Elements of Game Design: Art Direction

In this entry I will be talking about art direction in games in general, the Art Directors role within the company and what their job requires of them.

So what is an Art Director, well to put it simply the he or she is the person responsible for the level of quality and the style of art included in the game they are involved with, they have to be highly creative and able to visualise how an entire scene or area would look within the game, this is so as the job title suggests they are able to give direction to the art team. An art Director will have a team of artist they lead throughout game production, the size and skill-sets of these teams can vary quite a lot due to new staff, different studios and projects etc, this means the Art Director must also be adaptable and able to convey ideas to all their team regardless of their prior experience.

The Directors art background will usually consist of a Bachelor of fine art degree as they need great understanding of lighting and shadow, tone and texture, scale, perspective and proportion, construction of a scene and depth of field I find are especially important for for games as you need to be able to imagine how the player will move through the space and how they are going to view this space from pretty much every angle, this is different in a movie where the director can control exactly where the audience will view the scene from at all times, this I feel is what makes making good game world much harder than making a good set for a movie.

The main reason I feel why an Art Director is important for games is so that the world the game takes place in always cohesive and levels and areas complement one another, this enables the game to feel like a real place even if it is fantasy or science fiction.

Lighting in games I feel can vary in importance based on the style of game,  for example in a real time strategy game use of lighting and placement of it is less important than it would be in a horror game that's trying to emote a specific response from the player. I find that in First person games especially, lighting is extremely important, as well as my earlier point about how a scene will be constructed, because there is nothing worse than making a world that the player finds frustrating to navigate, a good example of using lighting for me is in the Left4Dead games and Resident Evil games, more so the old Resident Evil games as opposed to the new action styled ones.

In Left4Dead lighting is used to lead the player through the levels in an almost subconscious way, as a human player you feel less vulnerable to attack in the light and are therefor naturally drawn toward it, here's an screenshot to backup my point.

 As a Player the moment I entered this scene I was immediately drawn toward that orange glow off in the distance that is also highlighted by a beam of light from the nearby van.

Here are a few more.