Elements of Game Design: Art direction.

In my previous post, I have mentioned Art Direction briefly about being an element target for games, instead of focusing upon the technology target that the majority of games do these days. Art direction is basically anything that is visual within the game, and levels. They have to pay attention to every little bit of detail, making sure it is in the correct style that they are working for.

An Art Director is the lead on a team, and has responsibility for the visual tones used within the game, and the style and quality of the game. They are still responsible for, even though it’s not directly, any object, texture, level, character or effect that is or may be included in the game or franchise. They must consider how anything and everything looks from different angles in the game, and this is a crucial point in their job. This could be anything from the reflective surface on a glass, tones on a boulder, how buildings look together, to even the tone of water. They work closely with a game designer and they have be able to communicate well with their team to illustration their vision and version of the game to them.

Usually they use an Art Specific Documentation which helps them stay focus, outline who is doing what, and to track plans. It is done in much detail as possible, and contains a variety of things from an Art Director, including visual examples and story boards. Unfortunately, any disagreements, or anything not quite exact, could undo hours of work for everyone on the team. The Art Director has to make sure this does not happen due to the amount of hours it consumes, as well as money.

The necessary skills to be come an Art Director is being able to pick up on little details, drawing, understanding and being able to use the programs the team is working with, able to do story boards, communicating, writing, easy to approach, painting, bringing inspiration and motivation to the team, and having an extremely good keen eye. It’s essential to have a degree, or some background of graphic design mixed with drawing. I think the hidden skill in this is knowing exactly what will look right where, and in what texture.

I do think it is quite an creative job even though it has a lot of task managing and paperwork, due to communicating with the team. It is a job where you are constantly checking up on people, to get tasks done, and checking over everything, over and over again to make sure it is exact. Being able to get the team to build and create a level, in the way you visualise it is a unique experience for each game and rare for a lot of people to experience. It’s creative in the way that it’s your visual look on the game, and you can adjust it to your suiting, however there are guide lines and restrictions to it, but you have a lot of influence over it. I would however prefer to be on the team than the Art Director, as it is an extremely demanding job.