In simple words: Game Art is the visuals and the audio elements of a game. Everything that you see and hear in a video game is game art. Its aim is to give shape to the game design and make the experience readable and significant for a player.
Video game artists are responsible for elements such as characters, environments, effects, animations, interfaces, music, and sounds.
The three important components for Game Art are: communication, storytelling, and consistency.
Let’s break them down.
Game Art must inform the player about how much health you have, where to go, or who’s the enemy. It must make clear if we have hit a boss and if our spell has succeeded. In other words, game art has a functional purpose.
Game Art also conveys to players important information on the world of the game, facilitating the immersion. If the music suddenly becomes ominous, we know that we are approaching a tough fight. And pieces of the environment can tell us a lot about the setting – this is called environmental storytelling. So, Game Art has a narrative function too.
Lastly, Game Art should be consistent, so that the game has a cohesive art style; it must look and sound appealing and believable in the context of the game. It must have attractive values to stimulate the players.
Game artists use various techniques to achieve these elements. There are different art pipelines for 2D and 3D games which have developed through the years and are still evolving along with technology. In the industry, game artists usually work as a team, collaborating under the supervision of an art director who follows the project from its conception to its completion.
Concept art, modelling and sculpting, rendering, shading, texturing and so on, are specific stages of an art pipeline. But each game and company have different structures. And there are also video games made by one artist only! Pixel art, cell shading, hand drawn, and hyperrealism are examples of art styles that a game might adopt.
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