I like the water-colour look. And i love the idea of a unique art style. Too many games are just overlooking this aspect.

Still we don't really know what the game is looking like in action though ... Maybe the time is coming soon to dissipate the mists of mystery ...

I really like the attention to detail on those models. I can't wait to see some up close unit models. 

With buildings that pretty, I'll almost certainly spend more time zoomed-in than I do in GG2.

My addition to the art sample begging: I want to see some of those 'stylized' things you mention. Towards the bottom of my pet peeves with GC2 is the relative paucity of zoomed-out ship and fleet icons (there's no consistent way to distinguish hull types or fleet sizes. Will Elemental be able to generate that sort of icon based on the architecture of the 3D-level objects? Or will it at least have a large set of fixed icons that relibly provide basic info about the unit or group they represent?

That's a very good decision .

Stylized graphics doesn't age, so even in 5-10 years, the game will still looks good. Realistic graphics always look painfully dated once the next generation comes out.

Good stuff to be sure. I would like to see the objects close up and in different styles however.

It is because of how hard it is to go for just plain 'realistic' graphics.  To have state-of-the-arts realistic graphics, then only the top-of-the-line computers can run it, and lower end computers either get a very poor 'low-quality' version or can't run at all.   

Stylized art however lets you still get a beautiful theme on both high end and low end computers + making the game memorable because of style. 

I suspect that soon almost everybody is going to be going that way too.  Not just PC games.

What I didn't liked in this picture was that that stoned wall bulding seemed comparably small. I think its much better everything up to scale with eachother. Looking it, the houses inside it are smaller if compared to the other structures in the image and the bulding is shriked. Many games like early Age of Empires tend to shrink some models instead of letting them all correlated in size. But maybe that was just in this picture since the buildings was taken separately and put together for it at different approximations. I think everything up to scale is a better route and more fun.

Aside that the details are nice, I like that house with the fence. The L house on the left seems like intended to be big but is really small because of it's big doors and windows. I enjoy the castle in the Media section because everything on it is up to a beleaveable scale (like the windows for exemple) it looks like a big and graceful structure, but the houses inside that castle are bigger than would be and makes the stone wall looks small and not imponent.

I know that many things in a strategy game are meant to be representative, still it's better closer to realistic scale has possible in most of it. Thats what will make be fun to zoom to a structure. But it's nice to see the citzens there.

Oooow these look great! I wonder if these are models for the map view or the tactical view?.. if indeed there's any difference (which I assume there will be from the screenshots to date).

I am also very much in favour of the stylized art direction

Hooray for stylized art. We need more of it, that's for sure.

Put 12 FPS games in a line-up and only one sticks out: Team Fortress 2.

Blizzard gives its games character, distinctness, and longevity by using stylized art.

With enough money, anyone can make tech demo graphics like Doom 3 or Quake 4 or Unreal 3. (And only a small percent of users have PCs capable of displaying them in all their glory.) It takes real artistic and technical talent to pull off suitable stylized graphics like you find in TF2, Elemental, and even Civ IV.

And like Ephafn said, stylized graphics don't age, which is a huge plus, considering that PC games stay around forever thanks to digital distribution.

great stuff!

Looks cool.  How about this idea on buildings.

Use the Gal Civ 2 ship building idea, but for buildings.  You give us jewels to place where ever we want.  We can save our design types and what not.  People can build whatever they please this way.  All cities would look different determined by however the player wants to build them.

Maybe this is too much for just an art aspect of the game, but people LOVED designing ships in Gal Civ 2.

Add another "thumbs-up" from me for the artwork so far.  I actually have liked the screenshots I have seen so far and the detailed example above is even more impressive.

I have been going back through older games trying to figure out which ones I want to play before beta starts and while trying Age of Wonders again, I just can't get used to everything being so "busy" and hard to see what is going on in them on the world map.  They are very pretty and colorful, but hard to quickly analyze.  It is mostly because I have hardly played the games, I am sure, but I just don't care for it for some reason.  Your art style for Elemental so far seems much easier on the eyes and I like it .

yotix: i won't miss you when you don't buy it because of "graphical design". Hey, just some "brutal honesty" here too.