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I've been an artist in videogames for 14+ years. I'm between jobs and have a week off. Ask Me (mostly) Anything
- Thread starter XaviConcept
- Start date
Did you undergo higher education in game art specifically to lead into your job role? (assuming you weren't just self taught)
And in regards to the job role, do you cover a specific parts of games art design (like characters or environments) or does it involve tackling a bit of everything? (probably dependent on the job?)
And in regards to the job role, do you cover a specific parts of games art design (like characters or environments) or does it involve tackling a bit of everything? (probably dependent on the job?)
hey can you draw my portrait
i could pay you in uhhh exposure it would really benefit your business
i could pay you in uhhh exposure it would really benefit your business
If you wanted to work in film instead, how difficult would the transition be?
Or is that not something people do?
Or is that not something people do?
Does sending an IT Ticket for a zbrush software update not excite you? :(
Likewise, I have yet to see a viable alternative. I have seen some horendous JIRA DBs and implementations at some studios though, not all udpate and some have terrible set-ups. A lot of people don't make use of the customizable settings and plugins either, it can do a lot more than most people think.
Test Case management tools is where I haven't found a good one yet. TCM, TCP and TestRail have all had immense pains so far. Heard good things about TM4J though
In what kind of capacity do you as a visual artist work together with those who do sound design and compose the soundtrack? Do you give visual cues for them to work with? And can audio concepts actually influence a redesign of visuals in a game?
No question, just looked through the links to your art and wanted to say it's amazing. How did I not see that Chrono Trigger thread before now? I love it.
I recall you negative reactions to EA getting thrown under the bus by the community and internet at large during the various outrages/mobbings of the last few years. (SW BF 2, BFV, Anthem etc.)
But EA seems like a nice place to work. Has your opinion changed now that you may no longer be working at EA?
But EA seems like a nice place to work. Has your opinion changed now that you may no longer be working at EA?
There's a Figma plugin for Jira, and it's a fucking godsend for us ui designers.
Do you have any creative freedom when creating concept art?
I regularly feel like it ends up being more inspired than in game assets. Which do you prefer?
I regularly feel like it ends up being more inspired than in game assets. Which do you prefer?
Why was the PS3 and 360 generation full of games that had super bland, brown-and-grey art design? It really was everywhere. I recall reading from a dev that it had to do with how much harder it is to create a visually-coherent world when using a wider color palette. Any truth to that? Is there more?
Thanks
Thanks
Yeah it's good. The best tool I've used at least. The plugin/integrations fill out the rest. Certainly "good enough" for most things.
Def not starving...lol. It varies from studio to studio. When I worked for leading mobile developer and Zipper I was in low six figures salary, then bonuses on top of that.
1st Batch
OP
OP
First batch
Definitely, 100% Steambirds Alliance for Spryfox. Theyre awesome and its a game that I think ios very, very good (MMO, Bullet Hell, Roguelike, F2P) I was brought in for a 6 month contract and tasked to revamp the entire look of the game to make it more marketable in order for them to find a publisher. I was the AD but only had an art intern to work with and a partime VFX artist. Coming up with an artstyle we could deliver on with a super small timeframe while working from home and managing other freelance work at the time was super, super stressful. We managed to come up with a really cool solution (seen below) which made it very scalable because we had a textureless art style, making Unity do most of the work with lighting, vertex shading, realtime Ambient Occulusion and liberal use of colored fog but I definitely put my share of blood, sweat and tears on this one. Below is an example of how the game looked when I joined and how it looked when I handed it off before my departure.
Depends on your team size (indie, mobile or AAA) and responsibility. If youre on smaller teams youre asked to be more of a semi specialist that can also be a jack of all trades vs working in AAA you can be one of 6 character artists that specializes in modeling faces, maybe ... but if youre in an indie project you probably have to do 40% of the art needs a game has, depending on your role.
Each company is also very different culturally. When I was at Kiwi or SGN, sometimes I worked on several games at once and most of them are in different development stages so it could literally be that game A needs a visual target in order to get greenlit so thats gonna take 2 days at least but game B needs a new asset update so I gotta make some new ground tiles to go with the 4th of July theme whereas game C has some assets dropped from outsourcing so I need to make some time before lunch to check them out and provide feedback because theyre in BUENOS AIRES and theyre in a different schedule.
For EA it was different, there I was the Lead Artist and was basically in charge of the entire art team so I could go and tell our VFX guy "hey, I want to show this to Lucas today so please have the VFX for "x" ready by noon, then start working on "y" right after. Meanwhile our environment artist would be waiting on an asset drop from our outsourcer before getting started on the next env but in the meantime he was fine tuning the env thats closest to release or doing some minor tasks while waiting so he would have time to attend strategy meetings about the next content drop.
So as you can see its hard to nail the "average" I have found that mostly a production artist has a few standup meetings in the mornings every week, a couple of art reviews and the rest is heavily based on production time. It's not quite a 9-5 job because overtime is a thing but 9:30 to 6:30 is something Ive seen a lot
Crunch for artists fucking sucks! We dont always have to do it but some artists in some companies, especially the ones you would recognize, are in a constant state of crunch and I feel for them. Its not so much being able to make things that takes forever, its being able to TEST THEM, IN GAME that adds significant time and effort. Lets say youre an env artist, you have to be able to bake a lightmap in order to check your work, that can take HOURS depending on your setup, rendering your computer UNUSABLE for the duration ... so maybe you actually have TWO computers so you can work on other stuff while that lightmap bakes. Once you do that, you still need to test your work in-game, Ive been in places where it would take 40 minutes to an hour plus in order to compile all the shit in order to check things in a build. The problem with AAA dev and even in mobile, is that TOOLS often are not nearly at the same tech level that the expected asset quality, meaning youre asking PS2 level tools to handle PS4 level models and textures, meaning everything takes 5x longer to load and test.
Thats a big reason why more devs stopped using custom engines and started using 3rd party solutions that already had better tech built in.
Anyways, so yeah, its difficult because often the tools are not as good as they need to be in order to get the "easy" shit done quickly. It can also be very difficult because of the amount of quality other departments expect at all times, meaning a Producer wont be able to understand a concept if its not final art, leading to a TON of wasted work because suits cannot understand WIP's unless theyre colored or whatnot. Especially with art you see a lot of wasted work because art is seen as pretty disposable and misunderstood. Lots of "cant you just maker it like this?" comments, the artist knows that it would be a shit ton of work but will often just comply. Ive been in a ton of companies where the art dept doesnt have a seat at the big boys table and thus are often unable to argue for or against the amount of work given to the art team ... instead you see a lot of non-artists make assumptions about the art team can and cant do. It's a process I personally work very hard at to fix in every company I join.
This is an imperfect answer btw, theres tons more to unpack and it varies wildly from company to company. I personally barely ever crunch and have been in companies that never do, some that do all the time and some where only some people do because theyre the last group that needs to do something before release (Audio and VFX, for instance)
I assume you mean Repetitive Stress Injuries? Companies like EA are very supportive of employee health and often encourage people to get off their desks and be active. I personally make sure to organize lunchtime soccer or basketball outings 2/3 times a week so people can get off their desks and do something. Nowadays mosts desks are mechanical so you can turn it into a standing desk at anytime. Im sure other companies dont go to such lengths, however. It was a lot more difficult to have good health habits when I freelanced though, once youre on your own doing your own thing you "want" to work harder and often stay in the same pose for HOURS. Being in a studio, going to meetings, working with other teams, etc, often helps alleviate RSI because youre not locked in the same position for hours on end.
Star Wars! Being able to contribute significantly to that IP like revamping KOTOR concepts, getting storyboards approved by Lucas or the many other cool shit we get to do has been the chance of a lifetime.
Outside of that, Skullgirls. Ive always been hoping to work on a fighting game and they gave me that opportunity, as part of the animation team, no less! Small role, huge thrill.
Absolutely, often the Photoshop files we work in oscillate 800 MB or even some GB every now and then. Its a huge bonus to be in a studio that can splurge on top tier hardware like a big Cintiq as well.
However, for some big companies, theres also a lot of limitations like the heavy antivirus you need to have at all times so your super awesome computer will have a lot of IT mandated stuff on it, making it slower than it needs to be
Dude, during this quarantine? AWESOME
Definitely, 100% Steambirds Alliance for Spryfox. Theyre awesome and its a game that I think ios very, very good (MMO, Bullet Hell, Roguelike, F2P) I was brought in for a 6 month contract and tasked to revamp the entire look of the game to make it more marketable in order for them to find a publisher. I was the AD but only had an art intern to work with and a partime VFX artist. Coming up with an artstyle we could deliver on with a super small timeframe while working from home and managing other freelance work at the time was super, super stressful. We managed to come up with a really cool solution (seen below) which made it very scalable because we had a textureless art style, making Unity do most of the work with lighting, vertex shading, realtime Ambient Occulusion and liberal use of colored fog but I definitely put my share of blood, sweat and tears on this one. Below is an example of how the game looked when I joined and how it looked when I handed it off before my departure.
Depends on your team size (indie, mobile or AAA) and responsibility. If youre on smaller teams youre asked to be more of a semi specialist that can also be a jack of all trades vs working in AAA you can be one of 6 character artists that specializes in modeling faces, maybe ... but if youre in an indie project you probably have to do 40% of the art needs a game has, depending on your role.
Each company is also very different culturally. When I was at Kiwi or SGN, sometimes I worked on several games at once and most of them are in different development stages so it could literally be that game A needs a visual target in order to get greenlit so thats gonna take 2 days at least but game B needs a new asset update so I gotta make some new ground tiles to go with the 4th of July theme whereas game C has some assets dropped from outsourcing so I need to make some time before lunch to check them out and provide feedback because theyre in BUENOS AIRES and theyre in a different schedule.
For EA it was different, there I was the Lead Artist and was basically in charge of the entire art team so I could go and tell our VFX guy "hey, I want to show this to Lucas today so please have the VFX for "x" ready by noon, then start working on "y" right after. Meanwhile our environment artist would be waiting on an asset drop from our outsourcer before getting started on the next env but in the meantime he was fine tuning the env thats closest to release or doing some minor tasks while waiting so he would have time to attend strategy meetings about the next content drop.
So as you can see its hard to nail the "average" I have found that mostly a production artist has a few standup meetings in the mornings every week, a couple of art reviews and the rest is heavily based on production time. It's not quite a 9-5 job because overtime is a thing but 9:30 to 6:30 is something Ive seen a lot
Crunch for artists fucking sucks! We dont always have to do it but some artists in some companies, especially the ones you would recognize, are in a constant state of crunch and I feel for them. Its not so much being able to make things that takes forever, its being able to TEST THEM, IN GAME that adds significant time and effort. Lets say youre an env artist, you have to be able to bake a lightmap in order to check your work, that can take HOURS depending on your setup, rendering your computer UNUSABLE for the duration ... so maybe you actually have TWO computers so you can work on other stuff while that lightmap bakes. Once you do that, you still need to test your work in-game, Ive been in places where it would take 40 minutes to an hour plus in order to compile all the shit in order to check things in a build. The problem with AAA dev and even in mobile, is that TOOLS often are not nearly at the same tech level that the expected asset quality, meaning youre asking PS2 level tools to handle PS4 level models and textures, meaning everything takes 5x longer to load and test.
Thats a big reason why more devs stopped using custom engines and started using 3rd party solutions that already had better tech built in.
Anyways, so yeah, its difficult because often the tools are not as good as they need to be in order to get the "easy" shit done quickly. It can also be very difficult because of the amount of quality other departments expect at all times, meaning a Producer wont be able to understand a concept if its not final art, leading to a TON of wasted work because suits cannot understand WIP's unless theyre colored or whatnot. Especially with art you see a lot of wasted work because art is seen as pretty disposable and misunderstood. Lots of "cant you just maker it like this?" comments, the artist knows that it would be a shit ton of work but will often just comply. Ive been in a ton of companies where the art dept doesnt have a seat at the big boys table and thus are often unable to argue for or against the amount of work given to the art team ... instead you see a lot of non-artists make assumptions about the art team can and cant do. It's a process I personally work very hard at to fix in every company I join.
This is an imperfect answer btw, theres tons more to unpack and it varies wildly from company to company. I personally barely ever crunch and have been in companies that never do, some that do all the time and some where only some people do because theyre the last group that needs to do something before release (Audio and VFX, for instance)
I assume you mean Repetitive Stress Injuries? Companies like EA are very supportive of employee health and often encourage people to get off their desks and be active. I personally make sure to organize lunchtime soccer or basketball outings 2/3 times a week so people can get off their desks and do something. Nowadays mosts desks are mechanical so you can turn it into a standing desk at anytime. Im sure other companies dont go to such lengths, however. It was a lot more difficult to have good health habits when I freelanced though, once youre on your own doing your own thing you "want" to work harder and often stay in the same pose for HOURS. Being in a studio, going to meetings, working with other teams, etc, often helps alleviate RSI because youre not locked in the same position for hours on end.
Star Wars! Being able to contribute significantly to that IP like revamping KOTOR concepts, getting storyboards approved by Lucas or the many other cool shit we get to do has been the chance of a lifetime.
Outside of that, Skullgirls. Ive always been hoping to work on a fighting game and they gave me that opportunity, as part of the animation team, no less! Small role, huge thrill.
Absolutely, often the Photoshop files we work in oscillate 800 MB or even some GB every now and then. Its a huge bonus to be in a studio that can splurge on top tier hardware like a big Cintiq as well.
However, for some big companies, theres also a lot of limitations like the heavy antivirus you need to have at all times so your super awesome computer will have a lot of IT mandated stuff on it, making it slower than it needs to be
Dude, during this quarantine? AWESOME
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I'm aware you could probably write a book about this question alone but could you describe the process from concept art to final ingame art/graphics a little?
Sometimes I'm a little bit baffled by what starts out as amazing looking concept art turns out as pretty meh looking real time design and I'm thinking wow, that did not capture what looked like the artist's vision at all.
Sometimes I'm a little bit baffled by what starts out as amazing looking concept art turns out as pretty meh looking real time design and I'm thinking wow, that did not capture what looked like the artist's vision at all.
I am a game programmer with professional experience and a beginner artist looking to eventually fuse the two interests by getting into graphics programming research.
Got any recommended resources on, figure drawing, portrait drawing, or anything else related to character animation? Both 2D and 3D. Also anything related to NPR would be good.
Also what are the top mistakes beginner game artists make?
Got any recommended resources on, figure drawing, portrait drawing, or anything else related to character animation? Both 2D and 3D. Also anything related to NPR would be good.
Also what are the top mistakes beginner game artists make?
lol, you're dreaming if you think he'll come anywhere near answering that. That whole NDA thing....ya, this question not happening.
Depends on where you go to do QA. You can get in either through joining QA teams at large publishers or at companies that specialize in providing QA to developers such as Keywords Studios. These places take on huge amounts of staff but be aware that they will treat you like a number and you will most definitely be on a zero hours contract or self-employed. If you get enough experience at these places (1-2 years) then you can apply for permanent positions at development studios. It's a lot of work and difficult to make it through without some war stories but honestly if you make the best of it you can have a lot of fun with the people in the same situation. Good luck!
Not to hijack the thread too much but the simple path for most disciplines is to figure out what you want to do, become competent at that thing, and then present proof of your competence in that thing to people/studios who are hiring in that field. A degree isn't essential, I have a masters degree in animation and I work side by side with people who didn't finish high school, the quality of your work is all that matters.
Unless you want to be 'the ideas guy' because stop right there, that's not a real job.
Rigging is certainly one of the less exciting tasks in the pipeline, sculpting and texturing are pretty soothing though - in my opinion.
How many Teraflops does you new job have? Is it variable or fixed? You think an SSD will help with the morning commute?
Just kidding of course. I hope you are happy with your new job and get to create amazing stuff.
Just kidding of course. I hope you are happy with your new job and get to create amazing stuff.
Don't really have any questions, but thanks to you and all the other artists and coders and writers and so on who keep this crazy hobby of ours alive.
2nd Batch
OP
OP
2nd Batch
We are definitely paid less. If you want to make money as an artist, be in graphic design! At Gameloft in NY we had an amnazing UI artist who came from a design house and he said in order to join games he knew he had to give up 20k a year. It can be frustrating knowing how much to contribute to a game only to find out the producers who set your schedule make way more money than you do
Otherwise, its not like we are treated badly ... at least not in my experiences and in the roles Ive had as a leader its always been my custom to elevate the presence of the art team, very often they can feel more like freelancers than actual developers. Its key to get them more involved in the games process, you often hear jokes from game designers or other people that clearly disrespect our knowledge of games since "oh theyre just artistes" when like, motherfucker, I play more games than you and have been in the industry for decades, I know how to make a game LOL
That being said, designers and engineers and such are often wonderful to work with and can be pretty amazed when they see our output. It goes both ways.
I see a LOT of projects go sideways due to lack of confidence in the project and starting over way too many times. What you think is a year of development is often 3 months worth because they started over 3 times. Im a big believer in execution and think too many projects die get rebooted too soon when they just should have committed to what they had instead of jumping to conclusions too early and continuously trying to be perfect since the beginning. That CAN backfire though, just look at Anthem! They definitely went full out way too early.
I see a lot of copying and pasting too. "Well pick this from game x, this from game y and this from game z" That shit barely EVER works because youre teaching your game designers to copy, so they dont create anymore and if they dont practice their craft, they wont be able to tackle any kind of creative solving later on.
This gen Bloodborne definitely comes to mind, what a perfect blend of art and design! Monster Hunter World is also up there, basically perfect ... oh man, BOTW too.
All time it would be hard to argue against 3rd Strike. Perfection in execution by a team at the peak of their powers.
Nope, I love it. Im a game maker through and through. While I do have aspirations of getting a comic book/manga/graphic novel done its games that has allowed me to grown and flourish
BE a gamemaker, get in Unity, make things, try new things. A lot of people TALK a lot in thius business and dont realize just how mind numbingly hard it is. Make a small game, not your dream game, and realize how much you had no idea about. Its a great business to be in, but most people just dont understasnd it because what you see in media and forums really aint how 90% of it is, chief
Money! You need money. In order to make a studio that has a chance you need, imo:
- a small, doable idea
- a great engineerr
- a great artist that can work in code and can animate
- for one of the two to be a game designer, otherwise get a game designer that can work in code
Making games is very hard, much harder than you think so find people you want to work with, be nice, be humble and start very, very small.
Just how fucking impossible it is to get anything to work and not break the entire game. Even fucking FLOOR TILES are annoying as fuck to implement. Seriously, every game out there is held together by pins and needles and was probably crashing every ten seconds a week before release. Most "why didnt they do this?" question in most game discussion threads are things we probably already tried and couldn't do for a variety of reasons, most of them being "well if we did that wed have to redo everything else, which would then break everything, which would then ..." etc etc
Yall dont even realize just HOW MANY game breaking bugs are in EVERY GAME YOU PLAY. People bitching about bugs and QA really make me sad because you have no idea just how many bugs were found AND fixed before a release. The amount of crunch and hard work those guys and gals go through is unbelievable and yet they receive most of the blame. Remember, QA's job is to find bugs, not to fix them ... and if they dont get fixed is because theres even higher priority things to fix by the actual dev team
irl when people find out Im a game dev they become friendly and will then sometimes blurt out dumb shit like "Uncharted 3 sucked" only for me to verbally slap them. No, those people are fucking wizards and anything they do (outside of crunch) doest not, in fact, suck. Its such an insult to everyone who works in gamedev who doesnt work for Naughty Dog to be told that cause fuck, man, if THEY suck, then you must really not respect me cause Im nowhere near good enough to EVER work for ND. You know what sucks? Most games that get cancelled and never release, or most of the shovelware that comes out on the iOS store every day. Lack of perspective really gets to me
We are definitely paid less. If you want to make money as an artist, be in graphic design! At Gameloft in NY we had an amnazing UI artist who came from a design house and he said in order to join games he knew he had to give up 20k a year. It can be frustrating knowing how much to contribute to a game only to find out the producers who set your schedule make way more money than you do
Otherwise, its not like we are treated badly ... at least not in my experiences and in the roles Ive had as a leader its always been my custom to elevate the presence of the art team, very often they can feel more like freelancers than actual developers. Its key to get them more involved in the games process, you often hear jokes from game designers or other people that clearly disrespect our knowledge of games since "oh theyre just artistes" when like, motherfucker, I play more games than you and have been in the industry for decades, I know how to make a game LOL
That being said, designers and engineers and such are often wonderful to work with and can be pretty amazed when they see our output. It goes both ways.
I see a LOT of projects go sideways due to lack of confidence in the project and starting over way too many times. What you think is a year of development is often 3 months worth because they started over 3 times. Im a big believer in execution and think too many projects die get rebooted too soon when they just should have committed to what they had instead of jumping to conclusions too early and continuously trying to be perfect since the beginning. That CAN backfire though, just look at Anthem! They definitely went full out way too early.
I see a lot of copying and pasting too. "Well pick this from game x, this from game y and this from game z" That shit barely EVER works because youre teaching your game designers to copy, so they dont create anymore and if they dont practice their craft, they wont be able to tackle any kind of creative solving later on.
This gen Bloodborne definitely comes to mind, what a perfect blend of art and design! Monster Hunter World is also up there, basically perfect ... oh man, BOTW too.
All time it would be hard to argue against 3rd Strike. Perfection in execution by a team at the peak of their powers.
Nope, I love it. Im a game maker through and through. While I do have aspirations of getting a comic book/manga/graphic novel done its games that has allowed me to grown and flourish
BE a gamemaker, get in Unity, make things, try new things. A lot of people TALK a lot in thius business and dont realize just how mind numbingly hard it is. Make a small game, not your dream game, and realize how much you had no idea about. Its a great business to be in, but most people just dont understasnd it because what you see in media and forums really aint how 90% of it is, chief
Money! You need money. In order to make a studio that has a chance you need, imo:
- a small, doable idea
- a great engineerr
- a great artist that can work in code and can animate
- for one of the two to be a game designer, otherwise get a game designer that can work in code
Making games is very hard, much harder than you think so find people you want to work with, be nice, be humble and start very, very small.
Just how fucking impossible it is to get anything to work and not break the entire game. Even fucking FLOOR TILES are annoying as fuck to implement. Seriously, every game out there is held together by pins and needles and was probably crashing every ten seconds a week before release. Most "why didnt they do this?" question in most game discussion threads are things we probably already tried and couldn't do for a variety of reasons, most of them being "well if we did that wed have to redo everything else, which would then break everything, which would then ..." etc etc
Yall dont even realize just HOW MANY game breaking bugs are in EVERY GAME YOU PLAY. People bitching about bugs and QA really make me sad because you have no idea just how many bugs were found AND fixed before a release. The amount of crunch and hard work those guys and gals go through is unbelievable and yet they receive most of the blame. Remember, QA's job is to find bugs, not to fix them ... and if they dont get fixed is because theres even higher priority things to fix by the actual dev team
irl when people find out Im a game dev they become friendly and will then sometimes blurt out dumb shit like "Uncharted 3 sucked" only for me to verbally slap them. No, those people are fucking wizards and anything they do (outside of crunch) doest not, in fact, suck. Its such an insult to everyone who works in gamedev who doesnt work for Naughty Dog to be told that cause fuck, man, if THEY suck, then you must really not respect me cause Im nowhere near good enough to EVER work for ND. You know what sucks? Most games that get cancelled and never release, or most of the shovelware that comes out on the iOS store every day. Lack of perspective really gets to me
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