Moving Up in the World: How Artists Can
Become Game Development Leaders

Contents

Moving From Production to Leadership Recognizing an Artist's Strengths The Review Process

I've spent 9 years working in the games industry as a lead artist, animator, and 3D artist. I've gone through the gamut of self-examination as both a leader and as a production artist. I've been lucky enough to work on some very well managed projects and have been tortured through some very badly managed ones as well.
This article is designed to help both artists and managers identify key issues and begin to create working solutions to management problems.

Moving from Production to Leadership

Most artists who have been asked to lead teams have experienced the growing pains of becoming an artist manager. Undoubtedly, it would be nice to be prepared for the challenges that managing presents, but often, not much thought is given to preparing an artist for their first leadership role.

As production artists, we enjoy the luxury of producing game art assets without any worries about keeping the whole team together; we only need to worry about what we are doing and satisfying the lead artist's expectations. That may seem complex while you are producing under those circumstances, but imagine suddenly having to keep an eye on your fellow artists, making sure they are producing on time, and being responsible for creating the production pipeline. Now add to that conducting reviews of the work, communicating with the producer regularly, working with the lead programmer to make sure your methodologies are working together and making sure your artists are able to function properly.

The first step in moving from production to management is understanding that how you prepare your art team will have an effect on the outcome of the project art. In other words, seeing the big picture is your first and perhaps most difficult challenge as a new leader. What is that big picture? It entails having an understanding of how your part of the production process will effect the project as a whole. In order to do that, it is important to be organized and to plan as much as possible early in the project.

The next step is being able to accept that you will no longer be producing the volume of artwork that you may be accustomed to producing. Other tasks--management tasks--will now begin to take precedence over being responsible for producing an entire group of art assets. Reconciling the artist with the manager is a challenge that every new lead artist or art director may face. As a manager, you may have to put your own ambitions aside and concentrate on the artists in your team. There is a bonus to adopting that attitude: once you make your artists look good, it reflects on you as a manager and you look good as well.

How do you enable your team to perform well? A good part of it has to do with how well you can manage yourself. How well do you communicate ideas to others? How well do you offer criticism? How well do you plan? It never hurts to try to improve on any of those skills even if you think you are an ace.

Practicing Good Leadership Habits

Good management will be the power tool of development companies in the years to come. Imagine the things teams can accomplish when they have good managers helping them produce. Every management book in the universe offers a selection of key qualities of a good manager, but simply keeping in mind how you would want to be treated is a good practice. Being a good leader is not about you, it is about helping the artists you are leading produce the best work they can. A great looking game owes its success to the teamwork behind it.

Communication, Empowerment, and Ownership

Communication, empowerment, and ownership are terms that are thrown around within our industry without any real effort to understand or incorporate them into the management model.

Communication is the most important factor in successful teamwork. When the lines of communication are truely open people can function the way they need to in order to get the job done. Artists (or any employees, for that matter) will learn styles of communication from the people they see as role models. If your style of communication is to focus on weakness, mistakes, and to play one employee against another, then the people you are leading are effected by your example. Lay the groundwork for constructive communication by encouraging open discussion and feedback within your team. That way, no artist will feel that they cannot speak their mind. To encourage feedback is to teach the skills of positive evaluation of work, rather than negative criticism. The next area of communication to establish is conveying the vision of the game design to the artists and how you plan to help them incorporate it.

Empowerment means that members of the team have been allocated responsibility for their part of the project.

People get ownership of their piece of the development pie because they are empowered and are communicating successfully.

Identifying problems within teams is really simple once these three simple principles are put into place. If you find your team's morale dwindling, ask yourself how well those principles have been enacted. The following example can help illustrate some common problems caused by a lack of early communication and not clearly establishing roles:

• Bob is the lead artist for the PS2 monster game.
  
• Frank is the art director for the same game.
  
• There are 3 artists and 2 animators assigned to the project.
  
• Bob has never led a project before.
  
• All of the team artists are pretty inexperienced and need some strong leadership.
  
• Frank is a competent artist, but thinks that his role is to be in charge of the project.
  
• Bob is too inexperienced to stand up and talk to Frank directly, sees Frank taking over the team and not really following the schedule.
  
• Bob assigns the team artists some tasks.
  
• Frank tells the artists that they need to concentrate on the quality of the work and not worry about the schedule.
  
• Bob is tearing his hair out trying to get the artists to stick to the schedule, while Frank is chewing him out for interfering in "his domain".
  
• The producer has no idea any of this is going on because it's early in the project and some art assets are trickling through.
  
• Frank continues to undermine Bob's authority to the point that the other artists don't respect Bob and don't listen to what he has to say, even though it is in their best interest to do so.
  
• 2nd milestone approaches and the producer notices that the art team is behind and that the design is causing problems in the game engine - files are too big, textures are out of control and none of the technical issues have been resolved.
  
• The producer calls Bob into his office and demands to know what the problem is on the team. Bob feels trapped and doesn't really know how to communicate the problem with Frank. He complains that the leadership is not clear and that he is having problems getting the technical issues across to the artists because Frank contradicts his decisions…

Sound familiar? This scenario is replayed in countless companies every day. I could continue on with that scenario and go into how the team becomes systematically demoralized, but none of that would occur if leadership had been established and Bob, Frank, and the producer communicated more often. The junior artists would never form bad opinions about any of their leaders because they would be too busy producing work for the project on time and gaining the praise of the producer. Bob and Frank ideally would work together closely and help the junior artists have a strong understanding of what is expected of them.

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Recognizing an artists' strengths