Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion

finalbattel
Artist

Posts: 12

Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion Nov 4, 2018 1:58:54 GMT jysaw, cloudnixus, and 1 more like this

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Post by finalbattel on Nov 4, 2018 1:58:54 GMT

Hello, finalbattel here. :-)

As far as game development and Art Team/Art Assets go, I have had experience with both as a concept artist as a Character Illustrator & Environment Illustrator, sprite art & animation as an, and have been Art Director/Art Lead as well as for two different videogame projects.

Since there has been a lot of talk in the Discord about which direction to go in as far as the concept art and actual in-game graphics are concerned, I will provide my input/previous experiences with certain team structures and the handling of art assets, along with my personal opinion at the end. Hopefully this can help in figuring out the best course of action as far as art creation is concerned.

The TL;DR question, as blunt as it may be, is this: Quality or Quantity?
In reality it is one or the other. It's not often that you happily end up with both, even when working with "industry professional teams," unless there's an absolute boatload of time on hand. (Though it would be totally great if they went hand in hand more often!)

Here are the two main types of teams I have worked with in regards to art and asset creation when there were multiple concept artists.

The "Everyone Contributes A Thing" Team.
It is as the bolded says- everyone contributed a thing that ended up as being the "final proof." I want to note that the only times I personally have experienced this is when making a small game outside of the "industry," and there were about fifteen artists for a game that definitely did not require that many artists. But I digress.
There are positives and negatives to this.

Positives:

Everyone contributes in a more or less equal manner.
Everyone's art is exactly as they drew it when the consumer/player sees it.
You run into less "Hurt Feelings." (Though not always... which will be covered next.)

Negatives:

The quality of the art varies wildly which has a negative effect on the end product looking "professional" or not.
Things can end up taking way longer moving along because you are relying on a whole lot of people to get what is genuinely very critical work, done.
Toes get stepped on. Fairly often. Someone does something that someone else wanted to do, or thought they were going to do, and then accommodations need to be made to placate people, or people get in cat fights.

The "Pyramid" Team.
Calling it a "Pyramid" because no other word comes to mind and this paints enough of a picture.
Essentially, if you are working with multiple artists (especially of varying skill levels/experience levels) and you want them all to be able to contribute in one manner or another, you can have multiple artists contribute designs and concepts, but then have the Art Lead create the finalized concept art utilizing elements from the other artists.
There are positives and negatives to this. Though in all honesty- this is the most straightforward way to go about art creation with a blended team, at least in my experience.

Negatives:

This does add work onto one person's plate.
Sizeable changes could potentially be made to designs from initial concept (artist 1) -> final concept (artist 2) which may upset artist 1. (Though generally there would be communication about this beforehand to try to mitigate/avoid hurt feelings.)
Delays caused by only one person doing final art- so it should be someone that has time for this and is comfortable with such a task.

Positives:

One person is making the finalized artwork for consumer "consumption"/viewing- creating a more cohesive and professional image for the potential player.
In the case of those who have less experience with art, it gives them the opportunity to see one of their ideas still being used/"brought to life."
Since someone else (or multiple people) are doing the initial ideas for designs, it makes it easier for the lead artist to make the finalized art since half of the process has already been completed. So though it does come down to one person on the final art, at least a sizeable portion of the process would not necessarily be on them.

There are of course things that could be added to both of those team types and to each of those lists. But I kept it to three points per just to keep it concise.

From my own personal experience as a game/concept artist: I highly preferred "The Pyramid Team" layout over the "Everyone Contributes A Thing Team" layout.
Reasons why include things outlined in the bulleted lists. Those are all things I have experienced/have seen happen during my time working on different games that had more than one "concept artist." That way those involved have a voice but said voices are condensed down into one solid, cohesive looking product/portfolio in the end.

The other thing is how long would people be able to join up as a potential "artist" or otherwise. Were there any thoughts on this already?

Also, depending on the scope of a project or the experience/skillset of an artist, there might be one final concept artist for one thing (say monster and/or character design) and one concept artist for another (environment design or otherwise). I have also experienced this as well (in my own personal case with that, I ended up being "Character Designer" where I did characters and some summons, and a colleague was the "Monster Designer" where she did monsters and some summons).
^ Though with this, it also depends on the absolute scope of the project as well as what all an artist can do/will do/has time to do.
For example: A game like Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones required a lot less than, say, Final Fantasy XV, because of the platform and scope of the games.
Golden Sun had a handful of artists, but still two main final designers in regards to creature concepts, from what I can see. One for Character design and the other for Monster design. There was an overarching "Graphics Director" as well (that being Fumihide Aoki).

With all this said, hopefully this springboards some idea for discussion on how concept art should be handled. :-)
Actual in-game assets/sprite work is another beast but is generally the same idea, though perhaps that is better suited to have its own topic.

Definitely share your thoughts guys. Or any questions you've maybe got, I'm here to answer anything that comes to mind to the best of my ability.

Last Edit: Nov 4, 2018 2:11:07 GMT by finalbattel

WitchRolina
Administrator

Fulminous Witch

Posts: 232

Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion Nov 4, 2018 2:17:22 GMT finalbattel, cloudnixus, and 1 more like this

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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 4, 2018 2:17:22 GMT

So... when it comes to Quantity vs Quality, I have a very strong stance on which one is better.

Sakurai is wrong. Quantity is never the answer. Quantity is how you get Smash Ganondorf, who plays nothing like Ganondorf from any of the games. He's slow captain falcon. He makes no sense in the context of the franchise he's from. And this is because Sakurai believes in Quantity over Quality. He could have not included clones and refined and fixed what was there, polishing things up and ironing out the bugs. Instead, Melee is broken, and we have clones that never got uncloned to this day, and an annoying fanbase that throws a temper tantrum any time you suggest fixing the problem.

Quantity is never the right answer - or at least, not quantity for its own sake. I highly suggest that we err on the side of quality. This will be an issue of scale, of course - it's not a binary answer of one or the other, but which to focus on more - and my suggestion is that it be quality.

Because at the end of the day, our feelings don't matter as much as our customers. We might be upset that our designs didn't make it in, but the customer might appreciate not having a clusterf*** design style.

What I'd recommend is having a set of pyramids. All work shouldn't be done by one person, but I do like that structure. Get those people together and have them work on getting their art styles similar enough to a final style. Then use the pros of the pyramidal structure to your advantage. And since you have multiples if the workload of one becomes too great, others can pick up the slack a bit. As we get more artists, find where each is best - concept, refinement, or final design - and put them to work appropriately.

But remember - when it comes down to whether you have more weak stuff or less strong stuff, less strong stuff is always better.

Deleted
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Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion Nov 4, 2018 2:57:34 GMT

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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2018 2:57:34 GMT

Pyramid sounds good. I agree with Rolina, quality is best; not just for the end product, but for the creators as well. I am an amateur at this kind of thing, and I'd imagine almost everyone else is too. Pushing for high quality will help us all improve our skills and potentially develop new ones.

cloudnixus
New Member

Posts: 1

Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion Nov 4, 2018 3:04:27 GMT

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Post by cloudnixus on Nov 4, 2018 3:04:27 GMT

Hello! Cloudnixus here!

As for my experience, I've been selling my art for the last couple of years at conventions. I may of never been on a art team before, but I'm a supervisor at a Starbucks. Which sounds silly when comparing it to game design, but I think it relates. My job is to manage employees and determined how to "play" the store. All well being in a super stressful environment because it's non stop busy. (yaaay)

I completely agree with most of what you discussed and brought to concern. I think the "Quality or Quantity?" needs to be addressed before like anything gets started.

TL;DR I'm all for Quality and The "Pyramid" Team.. I would not want to put out work that I feel like it could of been the best it could of been. I want to make sure it's going to be something people enjoy. Putting out the better quality is going to make more people happy in the end. The people that don't make the cut probably won't be happy at first, but they'll get over it. I understand this probably sounds selfish, but if this is something I'm going to spend hours on, then I want to give it my all. I'm sure others feel the same.

This all depends on how many artist we get. A lot of the positions can be merged if needed.

I think it could run like this...

Head Artist(Or Project Leader) ---> Lead Concept Artist

- ---> Background Concept Artist

- ---> Environment Concept Artist

- ---> Character Concept Artist

- ---> Enemy Concept Artist

-> Lead Final/Illustration Artist

- ---> Background Final/Illustration Artist

- ---> Pixel Artist

- ---> Character/Enemy Final/Illustration Artist

-> Lead Layout Artist

---> Now this is where my knowledge lacks. *Read more down.

Head Artist/Project Leader: Basically has the final say on everything. Communicates with Lead Artists on updates and concerns. Bring forth what other teams have brought to the plate! If there's a negative debate between leaders, we take it to Project Leader ASAP.

Lead Concept Artist: Takes full control and final say over other concept artists, can ask concept artists to design things. Splits work between artists. Can modify designs.

Background Concept Artist: Designs backgrounds for battles.
Environment Concept Artist: Designs environments in game. Includes towns, caves, outdoors.
Character Concept Artist: Designs characters.
Enemy Concept Artist: Designs enemies.

Lead Final/Illustration Artist: Takes full control and final say on final art for the game. Splits work between artists. Can modify artwork.

Background Final/Illustration Artist: Makes artwork for backgrounds for battles.
Pixel Artist: Makes final pixel art.
Character/Enemy Final/Illustration Artist: Makes final character/enemy artwork.

Lead Layout Artist: Focuses on text boxes, text, special effects, title screen, etc. This is the one I'm unsure of and where my experience as an artist lacks.

And that's my two cents. It's very important to make sure the game is... constant pace of quality. We don't want some top noch art next to some semi-quality art, it will be off putting. If anyone has any changes they want to change to this, feel free.

Thank you,

Cloudnixus

finalbattel
Artist

Posts: 12

Art Development & Art Team Structure Discussion Nov 4, 2018 3:55:04 GMT

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Post by finalbattel on Nov 4, 2018 3:55:04 GMT

Thank you for your posts and starting up the discussion, it's much appreciated. :-)

Cloud I definitely like the overall layout of that. I do think there are a couple potential issues:

I believe there may be some splitting of hairs a bit too fine even we end up with a larger team. (And with a really large team to draw from remember that everyone has REALLY different styles inherently from one another- which can be difficult to work with... so I still advise for a slightly smaller team, if that requires a cut-off or not...)

Also keep in mind what we are initially pulling from: a small subsection of a fandom that is already fairly small- niche within niche. Our general artist pool to draw from is going to be inherently smaller, so we need to probably organize around having a team that is going to be smaller. :-) If it helps to get the ball rolling a bit faster, perhaps starting with more merged groups and splitting from there if there ends up being

HOWEVER- on the other hand, there's another issue:

"Pixel artist" - as in, one pixel artist.

We definitely, definitely would want more than a single pixel artist, especially since animation is involved! I say this as someone who started with pixel art and still regularly makes pixel art assets- pixel art is absolute hell to do alone, even with a few years of time on your hands. :-) Especially for a full-on game, it could be really daunting. I know a few other professional pixel artists so I could always reach out to them but no promises since none of them have attachment to GS like I do, and they've also got their own stuff going on. ;-) In fact I am pretty sure only a couple of us have even played it... Aw.

So essentially what you have outlined there is pretty spot-on for what would be great to see though there might be one too many administrative roles (I would rather see an Art Director, and then a Co-Director). The only thing is some people may need to share roles as well if there are not enough people proficient in whichever type of art- so for example, co-lead might need to also be an "enemy" concept artist (I would change that term to "monster concept artist" since enemies can also be characters/humans, which would fall under the "Character concept artist" umbrella).

Something like this, perhaps, might be a bit more streamlined with less steps in the way:

Co-Director / Lead Concept Artist

Character Concept Artist(s)
Monster Concept Artist(s)
Environment/Background Concept Artist(s)

Art Director / Lead Final Illustration Artist

Character Artist
Monster Artist
Environment/Background Artist

I think having each director in charge of a portion of the process might be beneficial, and if needed, people can share roles like said before. Especially since with two Director Roles, it's a bit more of a one-on-one chat with one another on where something should go, and would probably be a bit more of a straightforward conversation with one another from start to finish, if that makes any sense.
This is of course when considering a smaller team, which generally is more beneficial to have anyway ("too many cooks in the kitchen" and all that), but... in the end that particular bit is up to the Project Lead. I certainly would not like to make assumptions or step on toes when it is not my place to.

With pixel art as well as the graphic design elements ("lead layout artist") those are a bit separate from the concept art itself.

I have a degree in Graphic Design, but do we have any other graphic designers at the moment on the team?
The Graphic Designer as well as the pixel artist need to be in close contact with the programmers to know what the parameters are of what they need to create graphics for.

The concept art is only one half of the art of a game- the actual graphics are another half. To load half of the workload onto potentially only two people is quite something. :-) I think that may be something that should be approached in a separate pyramid.

Art Director + Co-Director / Lead Sprite Artist

Character Sprite Artist
Monster Sprite Artist
Battle/FX Sprite Artist
Overworld Asset Artist

Keep in mind a single person can do multiple things if needed or if they can. I've ended up having to do all of these roles... in some cases all of them at once (RIP)... and remember too these things need to be animated. Which is no small feat. :-)
HOWEVER- that is something a bit farther down the road. We need the actual art first to base the sprites on after all. ;-)

As for the Graphic Design... I think that is particularly something one or two people can do without much fuss so long as there's some background there, and with ample communication between the programmers and the GD'ers. :-) And it would go by the "Art Director" in the end as the rest does.

BTW- the "Co-Director / Lead Concept Artist" as well as the "Art Director / Lead Final Illustration Artist" are in the case that the Directors picked can do that other role, hence the "/."

If anything doesn't make sense let me know. I'll try to clear up what I can. :-)

Last Edit: Nov 4, 2018 3:55:53 GMT by finalbattel