Without
question the biggest problem I find during the design and implementation
of games is the lack of interactivity amongst the various team members
of a project. We've all heard the comments (laments, shouts, etc.) "You
wanted it to look like what?!?!?!", "This is the dumbest character I've
ever seen!", "I said round! Not spherical!"--and so it goes. As someone
once said "Without communication, chaos rules."
This article
will focus on the relationship and communication between artists and
designers during the development process. Topics will include: "Blue
sky" meetings, the design document, methods for streamlining the production
process and a few other random thoughts. Now a couple of those random,
but important, thoughts.
Designers:
Many (myself included) are Autistic, Not Artistic
While
some individuals (show yourselves demons) are gifted with a plethora
of skills- creative thinking, the ability to speak well, write well
and create great art-others are not so lucky. Many designers find themselves
in the position of being thoughtful, creative and having reasonable
(hopefully) communication skills but a total inability to draw, model
or otherwise communicate their ideas visually. Worse, many are not well
versed in the diction of art (you know, "those dark highlights!" -or
umm, shadows). Therefore, it's important to remember the "artistically
challenged designer" needs your help. Designers can envision what we
believe will be cool looking and we know the types of game play we are
after, but without significant participation from the art team it is
almost impossible to realize (much less enhance) the look and feel of
the game.
Designs:
Looking At The Big Picture.
One final
point before we dive into specifics. Design documents speak to a large
audience: Programmers, artist, level designers, producers, marketing
and business folks, etc- the whole enchilada. This can often make the
document large, fragmented and a "hard read". While nobody loves reading
several hundred pages of semi-literate writing, understand that the
document contains information that is crucial to an artist's ability
to do his job. While you may want to skip over the treatise on AI (artificial
intelligence), or the hyped up market speak this is almost always a
mistake. Read the document, the whole document, you'll be surprised
(hopefully pleasantly) to find information pertinent to the artistic
content hiding in some of the strangest places--read the document, get
the big picture.