Game Art Group Q&A, Part Two

The second installment of RPG Vault’s Game Art Group Q&A feature is now available, once again talking to various industry veterans about the artwork they create for games. Here’s a snip:

Q: This isn’t completely related to game art, but since it’s something many fans want to know, what do you like about being a developer?

A: As I stated during my introduction, I have been doing art in games for just over 10 years now. I started out using DPaint to hand-draw / animate my assets pixel by pixel, and now, I’m using today’s extremely powerful 3D packages, several 512X512 32 bit texture passes, amazing shader abilities, etc. It has been a fun adventure seeing how our industry has grown in such a short period of time.

Now is such an incredibly exciting, rewarding time to be a game artist. The in-game assets are becoming so believable that they are increasingly being using for the cinematics / marketing art. The levels of immersion, detail and design that go into today’s games is incredible. I cannot wait to see what the next 10 years bring to our industry, and I feel privileged to be part of this dynamic field.

I very much enjoy reading the feedback received online or otherwise about the assets I create. The game industry has such passionate / informed fans. Once a piece of art is released to the public, the comments and opinions immediately begin flowing in. Every poly and pixel is gone over a thousand times with a fine-tooth comb. Believe me… we developers are listening to these thoughts. Comments and suggestions, whether positive or negative, are taken into consideration, and in many cases, changes are made according to the popular or consistent comments.

I also take a great deal of pride in knowing that somewhere out there, a young artist is inspired by a piece of work that I created… as I was when viewing fantasy art as a youngster. What I like the most about my career is that my kids feel as if they have the coolest Dad in the world given what I do for a living.