Designing Your Game Plan

Video games are a huge worldwide industry that sees incredible growth yearly. The game art design positions available are highly competitive because people who play the games expect the best possible graphics and characters.

It is necessary to have a Game Art Design degree to even get your foot into the door in most companies. Following that, you need to have a great portfolio of impressive work to prove that you have the creative juice and technical abilities to work in an industry that updates technology and style multiple times each year. Your creativity, style and technical savvy can net a career that is upwardly mobile and fulfilling.

Art Technicians

Art Techs are artists who have programming skills and the ability to move effortlessly among the more technical aspects of the gaming design world. They combine their art abilities with their tech savvy to create incredible ideas and bring them to life. They use techniques from their Game Art Design degree such as motion capture, visual story telling, texture mapping and game level design to give life to a game idea.

Project Manager

The project manager handles the process of taking a game from idea to shipment. They perform a number of different roles including quality assurance inspector, managing the various technical aspects of character capture and handling the production schedule. They need to have all of the skills and creative abilities gained from their Game Art Design degree plus management ability.

Game Artist

It is the job of the game artist to come up with the design of all aspects of the game. This includes the characters, scenery, story and process. Starting off with 2-D drawings, the game artist takes the game idea from paper to 3-D interactive game play. Game artists use the technology skills learned from the Game Art Design degree program to animate their characters and move the story of the game along. Skills involved include 2-D and 3-D animation, rendering and texturing which are all fundamental aspects of such a degree program.

Other jobs that benefit from a Game Art Design degree include:

  • Programmer
  • 2-D Artist
  • 3-D Artist
  • Cinematic Artist
  • Art Technician
  • Project Manager
  • Game Designer
  • Producer
  • Modeler
  • Texturer
  • Layout Designer
  • Storyboarder
  • Background Designer
  • Cover Art Designer