Saturday, November 18, 2006

Week 7 - Art Direction for Games

This week we had our first guest lecture. The problem is that the lecture was mostly about careers in games art and I DON'T DO ART, I do Electronics Games Technology, which is usually about programming and hardware.

Over the next few weeks I will be looking into games design in more detail. This week focuses on Art Direction for Games.

What does an Art Director do?

Firstly, the Art Director has to create an image on paper from a description given by the Project Director (or who ever creates these ideas about games). Secoundly, the Art Director is involved in the production of all elements of art in the game. This includes graphics, intro scenes, cut scenes and advertsing.

Who are they responsible to?

He/she is responsible for the creation for All the art in the game and it is his/hers job to maintain the quality of all this art. More important responsibilities are: working with recruiting department to ensure recruitment of good artists, mentoring less experienced artists, maintaining good communication beween programmers and project directors (good communication usually means a well implemented game), supervising art reviews (maintaing quality of the art) and forseeing if there is enough time to complete required tasks.

Do you think it's a creative role?

Yes I think it is one of most creative roles of making a game. I think its because the Art Director has to create a vision before any production starts. He/she also has to communicate their ideas in the form of drawings and basic 3D images. The abitily to draw somthing form vision does require a vast amount of creativity.

How is art direction in Games similar to or different from Film, for example?

It is different from making a film becasue firstly not all films require CG (computer graphics). Also the Director of the film also acts as an 'Art Director' as he has to create a vision of the whole film before he/she starts any filming. Storyboards are usually used to create simple views of each scene. Also art is implemented in different ways to make a film, e.g. Make up effects (like putting bits of metal and blood on Arnold Schwarzenegger to make him look like a terminator and creating models (like creating the two towers in Lord of the Rings films).

What qualities do you think you'd need to develop if you want to become an Art Director in the future?

I think that I would need:
- Tons of experience in game art (at least 5 years).
- Ability to communicate ideas to other people.
- Ability to supervise other employees.
- Ability to see faults and areas of improvement in others peoples work.
- A Qulaification or relevent experience in 3D graphics or Multimedia.
- Ability to handle a big work load.
- Ability to resolve any problems encountered during production.

1 Comments:

Blogger Michael Powell said...

But as a programmer, still interesting, yes? btw you could always encourage Scott and Xin Kai to rustle up some programmers etc to come speak...

Friday, November 24, 2006 2:55:00 AM  

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