I've hired an artist to make character models. This is how it turned out. I kinda like it, but it doesn't fit into my game. The voxels have a single color, but my game has textures on everything (4 pixels per voxel and 64 per block, which is both equal to 128 pixels per meter). I would like the character to have a higher resolution, while my artist wants everything else to have a lower resolution. I am not sure what to do now.

Btw., is the head too big?

Beosar said:
I've hired an artist to make character models.

I'm surprised. To me it really looks like ‘programmer art’.

Beosar said:
Btw., is the head too big?

No. If it woudl be smaller, it would become more human. And i feel that's already the largest problem: The proportions of the body are too human, and pitting cat head, hands and feet on it is not enough to make it a believable character.

(It's actually very hard for me to criticize this constructively, because i don't have much of an idea on how to improve it. But i'll do my best…)

Maybe a lot of the problem is about details. If we look at good pixel art, the artists try to utilize the low resolution constraint. They also work with high contrast, which even amplifies the low resolution limitation, but it makes shapes recognizable and clearly defined.
That's missing here. The artist struggled with the limitations instead utilizing them. The blockyness was his problem, not his tool of choice. And we can see this. Mainly on the facial expression, which is dead. The eyes are lifeless and we can't tell which mood the character has. Is it a happy, curious young cat? Is it a old and grumpy cat? We don't know, and that's really bad.
Also: The texturing does nothing to tell us a message either. It's just noisy texture, but no interesting features or shape.

Btw, how do you intend to animate? I guess using skeleton and traditional skinning?
If so, this raises the question: Why voxels then at all? Voxels or pixels are not meant to be stretched and bent. We rather expect quantized animation but keeping the grid intact, like traditional 2D sprites.

That's not a must do ofc., but it's the doubt which brings me to an actual proposal: I would not do voxel characters, but rather smooth higher poly models using bones and skinning for animation. That's more work, but less difficult problems to solve.
To conform to the voxel artstyle, i would use voxel accessories on the characters. A blocky hat, a blocky belt buckle. (The game Bolt Gun is a good example for blocky models, not really constrained by a grid) I would use more clothing in general. Just pants make it look like a wannabe gigolo hanging out in the sauna. It looks like Larry Laffer. :D

So yeah, i'm not really happy about the character, and i would aim to replace it, tbh. : (

Beosar said:
I would like the character to have a higher resolution, while my artist wants everything else to have a lower resolution.

That's hard to decide at this point. The lower res texturing certainly has some advantages, mainly that shapes become more visible and don't get lost in texture noise.
A classical beginner mistake is to use texturing to add a uniform amount at detail at a uniform resolution. This gives you nothing but noise, but you seemingly have some tendency to work this way.
Avoid it. Use texturing to add detail sparsely, and don't hesitate to not adding noticeable details in other sections at all.
The wood planks on the walls for example. That's too uniform, making repetition more noticable, but not adding anything interesting.

But overall the environment models and textures is not bad and pretty nice.
The main problem is lighting. There is no lighting, just SSAO.
Some baked GI would do wonders if you can, or some direct light help sources would be nice too.
Otherwise i would try to make the texturing more saturated, to compensate how SSAO makes everything darker and washed out.

I guess you target a young audience. They want saturated colors and bold, distinctable shapes, believe me. ; )

JoeJ said:
I'm surprised. To me it really looks like ‘programmer art’.

Well, I have hired 4 or 5 artists before that, this is the best result I got.

Thanks for your feedback, I think I will go with the higher resolution texture, especially for details like eyes etc.

JoeJ said:
The main problem is lighting. There is no lighting, just SSAO.

Honestly, this is pretty much impossible. I have voxel lighting like in Minecraft but with RGB channels. And then there is sunlight with regular shadows. But I simply cannot add e.g. spotlight sources for torches because the player could place an arbitrary number of them and it would just destroy the frame rate. The way it is implemented now, you can place as many light sources as you want without affecting performance.

Beosar said:
Well, I have hired 4 or 5 artists before that, this is the best result I got. Thanks for your feedback, I think I will go with the higher resolution texture, especially for details like eyes etc.

Using even higher resolution makes it harder. I see why your artist tends towards lower resolution. At increasing resolution pixel art becomes more difficult, and at some point is no longer possible, since there are no more pixels. But long before this point there is some uncanny valley, causing a constant fight between realism and pixel art. It hits the character artist earlier than the environment artist.

Thinking about the eyes again, i think it might be better to use just black dots, no eyeballs.
This way you could animate eyes without requiring more resolution. I tried to edit this in Paint:

The eyes have more life and are more likeable, but i could not bright up the grey so they become better visible.
I have also changed the figure to be more round, less human. And it has proper pants now. No more gigolo effect ; )
(I would also remove the claws from the feet eventually, which feels like one of those uncanny, too realistic details.)

Subtle edits, but to me personally it's a big improvement. A matter of taste ofc.

Beosar said:
Honestly, this is pretty much impossible. I have voxel lighting like in Minecraft but with RGB channels. And then there is sunlight with regular shadows. But I simply cannot add e.g. spotlight sources for torches because the player could place an arbitrary number of them and it would just destroy the frame rate. The way it is implemented now, you can place as many light sources as you want without affecting performance.

Oh, i did not assume it's a game where the player can edit.

Not proposing anything technically, the problem is that furniture or walls have no directional lighting. The faces look the same no matter if they point in X, Y, or Z directions. This makes it hard for the player to orient himself in the world.
Anything that would add some variety depending on direction would help, even if you only use the direction towards the sun ignoring any shadows / occlusion.
Some global fog effect also helps with depth perception, even if used only very subtle.

JoeJ said:
Anything that would add some variety depending on direction would help, even if you only use the direction towards the sun ignoring any shadows / occlusion.
Some global fog effect also helps with depth perception, even if used only very subtle.

I could try that. Could be an option you can turn off if you don't like it. I already have fog but obviously you can't see it in such a small space.

You could also try a pinhead model. Like, realllly small head, big muscles. Like in Altered Beast!

Yes. Those are proper heroes, no wannabe gigolos.
Only such guys can dare to wear such pants. :D

At least back then, when Frazetta still inspired game devs, and Manara was accepted to be the greatest comic artist of all time.
Now not anymore. Even japanese artists start to replace anime girl panties with knickers.

Maybe that's for good. But regarding fantasy art i really miss the 70's.