The original art style of Bully was very different from the final version, but a requirement from Rockstar Games meant that the game had to be redesigned midway through development.

Although the experience of "Bully" has some shadows of GTA, and the core revolves around the interesting things in school life, rather than involving crime, murder and the like, it is still one of Rockstar's most distinctive works - this may be because the development was limited by the consideration that "the game involves children and cannot be too outrageous".Despite its similarities to GTA, Bully ended up with a unique art design: it wasn't exactly like GTA, but it had GTA's shadow to some extent, and it turns out that the formation of this style was actually an "accidental surprise."

"When the game was introduced to me, it was positioned as a piece of American culture. The goal was to make it look and feel closer to a Norman Rockwell painting," Andrew Wood, a scene artist on "Bully," said in an interview. He called the original style "cool because the stylized graphics at the time were completely different from what they are today."However, "halfway through development, a request came from Rockstar headquarters to make the game's art more realistic," Wood explained. It was at this time that "the art team was almost exhausted from the studio."

“We had to redo all the textures,” says Wood. “The more stylized, weird-looking models also had to be reworked—fixing them, reshaping them.” Although this requirement resulted in a lot of extra work (and no doubt added to the development pressure, with Wood describing the overtime intensity at the time as “brutal”), he explains that things eventually turned around.And with good results: "In the process of hastily adjusting directions and changing art styles, we finally merged the two styles together. Although this fusion was messy and strange, it was like an unexpected surprise, and it fit the game itself and its story very well. It is precisely because of that decision that "Bully" has its own unique style."