Creating the Art of the Game

Successful game artists develop their creativity and adapt to the constraints of their technologies. How? Read on! If you have some experience with Maya or 3ds max and some knowledge of Photoshop or Painter, Creating the Art of the Game will take you through the process and the associated responsibilities of making a videogame-from an artist's point of view. Learning the ins and outs of particular software packages and playing the latest games won't make you a dynamic game artist: They'll make you a great technician. To make the jump to being a professional game artist, you need to adapt your traditional art skills to the digital media. Matthew uses artwork from a variety of popular games to illustrate and apply traditional art concepts and skills and how to build and populate game worlds. The accompanying discussions make it easy to apply concepts to art for use in virtually any game genre. Inside you'll find creative solutions to the problems game artists face on a daily basis, as well as real-world perspectives on: - Using real-life reference for inspiration and art direction. - Best practices for polygonal modeling within the constraints of a game engine, - Creating high-quality textures for real-time rendering. - Porting traditional lighting theories and special effects to game art. - Creating collision geometry and sky domes, and fixing bugs.