When people think art the first thing that immediately comes to mind are the brush strokes of Van Gogh, Picasso, and others that are similar in the sense of the word. However, never the names such as Yoshitaka Amano, Akira Toriyama, or Joe Madureira come into mind. These are the artists’ work in video game industry, specifically in the character art sections of the video game development.
Having the mindset when it comes to art, video games do not fall into that category because games such as Halo, Gears of War, and Modern Warfare 2 immediately come to mind. Honestly, anyone can look at those and say that is not anywhere near a type of art because they are mindless shooter games. From the perspective of someone that has met with developers, level designers, audio engineers, and artists within the game development industry I can tell you it is broader than what most people think.
Character Art
One of the basic ideas of art is the conception of character art. Looking at video games such as Dragon Quest Series, Final Fantasy Series, and Lost Odyssey there are a lot of emphasis on having characters that stand out from everything else in each game. This is because these games are known as Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPGs) which are popular in both Japan and the US. These characters go from being conceptualize in sketch books, mock ups, criticize for editing, re-drawn, and to finally being put through another process of character modeling.
Character modeling is another process where a 3D modeler uses a 3D modeling program (3D Studio Max, or Maya) to take a sketched character from a sheet of paper to add more depth to them. This process gives a character more life, and receives the features of animation. An in game character needs to be able to have several animation (running, walking, and attack), but 3D animators need to make sure that character emote expressions during cut scenes of a game’s main storyline.
Level Design
I happen to be close to this topic because I have had a passion for level designing for two years now. In video games level designing is where environments are built using assets created by 3D Modelers/Artists and Audio Engineers. Level Designing gives a game more depth because levels within a game build a world unique to a video game’s theme.
For example the video game Resident Evil which was released back in 1996 was one the scariest games I have ever played because how the atmosphere was set up. As you are moving the character through this mansion out in the woods you can see the grandfather clock, hear it ticking, the rain hitting the windows, the silence of a deserted dining room and upon entering another room a zombie ambushes the character. The way the level designers set it up was to give the player a feeling of alone, dark, and marauding on the fear center of the brain.
Another example this sense of immersion can be seen in the game Beyond Good and Evil has a traveling mechanic of using a hover boat vehicle to get to different locations of the game. Traveling on the water of the game’s world would allow a player to catch the sight of creatures, cities, villages, and huts are seen inhabiting the game’s world. I can recall a time I was traveling to a mission location and saw the game world’s sun setting behind mountains as these whale-like creatures emerged from the water to dive back in. It was absolutely a breath taking sight and I was able to capture it on with a screenshot mechanic featured in the game.
Unique Art Styles
In the recent games Super Street Fighter IV and 3D Dot Game Heroes used very unique art styles to make their games stand out from the rest of the competition. In Super Street Fighter IV Capcom had their 3D artists use a technique called cel-shading (a 3D model mimicking a more hand drawn style). All the characters, level environments, etcetera were model using this technique. Super Street Fighter IV’s art style is heavily influenced by the Japanese art style known as sumi-e. The characters were given heavy brush stroke outlines on the outlines of their bodies.
Another game had a unique art style was 3D Dot Game Heroes for its use of a retro style graphics in a 3D world. All assets that were feature in the game’s world were built using this block looking system that made everything look like a pixelated 3D model. The game featured this unique style as a way to homage old games that were on Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System also known as the 8-bit era of video games.
Where VGs Stand Now
This is just from the perspective from someone who works in the industry and who has been playing video games for four-fifths of his life. Video Games for years now have featured some beautiful styles of art a character walking across a screen to environments of a game’s world. Video games are the living canvas that people can explore with just a controller, a console, a television, and of course a game to play. However, there is more to just 3D models, and hand drawn character concepts that makes video games an art. Just talking about the art is only scratching the surface that goes into game development.
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