week 7

Welcome back to another exciting week of blogging where today I will be poorly communicating the role of an art director to you. So what is an art director? I hear you cry. These are the people who are essentially in charge of making sure a game looks like the same game throughout. If you were playing Gears of war (a visually stunning game) and were sitting through a cut scene, on return to game play you found yourself in a land of purple trees and elves you would think you were narcoleptic and had the games swapped whilst you were unconscious.

The role is very similar to a Film director hence the director part. A game, much like a film has a story or script that needs to be portrayed in a manner suitable to its content and history. I’ll use the example of a Star trek MMO game. You could not as an art director make the setting (space) blue in colour and give the spacecraft fluffy dice. An art director must stay within the certain guidelines given to him or her. I feel a difference between an art director in game to one in film is that a director in game could afford to be lazier and let the game play pick up the pieces for a visually poor game.

I feel you must be able to put a twist on a classic as a director in film or game. This means that you must be incredibly creative to re-invent a product whilst maintaining its original foundations. I believe an art director must be able to put his/her finger in all artist pies (3D, sculpture, sketching) but most importantly able to communicate their ideas and visions clearly to those around them to create a product worthy of being called art.