What an Art Director does, is he/she tries to define the way in which a game should look like. For example the Art Director’s main focus would be working very closely with the game designer because the game designer is the one with all the ideas of how the game will plan out (its overall structure). The Art Director would then lead a team of Artists within a company to achieve what is wanted for the game, such as how should the characters look, how should the maps, cities, buildings, landscapes and even skies should look. The level of detail that should be in everything is another thing that should be gotten across, in particular if the game is based upon a certain culture, how it should feel?, what time of year is it?, maybe even what time of day, and also what type on genre is it. All these questions must be first answered to then try and communicate this to rest of the Artists for them to finally be able to communicate to the target audience which can be anyone and everyone depending on what type of game is being produced. The most important factor however of any game is the visual side, (in my opinion) simply because without design, there would be no game, and what I think usually attracts a lot of people to gaming is the appearance of it, because every game has design, in fact the way I see it is that everything in the world has design no matter what it is, and quite a lot of the time what makes gaming appeal to most people is how appealing it is aesthetically, however this does not justify the game is going to be good and it’s right up yours and the next persons street. There is a lot more to it than that, because everyone is a part of a team, which is where good communicational skills come in and that’s a very big important factor towards making a good and successful game. I mean a game can have the most beautiful graphics in the world but if that’s all it’s got it’s not going to get very far. Just as an Art Director would manage a team by communicating ideas, the entire company they are working for, must communicate in some way what they are trying to sell publically to people all over the world, so if anything it’s a huge responsibility no matter what the job role. It’s completely huge, especially now-a-days in gaming as Artist roles are growing increasingly popular with each passing year and even salaries are very high for Artists in the gaming industry, simply because it’s such an important role. Without aesthetic appearance a game just couldn’t simply exist, even Pong (as simple as it is) has an aesthetic appearance!
Some things that are different from Art Direction and Art director jobs in film and gaming is that an Art director working in games is in charge with the overall look and feel of the game, trying to visually communicate the best way for the game to look which can sometimes effect the way in which it plays. In film is more about keeping track of the overall Art department making sure everyone is on top of the tasks that the Art director would assign to everyone. An Art director in film would also try to get things done in a way that is sensible and sufficient meaning that they are in charge of the budget, so they have to be careful and think about what they want and need to use, which will include reading the actual film script for a better idea of what they’ll need. They have to prepare for every scene and before everything starts filming so they have to think well ahead, but this does have its similarities to gaming because in gaming they have to work to deadlines and manage teams to get across their visual ideas. Another thing they do is work with producers and tries to determine whether if the producers ideas will work or not, in which the Art director may try to come up with new/better ideas. I won’t get into every detail, but basically I think that the roles in both film and gaming are very similar, there are minor differences here and there but overall they both manage and work with teams to create ideas and assets, working closely with different people. Like I said before communication is essential and having a good knowledge and understanding of visualisation is key. An understanding of lighting, scale, proportion, perspective, colour, volume, shape, form (and the list could go on and on) are all a good thing to have, because if you’re not creative and able to come up with ideas you wouldn’t be able to get the job, but the same applies for film. You’ve got to have a strong passion for them (being films or games) so a really good knowledge of how games work and what they are made up of, and along with this a good portfolio would get you a long way, not even of just 2D visual ideas but also some 3D, since games are primarily 3D now-a-days. Understanding all this and being able to apply it to different types of gaming genres.
