Isolating Game Elements: Graphic Art and Games

Games has everything to do with graphics. Even when a game isn´t all about graphics, it had some graphic related choice to be made previously to get it done. It isn´t a rule, but most of games out there has this relation clear. Although most of game designers have not an art background to support them, they handle with it quite well. However, when you take decisions consciously things runs pretty smoothly.

Bread and Butter

At one moment over a game conception, it was right there at someone´s mind. No matters exactly where this idea came from or if it is original. It was just an abstract idea, untouchable and it needed to find a way to come to reality. So you have to find a way, a media, to bring it to reality. In case of games, it is like idea is the butter and media is the bread. Both might exist independently, but when they are put together, things get way much better. And according to the bread, things might get tastier.

Even when it isn´t made consciously, every game had been influenced by some art movement. During the conception process, usually we call upon what we know or had been in touch that might fit on what is intended to be exposed. There is a plenty of bread out there and, according to previous references, this blend can have a whole new taste.

Getting Inspired

Getting inspired by art isn´t exactly such a hard thing to do. Information about almost everything is available on the internet. So it is easy to take a look at some History of Art book or website. A good starting point, however, should be on a  History of Art overview article.

As reference of important art movements, bellow is described lots of references from them. Remember that each movement has a reason to exist and putting yourself on a person back at that time´s shoes would be a good experimental exercise. Checking further geographic and historic information is a plus to hit the road about art.

Baroque architecture.

Surreal painting from Vladmir Kush.
Square Enix crew might have been inspired by paintings like
that to create Final Fantasy series.

Cubism, Realism, Barroque, English Barroque, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Art Deco, Classicism, Minimalism, Art Noveau, among others, would be a nice reference to start your studies. Grafitti as a current art expression is a good reference to be studied. Also, pay attention to western and eastern arts and influences because at this stage, the broader, the better.

Cubist painting from (c) Thomas C. Fedro

Classical paintings might be helping
currently games to be realistic.

Curiously, when we start looking over all those pictures from each style, surely some reference of appreciated things and not so much appreciated things come up. Pay attention on it because it is a good way to refine our taste of Art. This is a continuous process that everyone might keep paying attention on our spare time. It is pleasant to understand all those movements and where we might get it applied on our work.

Also studying entire Gutemberg´s history and Typography´s  evolution and contribution to the press and all sort of things related to this amazing process is handful to build your knowledge about Art. His role to change the way information is spread around the world is priceless and must be considered part of any study. It might sound weird but character writing way, shape and composition is also considered a form of Art.

Paintings, painters and artist´s life in general is also a good way to study art because most of them used to be controversial, innovating and had quite interesting life. Spend time wandering what they had been doing back at their times, their difficulties and efforts to express themselves is a good theoretical exercise to start getting serious about studying art.

Assassin´s Creed - Unity - Hystorical commitment
to improve player experience.

Out of this world - vectorial and minimalist
art used in this amazing game.

La Abadia del Crimen - famous spanish game took
over the world back in the 80´s.

Collecting as much information as needed helps when it is needed to create a consistent graphic ambient to have a game running. In this first stage texts, our commitment is to collect information to apply them accordingly into game projects. Paying attention on elements that must match and follow rules imposed by ourselves, combining among them is a good signal that this text is taking desired effect.

Art has autonomy to reinvent itself.

Human kind has been through so much when it comes to History of Art that is almost impossible to cover every inch of it just taking a look. And would be smug of me discuss about it in a brief and amateur text. Consider this text as a contribution to get started in this world and remember that it isn´t intended to transform you into an art expert but only to be in touch with it when you are designing games.

All characters and brands in thisarticle are properties of their respective owners. This is a fictional text and has nothing to do with any official schedule neither implies into anyone´s oppinion unless expressed otherwise.

Isolating Game Elements - Art in the games

A game is a curious blend of Graphic Art, Music, Literature and Code. It is a multimedia product because each of the described items has autonomy on its own. Only when these items are put together and under certain conditions it might be considered a game. That´s the reason why studying games might be a complex subject. When it comes to creative process, the broader the better. So how to study a subject that is a blend of other complex areas? Lucidity is the key to this problem.

If doing games was an equation, it would surely help us to see more than meets the eye and start thinking analytically. With this equation as a starting point, it can be possible not only to analyze a game but also to subdivide equation members to find their correct classification. It can also help us seek further information regarding a specific area that was hidden behind the game as a whole.

Just as a theoretical exercise, consider all sentences as true and generating different expression subjects:

Graphic Art + Literature = (Installations, comic books, illustrated books, others*)

Graphic Art + Music = (Animations, others*)

Graphic Art + Music + Literature = (Movie, others*)

Graphic Art + Music + Literature + Code = (Game!*)

(*)Results are countless, so "others" always has  to be an option.

Literature

Inside a game, literature can be considered any element directly related to written expression. That said, all explicit elements such as score, character dialogs, numbers and any displayed messages can be considered Literature. There are also elements that have no need to be shown and that might be classified as Literature: Characters descriptions, game plot, text drafts.

Words and Texts are important part of games.

Any work involving translation and localization of texts might be classified as Literature when it comes to game design and development. For people curious about improving skills in this specific field, it is recommended to attend Literature and Arts basic classes at any university. In addition, Geography and History classes can help students to broad their basic knowledge about it.

Graphic Art

Any form of non-written and inaudible message expressed through draws, images and sketches can be considered Graphic Art. Same as Literature, there might be explicit and implicit GA. It embraces any sort of animation and paintings under any technique. It includes icons, characters graphical representation, charset, 3D models, screens, layout design and balance.

Although there isn´t a main component of a game, it is reasonable to say that GA deserves a little highlight in the process. Any form of graphic expression can be used to influence game production. Among others, Baroque, Realism, Naturalism, Cubism, Surrealism. There is no rule to get influenced.

The Last Judgement (Michelangelo).

Putting historical styles apart, an important tool to influence art on games is Color Theory. It is important to work objectively with colors. Sometimes, it is not so easy to work with colors when you are not used to. What seems to be a natural ability at some people skills might be a complete disaster with others. It classifies colors according to certain rules so, when Color Theory is used, designer can rest assured that, at least, regular work was delivered.

Curious people about improving GA skills can attend drawing classes, painting classes, animation classes available at any university. In addition, Art History classes, Aesthetics classes, Print Art classes and related subjects can help students to broad their knowledgment about this GA.

Music

Music is responsible for providing the whole ambient a game needs to push player into the game. Basically music in games can be divided in two: Background Music (BGM) and Auxiliary Sounds. Similarly Music has the same importance at games as it has at movies.

Music and Sound Effects expand player´s game experience

People curious about improving music skills should attend classes at any music institute or school or might go to a music university course if the intention is to become a musician.

Code

Coding involves whole support system to present a game. Code might get analyzed as a means of expressing the game itself. However, most of readers are involved with technology activities at some level and going straight to the point might be better and practical to our purposes.

Code involves game logic, game structure, game screen layout, databases, game programming, security issues, hardware and software connections, quality control tests, code optimization and more. Basically it seems that code activity involves the delivery of the game as a product. The group in charge of coding has a huge responsibility in a game process because game will get delivered from their hands.

Although it is very precise and technical, coding involves art at some level. If we consider that Michelangelo was very concerned regarding human anatomy proportions and that coding activity involves the art of putting every element of a game together, working fine, properly balanced and keeps it running, that coding activity involves getting all part of music, graphics and text to create a new product, it is art indeed.

Art at producing games

Creating games involves areas that are sometimes out of the designer’s knowledge range. This text exposes how to find at ordinary world all information and help a designer might need to accomplish a project. Once all resources are at hand, the whole game creation process becomes easy to get designed, produced and published. Designing a game involves balancing all game´s equation members and testing it insanely to check if desired result meets delivered result. Possibly there might be remaining points that were forgotten, please let me know so it can get fixed.

Clarification

Any written expression might also be considered as a graphic expression. Ideograms would be precisely the place where graphics and texts meet. However, to ease our analytical process, it was decided to explain them apart. In time, there is also a place where sounds meet texts. Any music with voices could get analyzed as a text at some level. Here again, it was decided to classify music with voices as Music and not as Text although there are surely some texts on it.