Art Direction in Games

 “Art production is overseen by an art director or art lead, making sure their vision is followed”

Art directors in video games are responsible for the overall visual style of the game and communicating this to pretty much all the levels of the design side of the games design process.

 To be an art director you need to be able to communicate ideas quickly and effectively using imagery which is usually done in a traditional media like pencil. If I wanted to become one I would need to increase the speed at which I draw and also the quality of my drawing as you will need to be able to confidently convey scenes imagery using all the different elements of drawing such as light & shadow, perspective and the use of line etc. The reason you need to be able to get ideas down on paper quickly is that a first idea is not always the best therefore its best to explore as many different paths of design as possible and then whittle these down to the best few and go from there.

 Arthur max the art director for the film black hawk down talks about the fact that so many of the drawings and story boards where thrown away during the design process, he talks about generating lots of ideas so then the bad ones can be discared in order to reveal the good ones which is a very interesting point to draw from in terms of the course I am studying because I could think about this when generating ideas for characters and vehicles so that I develop more ideas.  The DVD also showed some of the processes they used on the film in terms of design such as using a one room to display all the images from all the designers and producers that they think relate to the films visual style and direction. These images again would be short listed so to speak so that they are left with images that best fit the visual style of the they are aiming for.

To be honest I wasn’t really aware that one person could affect a project so much by being an art director, after watching some of the special features for the film black hawk down i was surprised how much influence the drawings and storyboards had on the film’s overall outcome visually. The video splits the screen in two showing the drawn story board scenes at the top and the live action finished movie scenes underneath to compare their similarity and to show their effect on the movie. It was surprising to see how close the actual film is to the story board as this isn’t always the case and it confirms the fact that an art director can have a huge impact and influence on a project.

Game and film art direction are very much the same I would say, the only difference being that obviously games are different in terms of the way you experience them as you can’t control a film.