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GDC 2003: Art Management For Artists What is a "lead artist"? How is a lead artist different from a production artist? Lead artists are less "artists who manage" than "managers who are in charge of artists". A lead artist is, first and foremost, a manager. Despite your role as the keeper of the vision for the look of your project, you will likely spend the bulk of your time doing paperwork, email, meetings, and managing your artists. This was a shock for every lead artist that I talked to, and it was a shock to me. (This is, by the way, a fact of life for any lead, especially engineers, who are just as likely to think they can contribute a significant amount of code and still manage a team.) You will have to change the way you gauge your own success, because you will no longer be able to look at the amount of art you have done to see how you're doing personally. What does your boss expect to see from you? Your boss
requires primarily two things: on-time delivery of art assets and clear
communication. The second element that is essential at all levels of the art lead's responsibilities is clear communication. Many beginning leads are afraid to present problems to their bosses because they think that it will reflect badly on their ability to do their jobs. That's what managers are there for. Don't be afraid to tell people that you are new to a situation. They probably already knew that, so if you manage to fool them into thinking you're doing great, you are more likely causing trouble farther down the line. Be aware, however, that communication means asking questions as much as giving information. Talk to your boss. Your responsibilities as Lead Artist may or may not include what you expect. Make sure that you are clear on what your direct superiors expect from you, and what aspects of the project and team management you can expect from them. I have run into very sticky situations that I thought were my responsibility that were not, and only found out afterwards. Are you responsible for hiring and firing artists? Who is responsible for disciplining problem employees? How far does your responsibility extend before it becomes a matter for the art director? Are you in charge of the art budget? Will you be evaluating and buying your tools and equipment? Do you need to coordinate with the marketing team, or is that the responsibility of the producer? Ask.
This question is the toughest one, since it depends most on your situation. How smoothly your schedule was run, how few complaints there were from engineering, how good the project looks compared to the competition, and how adaptable you were to bumps in production - these are typical and should be expected. And, of course, these are only a few criteria that your boss could use. Depending on the scope of your authority, other factors may be involved. Keep in mind that your artists, not you, will likely be the ones creating the vast majority of the artwork. That complicates how you are able to meet artistic standards, and a fat portfolio of new work for you may mean that you have been neglecting your responsibilities, not fulfilling them. Take a minute to think about this question; "How will I tell when I'm doing my job right?" This will be critical later in the project when things get hairy and you are off-balance. You will need to have some objective way to tell how you are performing. If you don't have a ready answer to this question, found out at your first opportunity. Managing The Project Chances are, you are good at managing yourself and your own time. That's one of the things managers look at when they decide who to promote to lead positions. But, managing a small portion of a project and managing an entire project require different skills. You are no longer just concerned with getting your slice of the pie done. You are also responsible for making sure that others get their work done, and that both the people you work for and the people that you manage understand where the project stands at all times.
How do you start? The first element necessary for building a schedule is the design document. The design document is the blueprint for the entire project, and lays out what the final product will be. Determine the assets required by the design - number of levels, characters, kinds of animations, shell screens, fonts, weapons - the meat of the project. Once you have an idea of all the pieces that need to be assembled, start looking at dependencies. Most decisions about what needs to be done first will be common sense, but certainly not all. If levels can be tested with old character models, then new models could be done early or late in the process. Objects for levels may not ever be critical issues in development, so they could be stuck in anywhere in the schedule. Shell screens could be polished at any point in the project. It is at this point that talking to the engineering lead is critical. The art schedule and engineering schedule have the greatest chance of clashing and causing conflict. This is common sense, really. Engineering needs to use your art, and your art needs to be supported by their code. These facts lead inevitably to a number of "chicken and egg" scheduling puzzles. One of my schedules on a previous game had levels being completed first and characters later. Engineering, as it turns out, needed the character models to write climbing code. If we hadn't caught that conflict, we wouldn't have been able to test any levels that required ascending a ladder for several months after the level was done. Sit down with the lead engineer and try to find potential conflicts in your schedules. Some will be more obvious than others, so devote some time to this and ask a lot of questions. If you have trouble poring over schedules face to face, email them to each other and schedule a time to talk about them later. If you have concerns and priorities, bring them up. Are you worried about a usable interface? Are your character models doing something they've never done before? Is there an effect or several effects that you feel are necessary to sell damage models? If you have a good relationship with the lead engineer from the start, then he will more likely be able to accommodate your need for tools, testing and scheduling. In the same way, you can make his job much easier when you can accommodate his needs and concerns. Individual items may require some debate and compromise, so be informed about your own needs up front and be flexible. By the way, it is never too late to work out these conflicts, it just becomes more painful the longer you wait.
You know from experience that something always goes wrong. No matter what your level of experience, you will hit roadblocks that you haven't encountered before, or some that you've dealt with before that you still have no solution for. Resist the temptation to schedule so tightly that any problem will throw you off. When talking to engineers, they will tell me with a straight face that they schedule everything to take three times as long as it will really take. How often do engineers find themselves running behind schedule? At least as often as artists do. That should give you pause. If they schedule that way and still slip, what chance do artists have of doing better, with artistic temperaments and less well-defined problems? The reality for most companies is that teams can't schedule that loosely, so have good, solid reasons for what you do pad out. Where is the team least experienced? Where are you most likely to need to re-do art assets? Where is the project breaking new ground in technology or playing style? Look for areas that have the most overlap with other parts of the production team, and there are you potential liabilities. No one can plan for every contingency. Three things will give you the best possible defense against slippage in your schedule:
Managing The Team At the same time that you will be working out the technical issues of the schedule, you will be spending at least as much time and probably more on people issues. Be aware that the art lead will be managing up, down and across - not only people under him, but the managers above him and the leads on his level. How will you keep up with the artists? (You could also pose this question as, "How will you know if you are on schedule?") The answer is complicated by the fact that you will spend some time working on your own art tasks, and a lot of time in meetings outside the team room. The problem gets worse the more people you have on the team, and the more inexperienced people you have working under you. At Red Storm we have tried a number of ways of getting information on individual and team progress. One was to ask everyone on the team to email his or her leads with a daily report. Everyone hated that, so answers ranged from helpful to downright insulting. I had at least one artist who just sent me the same note every day by hitting the re-send button in his email. We had some very good engineers who flatly refused write anything at all. It could have worked, but it didn't. From there, we went to weekly emails, which were better received, but people had trouble remembering what they had done earlier in the week. We have also tried setting up an internal web page where team members could check in with updates. Lately, we've developed time sheets with task areas already typed on them, and empty blanks for hours spent. None of these methods were complete failures or complete successes, and they emphasize the need to have one-on-one contact with your team. A balance of direct and indirect contact is important, not only in getting the data you need, but also in understanding what people are saying. The methods you choose for knowing if you are on schedule and on track should be developed early and tinkered with over the life of the project. In the same way, you should count on trying different approaches to maintaining contact with your artists. Some will naturally require more attention than others, and that time will shrink as you get later into the project. But cycles of turbulence are natural, so let's take a brief look at team dynamics. Team Dynamics All teams go through a predictable cycle of chaos and order that can be summed up in four stages: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. "Forming" is the stage where the team is first put together. Everyone is very polite and excited, but tentative. People are still floating, unsure of their role on the team. The next stage is "Storming". At this point, problems have started to surface, and people start to drive each other crazy. Everyone knows they are in over their heads, and they can't get out. There is too much agreement in meetings, while inside everyone is smoldering with resentment. Fixing problems almost always involves stepping on toes. Everyone wants to avoid this phase, but it is unavoidable. Storming is where the rubber hits the road, and all your best-laid plans start to show their weaknesses. Reality begins to exert itself. Teams and entire companies can get stuck in this phase, because solving root-level disagreements is painful. People often deny that those problems are there, or end up leaving in frustration if they feel that issues important to them are not being addressed. The lead needs to help the team through this phase. If the lead is part of the problem, then a neutral party needs to be brought in. The Neutral party doesn't need to be a professional, just neutral. This is the "Norming" stage. General solutions or technical fixes are unlikely to solve the real problems, because they are caused by conflicts between personalities and agendas. Solutions require that people to talk to people. The Norming stage requires honesty, patience, and the ability to apologize. Feelings will get hurt - yours as well, because, as a lead, you will be the focus of much of the conflict. At this time, it may become clear that some people are in the wrong position, or doing the wrong job. At Red Storm, fortunately, we are too small a company for these conflicts to be solved by firing people, except where a situation has been proved to be hopeless. Actually working out problems is much more difficult than downsizing, but it is well worth the sweat and tears. After one or two rounds of Norming, you will feel like you can face anything. You will also have a better understanding of your own abilities and the abilities of your team. If a team successfully passes the Norming stage, they will move on to "Performing". This is the stage that you hear the most about from successful teams. "I dunno, we just jelled!" "We had an awesome team, and it felt like we could read each others' minds!" Teams like that get write-ups in business magazines. Don't be fooled. They didn't skip the Storming stage, they just don't talk about it. The more experienced you are, the shorter the round trip is through the four stages, but you will go the whole circuit. A few things need to be pointed out about this model:
Take a minute
now and think about your current project. What is happening now? Jot down
a few notes, and compare them to the development cycle. What stage are
you in? What are the next steps you need to take with your team? ______________________________________________________
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Introduction
Features
