I know it''s important to have a good fine arts background if one wants to get into developing graphics for video games, but what else? I know very little about the techniques used in producing video game graphics. Does an artist need to go beyond a mastery in photoshop and a 3d program? Do they need to actually code anything? I''m asking because I hate math :D. I don''t mind programming, but as is my understanding, the more demanding you are with code, the more demanding the mathematics become. I''m just afraid that the visual side to video games might also need good math skills, dealing with high-end software and all. Thanks!!

well would you hire an artist that doesn''t know programming/math, or an artist with the same artistic skills that DOES know programming/math?

a2k

but, to answer your question in a more concrete way, no, i would imagine that you don''t really need to do any programming as a digital artist. unless you''re thinking of doing web programming (i.e. flash GUIs), but even then, the programming is pretty simple. it would be interesting to be able to code your own scripts in 3d packages, so as to simulate a more realistic behavior. (i''d rather type in a sine function instead of click to every keyframe and move a fish''s tail back and forth for thousands of frames (well, actually you can just copy keys, right? but still, you get the idea)). wouldn''t you ever want to assign gravity to objects? or how about a damped spring? i know the modern packages already have incorporated physics like these, but i''m just trying to simplify the scenarios.

so alls i can think of is:

-3ds max plugins/scripts
-flash event assignment
-special behaviors in certain animation programs

a2k