Hi, my name is Scott, I'm 21 from Boulder Colorado and I've been an avid gamer for roughly 10 years now. I recently decided that I wanted to do game design as a coureer, specifically in the artistic side of game design, although I have some doubts about my artistic talent. I'm currently looking at a two and a half year bachelors degree in Game Art & Design from Westwood College. But I have a few questions for the more expierenced designers/professionals that frequent these forums. 1. I've heard over and over again from many people that you need to have strong free hand drawing skills to really be good at Game Art Design. Now I haven't ever really tried to draw anything free hand but I'm pretty sure that my free hand skills are seriously lacking. So my question is, in your expierences how well do you really need to be able to free hand to be a successfull Game Artist? 2. This question really continues on from the first, but I'll ask it anyway. From discussion with my father about Game Art Design, I think what I really want to do is design Game Worlds, Game Enviorments, and Character Modeling/Skinning, and perhaps even Animation with Texturing in there. Does being able to free hand well come into play with any of these aforementioned areas? If so, how strongly? And finally, would that skillset be too narrow, or too wide to make myself attractive to an employer? 3. Last night I went to my local Barnes & Noble bookstore to look at some Game Design books. I was rather suprised to see the ENTIRED Game Design section filled with NOTHING but Game Programming books. To say the least I was rather disappointed until I looked at the Graphics section right next to it. I ended up buying "Mastering Maya 7". It also comes with the PLE (Personal Learning Edition) of maya. My question is, is this type of program too advanced to start out with learning, or is it an ideal place to start? 4. Another thing that worries me that I touched on slightly in one of my other questions is Artistic Ability. Just how "Artistic" do you have to be, to be successfull in this area of Game Design? 5. I'm pretty sure it's unlikely but I was wondering if anyone here has any opinions on Westwood, has graduated from Westwood with the Game Arts & Design degree. If possible, could anyone list some good schools to attend for a degree like this? Thanks for taking the time to read through this, I know it's rather long, but I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Hi Sheresh,

I've worked in game design for a while and have worked with many different -types- of game/resource artists. I believe that answers your first question: there are MANY different types of artists. A couple examples are pixel artists (per. pixel drawing, gradients, etc.), modeling artists (3D models and such), free hand artists (one of the most useful, primarily for conceptual art), brush artists or shading artists, and vector artists. Forgive my naming convention but I think the context is obvious.

My favorite are free hand concept artists. Some of the best concept arts I've worked with can take few words and draw a conceptual sketch base on it. They usually don't model or perform the pixel art, they usually dress horribly and smell like noodles, but I don't think thats a requirement.

Pixel arts are great for texturing and the likes – the deal with gradients, texturing, bump mapping, etc. Lots of this can be done pro grammatically and I'd imagine a good pixel artist would have no qualms in learning how to use said programs to help reduce development time and expense.

3D modelers do what they sound like they do, except a lot of them (the ones I've worked with at least) usually aren't very good at free hand art, they use Max or some other 3D studio to create 3D models of the concept artist's sketches, usually visibly accurate (though many seem to neglect optimizing polygons and avoiding T intersections – naughty, naughty!).

A vector artist (and I'm sure I've made this term up) use programs like Illustrator or Flash to produce art thats extremely scalable to platform and attractive to sight. With so many great flash animations on the net, it's hard to not see why not!

Personally I think vector art is the easiest and quickest to get into. I've done a bit and can see how easy it really is to begin (but tough to master). Mastery tends to come from using your program/studio extensively and knowing how to do things easier and faster. I wish I had spent more time with this. Just about EVERYTHING you can learn to do with 2D vector art can apply then almost directly into 3D. With splines, nurbs and other primitives you can create nifty land masses ripe for the pixel artist.

All art is about the same to master – learn your tool to learn your craft! Art is not something you are just born with, a painter with a chisel is as useless as a sculptor with a paint brush. Typically you can learn one form of art by learning another – simple leads to complex. So don't let some imagined lack of artistic talent dissuade you, focus, practice, learn. You might such at first with one type of art, try a different kind – ever watch Southpark or Simpsons? Or play the GameCube Zelda? Art is not a constant.

I hope that helps at all!

One last thing, school is great and all in most cases but it fails to compare against dedication! Start doing something and stick with it and I guarantee you can improve! Let school or education show you how to DO, but DO, do, do, do, do, etc. And don't wait to be shown how to, get a good book! Use Amazon. I have several books on Macromedia, Max, sketching (yes, you can LEARN to sketch), etc. Amazon is a great source as it has reviews.

-Q

Complementing on "theQ's" statement. The reason a lot of people will tell you that you need good free hand art skills. Has to be related to traditional skills. Many people believe that maya,photoshop, max,ect.... are exstentions of traditional art skills. That you use them as tools. Now personally I think that if you work hard enough you can get good at whatever you wish too. But many companies like good traditional artist because usually they can be trained to do whatever they need at the time and are very adaptable.

Also if you want to get into game design and not artwork. There are many resorces online if you just look for it. But my personal advice is to start critically thinking about games you play. Go play games that suck and games that are good. Break the games down to there basic parts and figure out why one was successful and why another was not. Also start getting in the mind of what games "hypothetical player happens to be" is it a 12 year old girl a 16 year old boy who loves comic books. These things are very important and will impact how a game is created.