Professional

Lead Artist:

    The Lead Artist is a principal person responsible for a team in an art section or project. In game art and design the development is controlled by the lead artist, but the whole art team will be made up by artists who will be chosen for their skills according to the requirements of the project. Artists work together on a main feature under the guidance of the lead artist to become a efficient and professional team.

    The Lead artist need to be able to work with others on a game project, include planning, painting, scenes design, characters design, props design, animation design, special effects and the whole production work. They will guide their team through the game and delegating tasks on future work. Lead artist need to recruit new members according to the requirements of the projects, and then quickly integrate them into the team. They need to know how to communicate ideas and manage the team, assign jobs to each member of team, knowing their strong and weak points.

    Behind each game there is a game development team. The team can be divided into many sections, the game designer, game artist and special effects artist etc. Primarily the game should be designed by lead artist, and other game artists need to do auxiliary work. The book of “Post Mortems “from Game Developer makes me know how important the team is, for example in the processing of Age of Empires and Halo.

    A lot of games copy the same style, but a good game will have a unique style. The style refers to the scene environment, role models, skills, items, etc. Players view the world of game through the game environment. They create lovely models for players, and skill items allow players to have more choice. Lead artist is the designer of these features. Unique game style design is one of the keys to becoming a lead master and makes the game popular.

 

UI Artist:

    UI is the short for User Interface. UI design is refers to the software of human-computer interaction, logic of operation and the overall design of the beautiful interface. A good UI artist gives the software it`s unique style and makes the operating comfortable, simple, free, and fully embodies the orientation and characteristics of the software.  

    One of the most important things of the UI artist is human-computer interaction. In general, the goals of the human-machine engineering are to create a simple operation and convenient interface. So in other words, the UI is not just a user interface, but include the interaction of user and interface. So as a UI artist, what we have to do is not just design a beautiful interface but make easy to operate. Web technology in accordance with the traditional classification divided into the two parts of web design and web development. UI artist belong to this design. Design is divided into front-end design and back-end design. The front-end design an idea sketch, the back-end builds it.

    A UI designer can't be limited to the front-end design, what we need to think is not only what is suitable but also how it will be done. A book named “The design of everyday things” has a good explanation for this.

 

Character Artist:

    The main work of character artist is making the models of human, animal and monsters etc. according to the idea sketch. Generally, all creatures are designed by them. Requirements of character artist are higher. If they have good art skills, projects will be easier to complete. A character artist needs to be familiar with the biological skeleton, the organization structure and so on.

 

Concept Artist:

    In brief the concept artist uses the design concept, the main theme throughout the entire design process. Concept design is a complete and comprehensive design process. It will complete all the process through the complex perceptual and instantaneous thinking of the artist. If the concept design is an article, then the design concept is the theme of this article.

    In the book of “Fundamental of game design”, the key of to be a good concept artist lies in the two aspects of the proposing and the application of the concept. Specifically, it includes the design of pre planning preparation, feasibility demonstration of technology, cultural significance, research of regional characteristics; research of customer and market, understanding of spatial form, design of concepts, expansion of design concept, concept expression, concept design review and many other steps. This shows that the concept of design is comprehensive.

Concept artist first need an idea. Then they need to express that idea in their work.

3D Artist:

Game production usually needs to master the technology of 3D animation, model, special effects production, etc. Engaged in game production, first of all 3D artists needs to have a certain passion for the game, and be familiar with the main scenes, characters, props and other features of the game. Secondly they need to have the relative art skills.

    Each company has different requirements for 3D artists. For example, Target Company requires that each artist is more comprehensive. Technology of both three-dimensional and two-dimensional, model, map, animation etc. need to be mastered. They need some expertise on at least one thing, other aspects can be relaxed. Team work in practice is important in their opinion. For e.g. If you want to join Ubisoft in China, in addition to skills, foreign peoples language cannot be poor and resumes need to be in Chinese. Most of the Japanese companies need employees to do this low-cost work. Such as KOEI, most of the artists are doing point pixel. It got a detail exposition in the book of “Creating art of the game”.

2D artist:

    2D artist responsibilities include setting up the art style for new projects with the lead artist. Co-leading an art team and making fine art compositions. A 2D artist needs to ensure that the project can be achieved on time on the premise of ensuring quality. For e.g. 2D artist will be involved in the project from the beginning to the end of the entire process, and is responsible for all aspects of the game art design (the original painting, characters, environments, user interface, animation etc.) and all the important influence of projects. They also need to have a solid art foundation, a good understanding of colour, and the ability to take something from concept to finished product. They are extremely talented in art.