Game art is a complex sphere, which, on the one hand, embodies creativity and creativity, and on the other hand, a set of functions. Art to be used in games has a lot of features.
You could say that game art is as much an art form as any other form of visual art. What we make for games today will someday take its place in cultural history. Here the artist can find the same opportunities for creativity and self-expression.
But at the same time, the artist works with the entire development team and makes the art functional for the game.
Types of game artists
- The concept artist is the most well-known and coveted type for most artists trying out and taking their first steps in the game industry. Everyone wants to draw concepts (especially – characters).
- Character Artist.
- Environment artist – creating locations, landscapes and objects;
- Interface artist – a rarer and lesser known type. Not everyone knows these artists exist.
- A lead artist is the most competent artist, a manager who is involved in designing the style of the game. It’s good if the lead can direct the artists on his or her team.
Choosing the ideal style.
There are three areas: audience perception, “lore,” and project genre (and its technical features).
Audience perception
Each of the styles listed earlier has a different audience. The first question you should ask yourself when designing a game is, “What audience do I want to attract? What does my audience expect from me?” The answer to that question lies in the gameplay.
The artist’s job is to understand what styles exist and what audiences they affect. In order to understand this, you have to constantly monitor the market and keep an eye on new projects. Each style has its own history among users, and you need to know it.
“Lore” and genre.
“Lore” is the history of the game. If you have a fantasy story in a minimalist style, it’s hard to add any witchcraft to it. Genre brings its own requirements and laws to the implementation of a game. Depending on what mechanics the game uses, it changes how it will look.
Technical Requirements
First of all they depend on what kind of devices your game is designed for. For example if we make a small game for Steam and draw some “fat” art that doesn’t work well on weak computers, users will be very unhappy. If we make a mobile game, it’s clear that we can’t do super polygonal 3D in it. There are mobile games designed for tablets and powerful smartphones that can afford to be quite demanding on hardware, because that’s how they position themselves. What tools you use will depend on what you can technically implement.
By combining these three aspects and finding something average that meets all the parameters, you will find the visual style of the game. The less you know about them at the beginning of the project, the more rework you will have to do in the process.
Designing a style of play
By going through the starter stage, you will save a lot of development time.
References
Once you have determined the style of the game, you need to search the Internet for references. If you don’t devote enough time and attention to this, then you will find out, for example, that someone has already done such a project. To find the best solution, you first need to ensure a good level of “vision”. Having collected all the found examples of games in the chosen style in a package, you need to highlight the positive features that can be used, and the negative – the mistakes that need to be taken into account.
Fake screenshot
A very interesting point. Even among developers with extensive experience in the game industry, not everyone is aware that this is a necessary stage of development. There are two definitions of a fake screenshot.
One of them is rather marketing: when during the development process the screenshots of the situations which haven’t been realized yet but will be soon, are collected from the existing in-game art. They are used for presentations.
The second is a fake screenshot, created from scratch. This is the screen of the game with the most common situation. For example, a battlefield. If the artist has a lot of experience (including with games, it’s very important – usually artists don’t play much) and observation, he has a rough idea of how the game should look like. A fake screenshot is created to see if the game can be what he imagines it to be.
You don’t have to draw everything to do this, you can borrow parts from other projects. But it is useless to try to combine them if you don’t have a vision of what a screenshot should look like. In this case, you need to progress in small steps. First make “skins” and estimate the right size, then the colors, then try out the style. When the picture comes to mind, you collect a fake snapshot.
At the stage of its creation a lot of issues are resolved: the color scheme, visual styles, the relative sizes. The fake screenshot is scanned on as many screens and devices as possible, to make sure it looks good everywhere.
In our last project, the work on the fake screenshot took a month. In the process, about a dozen solutions were discarded that would later prove to be not very good. This was discovered at the very first stage.
Screenshots of major game situations
The more game situations in the game, the more of these screenshots might be needed. If the developer and artist have a clear understanding of what happens on them, the stage can be skipped and start drawing content. If any screen in the game still raises questions, it is better to test it.
This method is best suited for mobile games in which the number of game situations is quite limited. There is a typical location, hero, playing field and situation on it.
Primary documentation
It is not clear to everyone why it should be done, especially if there are three or four people in the project.
In the process of creating documentation on the art, the team finally understands what they are doing. The document describes the audience for which the project is intended, its genre, technical features, and style. It also contains references and types of content. For example, you do “match-3”, and then you have the backdrop of the game, the playing field, the chips and interface elements. It’s very good if you schedule time to work on each piece of content at this stage.
These descriptions will save you a lot of time in future development, especially if your team is going to scale.