Monday
We were lucky enough to listen to Dan Emmerson’s speech, which mainly discussed not “how to make the picture more beautiful”, but the complete process of game art in actual development, and how art can really serve game development. In his speech, he repeatedly emphasised that games are not just works of art, but a kind of “mechanical system”. Therefore, art resources should not only consider visual effects, but also take into account functionality, performance, teamwork and technical limitations. This made me realise that the biggest difference between game art and traditional art is that it is essentially a team industrial production, not an individual expression.
In addition, Dan’s emphasis on naming specifications, file structure and resource collation also showed me the very “engineered” side of game development. For example, he said “Rock_A tells us nothing”, which means that a name like “Rock_A” has no meaning.
I think there are some things worth critical thinking about in this speech. First of all, Dan’s perspective is very biased towards industrialisation and commercial projects. He has always emphasised efficiency, optimisation, standardisation and “as long as it is enough”. Although this way of thinking is suitable for team development, it may also compress the space for artistic expression. If “practicality” is overly pursued, game art may become more and more standardised and conservative. In fact, many independent games with strong style come from “non-standard” and experimental creation. Therefore, I think the process of industrialisation is important, but artistic innovation cannot be ignored either, and a better balance is needed between the two.
Tuesday
I was absent from this group discussion because I was sick, but fortunately, my team members were very good. They recorded the content of the meeting. Elina sent the minutes of the meeting in the slack group chat. I took a brief look and made sure that I sent all the art assets needed for the second test. Yufan Wei, to ensure the smooth progress of the test.
Thursday
The number of people in the second test after the game adjustment is much more than the last time, and our game has also received a lot of feedback.
I’m very happy that everyone likes the art style I draw very much, but about the difference between the camera shutter or the button, I thought that if I draw the shutter button of the camera alone, it is too small and very simple, so I changed it to the button in the end. It is bigger and more exquisite. And if it is really changed to a button, the TA in our group has more important things to do, such as adding background music, item bar system, etc. First of all, the most important thing is to ensure the integrity of the game, so I don’t plan to change its style.If we have time in the future,i will do it again.