goes for height. Brazilian law since 2011 tolerates graffiti made with the owner's consent and keeps pichação a crime, so decide which one the brief needs.
- Stencil Street Art Contrasts · Both use spray paint in the street, but graffiti makes the writer's name a freehand, many-coloured letter-sculpture with 3D blocks and fades; stencil art sprays a reproducible photographic picture in black. Decide which one the brief needs before mixing them.
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend) Pairs well · Guochao's streetwear wing already borrows hip-hop lockups; treat a brush character as the tag and keep the heritage palette.
- Black Lives Matter Street Murals Contrasts · Graffiti writers paint their own names on walls and trains, uninvited and in letters few outsiders can read; these murals lay one shared, legible slogan on the road, usually with the city's permission. Let a writer fill one letter, as Sam Sneke did in Seattle, without turning the slogan into a piece.