Elements of Game Design Part 2
What does an art director do?
An art director in the game industry is
the “captain
of the ship”,
the one responsible for
setting the visual tone, quality, and style for the game. They are at least
indirectly responsible for every object, texture, level, character, and effect
that appears in a game. This is a profound responsibility.
The art director will work closely with
the lead artist and the game designer to communicate his vision for the game
across to the teams of artists.
Who are they responsible to?
Most art directors will be responsible to
one of several team managers who act as liaisons between the artists and a number
of people such as the project/ creative managers and or the producer.
This is hugely important in game teams,
where there is so much information flying around, critical decisions and
changes being made to the design.
Do you think it’s a creative role?
Yes and no, the art director is
responsible to setting the style and tone of the game, and so needs to be
highly creative and highly skilled in communicating his vision across to a
diverse team of waiting artists. However he is creative indirectly, he is not
directly creative. The art director will forge ideas with the lead artist, but
he will not actively bring them to life in the creative sense, he merely
watches and corrects mistakes to suit his vision.
As well as this the art director has
extra roles that are not usually associated with an artist, the business side,
he is responsible to relay budgets and limitations for the project, manage time
frames and deadlines. All in all I think it’s a balance between creativity and
business.
How is art direction in games
similar to or different from film, for example?
Art direction is very similar in both
games and films. Communicating an overall style and vision of a project is
vital and key for both roles irrelevant of the type of end result.
Both act as liaisons between managers and
artists and require critical business skill to relay information regarding
schedules and budgets.
The type of designs and ideas that come
from the art director are very similar as well, both games and films require
characters designs, props, clothing styles, settings etc. In both roles the art
director must have business and creative talents in order to succeed.
What qualities do you think you’d
need to develop if you wanted to become an art director in the future?
In my opinion, the four most important
abilities that would have to be essential to obtain in order to succeed in an
art directors job would be.
1: creativity and vision, the ability to explore
new ideas, design whole worlds, styles, colour schemes, making
every last element visually pleasing and relevant to everything else. and assess their value in the shortest time
possible.
2: Communication, being able to convey these ideas accurately and
efficiently to masses of people and to maintain these ideals throughout the
length of the project. 3: Business like management, to be able to keep under
control of budgets, schedules, limitations of every fine detail, as well as
managing feedback, correcting artists work, making sure it aligns with the
styles previous established. Finally
4: experience, as if all that wasn’t
enough to be able to do everything on that list will require vast amounts of
experiences and confidence, to correct mistakes to keep to the initial styles
and scenes.
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/159200430X/ch11lev1sec2?portal=oreilly#X2ludGVybmFsX0h0bWxWaWV3P3htbGlkPTE1OTIwMDQzMHglMkZjaDExbGV2MXNlYzImcXVlcnk9
No comments:
Post a Comment