Art requirements

Working on a project by yourself can be fun, exciting and surprisingly efficient. After all there are no communication problems between people. You know what the vision is for the game. You know the motivations of everyone involved and what they're currently thinking.

I don't think I realized how freeing all of these things were until I started working on my art design document this morning. Since I now have artists willing to do work for me I realized they have a million questions about everything from theme and style of art to screen resolutions and texture size. All of these things I've thought of at one time or another but it's all stored in my head. Not an easy thing to email to someone. As such I'm working on creating an art specification that details all of the basics along with all of the expectations for backgrounds, textures, etc.

This will definitely be a learning experience for me in getting my art requirements into something fairly black and white. I'm used to creating design documents and technical specs for my day job but that is usually more around work and data flow or technical implementations. Just another reason to put on a new hat. And that in itself is another plus to working on your own. The more hats you try on, the easier it is to see things from different perspectives. And who knows? You might find a new hat that you like a lot.