Monday 5 March 2012

Art Director Role

     A Video Game Art Director’s role consists of constructing and criticising the quality of art that can be incorporated into games. They need to be well educated in art, as they will need to be able to recognise aspects of art such as drawing, 3Dmodels and colour knowledge. Creativity is a key point as the Art Directors needs to be very visual with the job at hand. You need to have an open mind to different types of art if you want to be a good art director, as art that you may not like, may be popular. You have to think beyond your own personal preferences and into the ideas that will be most popular with the target audience.

    A director also has to be very good working in part of a team, he will have to correspond around the art team so that all the different departments can communicate with each other, so that there is a consistency in the art that is produced. The art director must be able to pick and choose the best styles of art that he think will be most popular. Within the team, there will be a lot of different opinions, it is the art directors job to manage all the thoughts and decide on which ones would be best. The art director will have to make sure that the art fits in with what the Game Designers what the game to be like.

    I believe art direction in games is similar to the art direction in films. In film, cinematography is incredibly important in setting a scene and emotions throughout the narrative, it is how the audience reacts and interacts with the story on screen. Games are a little different to film, in the fact that games are heavily based on art direction. Films also have a very strongly based art direction, however if the art is slightly off, the director could possibly make up for it in other areas, where as if there is some disjointed texture on a character in a game, it will be heavily scrutinised for being a lazy effort from the artists in the team. Game and Film art directors both need to have similar creativity and enthusiasm with art based knowledge, this means that the roles that they have are incredibly similar.

   The qualities that would be expected of you if you wanted to become an Art Director in the gaming industry include confidence, you are in charge of an important part of making a game. If you are not confidence and back up your opinions and knowledge with good judgement, then it will be difficult for your game to become popular, which is going to pay your wages. Another important quality you must have is ability to manage time and plans to make the best out of the team and the time limit. There must be quality and quantity of your work. An obvious value that is needed is creativity. You need to have a creative mindset that allows you to wonder through the different ideas of others, stealing, changing and making them better. This is the most important role you need to have to be successful. The drive to become something spectacular should be in your soul, you need to have the push to become what you want.

    Personally, I think the role of the art Director is one that would be very interesting and appealing to me, I could quite easily see myself in that role. To do this I need to strive my artistic capabilities to the highest possible limits.

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