on certain levels, like rainbow road, the background is rendered in a radically different style than the avatar.
this is not at all unusual. through the history of video games, cartoon animation and manga comics simple/iconic/cartoony characters have been placed atop much more realistically rendered backgrounds. this is so commonplace that it is an aspect of our cultural visual vocabulary many of us take for granted. sometimes the detailed background / simple character contrast is done for technical reasons, like sprite based characters against more detailed backgrounds in side scrolling video games, or flat colour cel animation against highly detailed static painted backdrops in disney animated films. sometimes this is done for stylistic reasons, like in japanese manga.
glitch is unusual, however, in that that the avatar is often more more realistically rendered than the background. this reverses the traditional relationship.
this can be a little jarring. to me at least. i might be alone, and am interested in other people's thoughts about this because the art is such an important aspect of the game. should the avatars be more cartoon like so as to better interact with a variety of different level background styles? is it simply a question of getting used to the inversion? are there ways that the game could make these extreme differences in style seem "glitchier", playing up a seeming weakness into a stylistic strength?
*provoke, provoke, provoke*
[for an interesting analysis of this phenomena, check out Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" comic book, page 43. it's worth reading for a lot of other reasons too, even if you're not that into comics.]