Graphic Designers in Game Development

This isn't a Game Design question; moving to Visual Arts.
Submit, read the credits for any video game, and read this: http://archives.igda.org/breakingin/path_art.htm

When I think Graphic Design when related to video games I think of posters, box cover art, etc, not 3D character builders or animators.

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Original post by SuBM1T When I think Graphic Design when related to video games I think of posters, box cover art, etc, not 3D character builders or animators.

Oh. Then in that case "during the development process" -> no roles since their job doesn't start until there exists a product to start marketing. I don't think I've seen box art for any game I've worked on before we're already deep into final production

-me

They do this.

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Original post by Hodgman They do this.

Was that supposed to be funny?

No. That page explains the roles and tasks of graphic designers.

Not every game needs graphic designers. As mentioned above, product packaging is one task (post production). Games that have a lot of 'media' inside them (in-game magazines, lots of icons, lots of menu layouts, web-style interfaces, etc) may benefit from having one or more, other games will juse make use of their generic 'artists' to do these 'graphic design' tasks.

I guess my question was phrased wrong. I meant do graphic designers contribute more to a game's development besides the artwork following completion?

Not really?

Graphic Design and Game Design are two different fields of study.

Usually what publishers do is they contract a graphic design/advertsing studios who have experience doing other things to create box art and promotional materials, there is no "in house" graphic designer for any dev studio I know about.

Now what is possible is that people who have studied under graphic design can apply those concepts to art design, game design, interface design, etc... assuming they have that kind of work in their portfolio.

GUI and interface design for example follows many similar practices of Graphic Design.

We have a number of graphic designers who work in a couple of interesting ways:

1. As a concept artist who does a lot of design-related work for presenting a homogeneous art aesthetic through solid graphic design work. While most of this time is spent doing concept work, some of his time involves good old fashioned typography, page layout and 'design thinking'; ie. color theory, composition, and aesthetic problem solving. In this role +1 for being a good drawer, obviously.

2. As a front end artist who does a lot of design-related work presenting an integrated, thoughtful user interface to the end user. Our company uses a custom front end tool that requires bitmaps to be exported from Photoshop and composed in the tool. Sometimes the source of the images is Illustrator. Mock ups are usually done in Illustrator or InDesign. With the widespread adoption of ScaleForm, all of this is done in Flash, so if you have solid design skills, a good understanding of typography and a passing knowledge of using Flash, you might land well there.

3. As a Graphic Designer, working on pitch documents for publishers, or doing marketing work.

Obviously, if you are good at 1 or 2, you'll be able to do 3 - which is how it works in our company. Sometimes we get the front end designer to do some straight up print or electronic design work at the right time in the project.

Like everyone in the gaming industry (including programmers) your value comes from the mixture of your skills. Straight up graphic designers will struggle to find work, but combine that with Flash experience, or concept art, and you'll find work no problem. This is true of game designers: if all you can do is write paper-based game design, you'll have a hard time cracking the industry, but if you also have experience testing, or are also a screen writer, or a level designer, you'll get more attention.

Best of luck.

S