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Production Now we've reached the point where the "rubber meets the road"-implementing the design. In theory you should be able to take the design document, spend a few moments pretending to understand the programmers and other team members and begin drawing, painting, modeling, texturing, and animating your heart out-right? If only life was this simple. Unfortunately, like life, things are going to get pretty complicated (and we're not even going to discuss all those lovely technical issues like polygon counts, texture mapping, texture sizes, memory constraints, color palette restrictions, file conversions, etc.) Following are several points to help you work with the designer(s) and insure (as best you can) that the work you perform will not only adhere to the overall vision of the game but allow you to the freedom to enhance that vision: The Three Most Important Points: Communicate, Communicate & communicate More. All too often artists and designers (along with everyone else) tend to become immersed in their work and those lovely ever-looming deadlines. While this focus is understandable it tends to create large gaps between review and design meetings. I'm not suggesting you have large meetings every day (or ever for that matter)-but rather that you find a few minutes to spend with the designer(s) as your work progresses, show him/her what you're working on and discuss how it will affect the game play. Whether you're building/drawing characters or objects, animating them, working on backdrops, textures or level art you'd be surprised at the amount of work that has to be reworked or redone due to simple misunderstandings and miscommunications (the designer told the team leader who told the art director who told you ----hmmm I wonder why it didn't turn out the way expected.) This Is the Last Revision...I Promise! Game designs are works in progress. They will change faster than you can sharpen your pencil. Eventually someone will get around to telling you that your level has been redesigned or that the character you've been working on has been changed. But, all too often, the lag between the design change and the communication of said change is far too large. Stay up to date, do not assume that you'll be told when things change. Remember, even if it's not your job to coordinate changes, you'll end up doing the work. Concept Drawings: Blazing Pencils One of the best artist/designer tools is the concept sketch or storyboard. Initially variety and options are the key. All too often I've left a meeting expecting to get some "concept sketches" for review, after several days an artist reappears carrying a fully inked and colored rendering ready for the cover of a comic book. Take note, designers would rather have 20 rough sketches showing a multitude of look and styles than one carefully crafted masterpiece. Once there is an agreement on the basic look of the character Then spend time fleshing it out. Reference Material Is Worth A Thousand Lines of Ink If a picture is worth a thousand words, then reference material is worth a million. As noted above, in the design document topics, designer should include references for their characters, levels and other graphic items. The same goes for artists, instead of drawing 20 concept sketches, show the designer an existing image, be it a comic book (my personal favorite), magazine image (and you thought those travel magazines were garbage), photograph (I have discovered a plethora of truly gruesome characters at out last family reunion), another game (good artist borrow, great ones steal) a video tape (Hooray for Hollywood), your dad's latest wood carving (hmmm), whatever. There is almost always some Existing material that can be used to communicate a look, character, scene or movement. Make One, Let's Review It, Then Make More Make sure you are on the same page as the designer(s). Don't go off and spend a hundred or more hours cranking out artwork. Finish one task and then review it with the designer. This is especially important at the beginning of a project when everyone's unsure of exactly what things should look and play like. As the game progresses both the artist and designers should begin to get comfortable with one another's styles. Final Thought Hopefully the above suggestions will help you sort through the sometimes strange, and often idiosyncratic work of various designers, as well as, streamline your production process as it relates to the design document. On a final note, remember each design document and designer/design team is unique- you'll need to learn how the designers work and how their documents are structured. Talk to them. Joshua D. Gordon can be reached at gordon@crl.com ________________________________________________________ |
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