I saw some time ago in the forums some programmers complaining that there isn’t a readily available documentation on art. I was curious about that because I had the interest of writing something on the subject for a while, but only got the time to start it now.
My goal is to provide a good reference for artists, programmers and developers overall. Something explaining the theoretical foundations of well-established art direction paradigms to make anyone (regardless of your background) understand how to improve the looks of their game with examples tailored to the Unity pipeline.
Keep in mind these would be art direction books. They wouldn’t teach you how to model or how to make sprites. They would explain how to make your game look better with the resources you have. How to make something appealing to the eyes.
My inspiration to do this is because I see a lot of developers make a lot of mistakes constantly, which I imagine it’s due to the lack of readily accessible documents on the subject. Some of these mistakes are very easy to fix. I want to provide something with real, accessible and affordable information.
So, would there be any interest for this right now? And if so, what would you consider to be a good, affordable price tag?
Not really level design, no. Level design is the process to create and populate the levels and is related to either Game Design or the creation of Art Assets. While Art Direction does influence that, they’re far different subjects.
Art Direction is the task of unifying and polishing a visual style. It’s usually the hierarchical top of the art chain (either that or the Production Designer) in the development of AAA Titles/movies. It’s the understanding of the stylistic process that makes something look good - A game with next-gen assets can still look bad if they’re not used correctly. Conversely, a game with extremely limited budget can also look great if its art direction is planned accordingly.
It’s quite wide in scope because it usually involves specialization in multiple fields or a lot of experience, which can go from classic arts to semiotics to psychology to neuropsychology, as well as complete understanding of the basics behind art (lighting, composition, animation, etc). Usually these tasks fall within the responsibility of the art director:
Defining which visual style the game/movie/product will adopt to set up a visual identity.
Making sure the visual style is optimized to make the product look as good as possible within its limitations or lack thereof (and trust me, that can be an issue too).
Guiding the artists or third-party companies to create assets according to these specifications.
At the end of the day it’s about the solutions that will make your game look better. Most of it are not intuitive. For example, you might have read or noticed that most movies nowadays follow a teal/orange color scheme. These “formulas” are usually studied or discovered by production designers/art directors. Our task is to find what works, what doesn’t and why it works.
The major companies tend to invest huge in Art Direction. Blizzard Entertainment for example prefers to focus its RD in Art Direction than technology because a good Art Direction can make your game last much longer before getting outdated. Nintendo tends to take that path too. The movie industry has most of the AD basics locked down to the point some of it are aggressively formulaic (which I dislike, but understand why), simply because making mistakes is not affordable at this point.
The video game industry is far newer, so Art Direction is something that is often overlooked by smaller companies, even by artists. There’s a considerable lack of accessible material on it. I want to take the pragmatic approach and teach what matters to solo developers/smaller companies who probably won’t have access to full time Art Directors, in a way that would be beneficial to both programmers and artists.
I’d be interested in that. Will it include environmental art also, outdoor lighting, etc? I struggle with finding good lighting and the right color scheme and matching, in my environments.
While it’s not the primary goal to provide art assets but to explain the decisions behind them, I will include sample scenes with my own assets (which you’d have permission to use commercially). My first specialization was color schemes if that answers your question
It’s a good idea.
The closest I’ve found as a package is UPDATED: Preproduction Blueprint: How to Plan Game Environments and Level Designs , which looks excellent and covers some of the elements you mention. The only downslde is it’s focused on FPS type environment.
Something more generic would be a great addition I think.
That is a great document, yea. I’m aiming for something more generic. And like I said, not focused on Level Design (although he does provide some good insight on the artistic side).
Sorted out. My plan is to have two different books to cover as much ground as possible, but keeping it affordable.
What would be a good price point? $15? $30?
Like I said, my goal is to provide information that is not easily accessible. I’m very professional about this kind of thing, and it’s completely against my ethics to provide something just for the sake of making money, without giving quality in return.
I think you are putting the cart before the horse, talking about how much you are going to charge for an unspecified product.
Who are you?
What is your experience/background that qualifies you to write this?
Why two books?
What is the proposed table of contents?
Will there be any tools provided? (Color set selection, checklists etc)
Will there be a companion website?
Also, why even provide it as a “traditional” book? Maybe you could do it as an interactive, like a html5 app that gives you the ability to deploy it onto many devices where people can learn the concepts anywhere, anytime.
Hi, Im from Brazil and im a student of the first Art Direction University in Brazil and im making my final course research with the subject Game Art in art direction, who has been updated every year but its only academic and i cant publish yet until 2014 when i graduated, as an ART DIRECTOR. the course we study in the field of cinema, theatre, music with all subject such as illuminations, coustumes, design,scenography and estetics but in UFG university we dont have the aproach in game art direction wich its why im doing this as a academic level. So soon you all gonna have something to look at, im trying to translate but its going to take a while. Here in brasil we have a book called Videogame Arte (Video Game ARTS/ Arthur Bombany, ADM) who is the one im always get a look. I ll talk to my teacher if they allowed me to give you my unfinish research.
