Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Business of Video Games: Part 4

During this time, the other departments also get busy. The Artists begin to do research. To the uneducated onlooker, it resembles looking at art books, comics, and other games a lot, and then surfing the net. However, artists will insist that it is actually work. Once they have gotten bored with their research, they then began to design Concepts.

A Concept is piece of art that incorporates all the descriptions the designers have written (it is, like, big, with spikes, and . . . uh . . . it is blue) along with a healthy amount of imagination on the part of the artists. Once all the Concepts are done, often with multiple Concepts per individual item, everyone else reviews them and gives feedback. The feedback varies from simple (that blows) to extravagant (that really blows).

Sometimes, someone will point out that the artist obviously does not Get what the game is about and that all of the Concepts will need to be redone. If you happen to be in the room when this happens, you should pick this moment to go to the bathroom, as there is a certain probability that the artist will attack this individual with a blunt pencil.

Eventually, once the Concepts have been decided on and any injuries have been seen to, the artists will begin to produce all the art required for the game, as well as whatever else Marketing asks for.

Tomorrow: Programmers and Producers

1 comment:

Leigh Kellogg said...

Ow. Truth hurting. Color blind producer telling me things are too "red". Urge to kill rising.