Feature: Applying Basic Art Practices To Game Design

Author: by Staff

While the old "are video games art?" argument is a well-trodden debate with some opposing viewpoints, it's virtually inarguable that making video games often involves artistic talent and practices. Rob Kay -- currently with Wii MotionPlus developer AiLive, and formerly of Harmonix -- and game designer Andy Tudor explained in a Gamasutra feature how their art backgrounds and learned art practices were directly applicable to games they designed, including Rock Band (Kay) and Need for Speed: Shift (Tudor). The pair wrote, "The principles we'd learned as we became artists were useful in game design too. [There have been] three art principles that we've found particularly useful as game designers: thumbnail sketches, the Golden Ratio, and anticipation." For example, artists use thumbnail sketches -- maybe one or two inches across -- to explore ideas visually in rapid succession. As game designers, that practice is also useful for cranking out ideas and weeding out what won't work. Kay said that the idea for the drum controller on Rock Band was born in a thumbnail sketch. "By doing quick drawings of the layouts which bubbled up in conversation, I was forced to identify more important criteria [for the drum controller] (for instance, pads should be readable as one row to aid usability)." He added, "This in turn fed into more design discussion. The solutions we gravitated toward at this early stage (four pads in a row, kick pedal mounted to the frame) shaped our first physical prototype, became requirements for the industrial design phase, and can be seen in the shipping drum controllers." The Golden Ratio, studied as far back as 500 BCE, can be seen in game designers' implementation of the Rule of Thirds, which states that an image should be divided into nine equal parts. When a grid is applied over games such as Mass Effect's menus or gameplay screens from Gears of War or Splinter Cell: Conviction, the composition rule is obvious. But the rule can also be applied to other areas of design. "...One good usage of the Rule of Thirds is to keep splitting your total game length into thirds until you reach a 'gameplay bite' length of around half an hour (the average time spent by players in a session)," according to the pair. In animation, the artistic idea of anticipation is also applicable to game design: "The key is selling the audience on the idea that something is about to happen (the anticipation) and then a moment later that it did happen (the reaction)." "For example: a boxer pulls his arm back to prepare for a punch (anticipation), strikes his opponent (action), who recoils from the hit (reaction). Every action has three distinct phases: anticipation, action, and reaction." For more on these parallels and the application of art practices in game design, read the full Gamasutra feature, available now.