Digital Graphics for Computer Games
Artistic Style - Different game genres, or developers design the styles of their games differently, depending on what the game is, and who it is aimed at. For example, developers might want their new game to be realistic, for a war game, or cartoony or a game aimed at younger children.
Types of video game art styles:
Photorealism - Games that are designed to be as realistic as possible, whether fictional or non-fictional. Photorealism is difficult and time-consuming to create, and takes a lot of skill to get the textures and scaling of the world to look realistic.
Notable games that use photorealism include all of the Call Of Duty games, as well as the many Rockstar games.
Cel-Shaded - Designed to look like it was drawn by hand, and is used to represent a cartoon or comic book. Cel-shaded is primarily used by Japanese developers, in games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! and the Dragon Ball Z series.
Exaggerated - Games which are loosely based on Photorealism, but the style is modified, giving the graphics an overdone look. The graphics of the game can make it seem like it is not a serious game, because the characters are outrageously muscular, or features are not proportional, for example: large eyes. Japanese game developers also exaggerate the hair on their characters in anime games, such as Tekken.
Abstract - Games that use geometrical shapes and lines to create a unique visual style. Abstract does not take much skill to create compared to other styles. Abstract games can use both bright colours for fast-paced action, whilst others might use softer colours, which makes the player feel relaxed. An example of an Abstract art style designed game is Geometry Wars.
Rockstar - Rockstar Games develop all of their games with a very similar style. Games created by Rockstar are dark and gritty, and are heavily based around criminals and breaking the law. For example: Grand Theft Auto V follows three protagonists, as they undergo a series of heists. Similarly, to Max Payne 3, who turns into a vigilante after the murder of his family.
Computer Game Graphics - Sprites, either 2D or 3D, can be created using Photoshop, a professional digital design program, which has lots of tools at the users disposal to create a character of high quality.
The style of the graphics can be decided during the concept art stage of the production, in which artists draw anything involved in the game, whether it be vehicles, characters, weapons or environment. The environment concept art include things like building walls, any scenery such as forests and clouds in the sky.
Many games features a Head Up Display, which shows information, such as a map, or the player health/score on screen. This interface can be designed in the concept stages.
When the game is advertised before release, there needs to be art for the print media, whether it be the packaging, which displays the game graphics, and information about it, or a poster to be displayed around the counties the game will be released it.
Pixel - Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The higher the resolution, the higher the detail of the image. Resolution can be measured in different ways. Lines per mm and Lines per inch for example. The resolution quantifies how close each line can be whilst still being separate lines.
Pixel resolution is displayed in AxB format. For example, a 1x1 pixel resolution would be 1 solid square, as it is only 1 pixel. A pixel resolution of 100x100 contains 10,000 pixels, therefore the image would be of a high quality.
Pixel resolution is displayed in AxB format. For example, a 1x1 pixel resolution would be 1 solid square, as it is only 1 pixel. A pixel resolution of 100x100 contains 10,000 pixels, therefore the image would be of a high quality.
Types of Digital Graphics - Raster images, such as Bitmap, GIF, JPEG are images that are pixelated, and therefore, when zoomed in, is easy to see the different coloured pixel of the image.
Vector images, such as PSD, WMF and FLA use primitives (straight and curved lines) to represent the image, rather than pixels used in raster images. This means when zoomed in, the quality of the image does not change, and the image does not turn pixelated.
File Extensions - Usually 3 letters following s '.' a file, which help the computer recognise file type, and the programs that open/created the file. Extensions such as .bmp (Bitmap Image), .GIF (animated image) etc.
Compression - Files can be compressed into smaller folders using ZipFile, which allows several different files to be placed into a small folder, which requires to be unzipped before any of the contents can be accessed. This feature makes sharing files through the internet or through a file sharing program, such as an FTP.
Lossless is a data compression file, allowing files to be saved in a smaller format, and can be expanded again into it's original format without losing any content quality.
Image Capture - Images can be captured using a digital camera from a location, or hand drawn in a concept design, or even have an image scanned into the computer with a scanner. Concept art can be created in digital graphic programs, such as Photoshop or Illustrator, created using a graphics tablet for better accuracy that a mouse.
Optimizing - Optimizing an image file consists of saving the image as a suitable graphic
compression format. Saving an image as a PNG will reduce the file size without losing any data, therefore the photo file has been optimized.
Storage of Image Assets - When designing and creating characters or vehicles or scenery for a game, the artwork starts of as a basic idea, and evolves into a highly detailed final piece, which is used in the game. Therefore, for a charater, there are lots of different versions, with different levels of detail, and things that have been removed, changed and added from previous versions. It is important to know which file is the basic design, or the final design. Many companies, regardess of its size, use number. For example, a basic concept design might be called 'version 0.1', and the final version having a higher number, '1.14'. Numbers between these figures will be other files, which have been altered slightly from the last.
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