Elements of game design, part two: art direction for games

I realised I'd accidentally skipped out on part two of this 4-parter blog series. Whoops. I must have been excited to cry over the story and characters of Mass Effect a little too much.

Anyway lets back track a bit so we can cover the second part of this series; art direction for games.

Art direction is incredibly important when it comes to creating an original game, the style in which we play a game can really make something original and interesting to play. If an art style is overused for example, the same style used in a lot of first person shooters then games will often look a lot like each other and will fail to have a 'wow' factor when it comes to art direction but a game like Borderlands where cellshading was used for all the game makes everything look original and interesting, something new and exciting to experience as well as making it easy to differentiate between different kinds of games.

Borderland's iconic cell shading style

This is all down to art direction. The art director has an incredibly difficult job of pretty much deciding what a game will look like as a whole and they can make it as unoriginal or original as they see fit to. So when the art director of Borderlands created the art style they made it original. Borderlands is another first person shooter but it's art style makes it very easy to tell what game it is unlike a lot of other first person shooters such as Call of Duty and Battlefield, if you were shown screenshots from these three games then it'd be very easy to tell which one was Borderlands but much more difficult to decide which was Call of Duty and which was Battlefield unless you were a hardcore fan of the two. Borderlands' art style is what makes it stand out.

A little more difficult to tell which is which, right?

An art director is described as 'the captain of the ship' because they pretty much decide what a game will look like, a very difficult job indeed taking up a lot of hours. The art director decides what goes into a game, the style, the characters, the assets, everything is decided by them and art is what makes the game quite honestly, it's how the player will see it and ultimately how it is advertised. Games with brilliant art direction, stunning views during gameplay and really amazing character designs that are all memorable are down to the art director so we really have to thank art directors out there for making our favourite games possible.

Art directors have many people working under them, the 'game artists', yes what I'm aspiring to be who will help to create the art director's visions. There's also 'gurus' who are like art directors but don't manage people, instead they mentor and tutor them. It's down to all these people working together that we can have aesthetically pleasing games like the ones we play today.

So what it really comes down to is creating an original art style for your game. I've talked about Borderlands, how about some other iconic art styles? Well there's the post-apocalyptic era of the Fallout series, art direction mostly comes down to the weird and wonderful assets we see in the game, Iguana on a stick anyone? Wanna wash that down with some Nuka Cola Quantum? See, these are such memorable items from the series and are so iconic to Fallout as a whole so thank you art director of Fallout, you're the reason I have five jars of bottlecaps in my room. Yes I'm being serious.

Some tasty Nuka Cola Quantum

Pokemon is another one with a very clear anime style. Ok so actually there's a lot of games with the 'anime' art style but Pokemon is so original probably because of the battle system which has been the same in almost all main Pokemon games. It's so iconic 'fight, bag, Pokemon and run' are just something you'll expect to always see when you play a Pokemon game now.

The iconic Pokemon battle system

I'll pick one more to talk about, how about a little twist? I'm a huge fan of the Youtubers 'Smosh' and recently they created a game called 'Super Head Esploder x'. While I have yet to play this game (due to having no iPod, iPad or iPhone) you'll be able to tell it's a Smosh game in a heart beat. Anthony Padilla from Smosh did most of the coding for the game and we all know he's really big on designing as well, he's designed a variety of websites. So what makes Super Head Esploder X so original? Well it's done in an 8-bit style to commemorate the era of gaming the boys grew up with as well as featuring a number of characters iconic to the Smosh videos, you even play as Billy, one of Ian Hecox's characters. So it's very easy to spot that this is a Smosh game because of the art style it's done in and the iconic characters.

Iconic Smosh characters

So to wrap it up, I believe that being an art director is a creative role, they have to manage people and map out what they think a game should look like, they can choose whether or not to make it original or generic and typical like many previous games, it's up to them. If I was to become an art director in the future I'd really need to get my creative juices flowing a lot more than they are now, I'd need to delve into the depths of imagination, creating an art style that is original and can put a game in the best perspective possible, I think this is why games like Borderlands is so big to this day, it's art style.


Sources:
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/159200430X/ch11lev1sec2?portal=oreilly
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3115/common_methodologies_for_lead_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2402/day_in_the_life_phillip_bossant_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2960/keeping_up_with_the_sims_managing_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2352/advancing_your_game_industry_.php