Game artists are the real heroes we have all secretly admired since we were kids. The people who made the game fun and enjoyable for all of us. Game artists are responsible for making the environment, the characters, the enemies, the UI, the VFX, and everything else you see on your favorite screen.
And in the end, it all comes down to 3 basic parts that make up the art of a game clarity, satisfaction, and style.
CLARITY
It's explaining to the player what's happening and what is to come. Things like:
Where to go?
Who to help? Who are your allies?
Who to shoot? Who are your enemies?
What to do next?
Leading the player in the right direction.
Identifying important actions and objectives and choosing the right action to take by reading the tons of information taken in a very short amount of time. It should be very clear to the player what are their next steps.
Although it seems very simple, it can be very difficult because games have so many things going on at the same time.
The visual hierarchy makes this possible. Meaning the most important information should be the easiest and first to see. Attracting the players’ eye to it. It can be the difference in contrast value, color, size, shape, placement, and even detail.
SATISFACTION
The action that the player takes should be satisfying and expressed very clearly no matter whether the player did good or bad. Whether you just punched very hard leading to a small pause for effect, or as simple as running around in an open-world game.
Did you succeed in killing the final opponent? BOOM victory screen! and other stuff telling you, you did a good job. You missed the jump over the spikes. Sad to see the death screen, but it should make you feel like trying again and doing better next time.
There should be a good balance between clarity and satisfaction and a good art style that differs between games.
Leading to the final part. Style
STYLE
The style should express a certain feeling when playing the game even though there are many games with similar art styles to make you feel a certain type of way or certain emotion
There are also games that are pretty much the same with different art styles and make you feel different emotions. For example, let's take two battle royal games to compare. Fortnite and COD Warzone.
The gameplay and the objective of the games are the same, but the style is very different. Fortnite is more colorful, the proportions are more pushed and exaggerated, the environment, the character designs are more cartoony and stylized, whereas COD Warzone is more realistic, less colorful with real-life guns and environments it is also more serious.
To sum it all up there are three things that make a game better.
Clarity - Making it easier for the player to know what to do.
Satisfaction - Making the game enjoyable and fun.
Style - Making the game unique and appealing.
These are the key elements of game art. We’ll talk more about the general process of creating a game in the next article. Follow us :)