PotBS Devlog for Aspiring Artists, Art Directors

The latest devlog from the Flying Lab crew on Pirates of the Burning Sea is aimed at aspiring artists and art directors.

In “What is Right and What is Easy” BSharp, a teacher at the Art Institute of Seattle, discusses conceptualizing a perfect finished game and executing that image, the tools used in creating art and the vision and inspiration that goes into creating captivating work.

The author firmly believes that aritists not coders should determine the artistic look and feel of a game. Artists tend to ensure games are more flowing and uniform. Programmers do what everyone else is doing, what they know or what they’re interested in leading to an “largely random” artistic vision. Having a concept artist on your team isn’t full proof.

“…there is a lot of visionless work out there for which coders can’t be blamed, however. It happens that many artists don’t have vision as well. For instance, something you’re seeing a lot in next gen games these days is the same brown and gray gritty appearance in their environments – in the words of Zero Punctuation, it’s like most games are being viewed “through a used coffee filter: what isn’t brown is gray and what isn’t gray is too dark to make out.” While this look may be appropriate for the first game that came out with it, I believe we see it in so many games because, frankly, vision is hard and people tend to copy other people’s ideas, techniques, and practices (their vision) without doing the hard work of re-interpreting and personalizing it. In other words, they take the easy way.”

The article is a great technical piece for gamers and artists that are interested in getting into video game design as a career. Read about BSharp’s “radically different and revolutionary” way of thinking about art and how to apply it to game design on Pirates of the Burning Sea.