Next-Gen Predicts Artsy Decline

One of the biggest challenges for a creative team in the gaming field is to deliver compelling visuals that stand apart from the crowd, and at the same time are not so unique as to offend mass market tastes. There are certainly exceptions to the rule (Okami, Shadow of the Colossus) where games largely forgo a more traditional art approach and dare to put forth an unusual, bold graphical treatment - similar to an arthouse film in the movie world. The huge install base of a dominant console platform is one of the key factors that allow for more "artsy" games to make viable business sense. A recent Next-Gen article entitled The End for 'Artistic' Games? warns of a decline in creative, artistic titles due to current lack of console dominance. An interesting read, especially for teams in the early visual planning stages of a Next-Gen product.

Big Huge is getting BIGGER

This past Thursday was MONUMENTAL for Big Huge with a number of amazingly cool opportunities materializing in a fever-pitched day of excitement. The term "1/25" has been added to our company lexicon as a way to mark the momentous occasion. So what happened on Thursday? Well, unfortunately I'm unable to divulge the details without the express written consent of various massive corporations and tight-lipped media conglomerates. I'll leave that to our crack team of press release writers (keep an eye on www.bighugegames.com in the coming months). About the only thing I CAN say is that Big Huge is expanding into next-gen, multi-genre game development. We have a metric ton of cool, industry-redefining work to do & many exciting positions available! Programmers, Designers, Producers, and Artists (art openings include Senior/Lead, Senior Technical, 3D and Art Intern), are needed, and we're also looking for a Director of Development to help co-ordinate it all. Whether you're an industry n00b looking for your 1st fantastic job or a jaded veteran in need of a jumpstart, we're interested in talking to you. Should you find yourself considering lending your talents to the cause you can peruse our industry leading benefits page here. Also, see why we think the Baltimore, Maryland area is a pretty cool place to work, live and play.

1/30/07 **UPDATE** Director of Development position has been filled

"Real is Brown"

A clever demonstration of next-gen graphics creation...

imageSynth and GamerPoints

One of the basic skills in any game artist's arsenal is the ability to create tiling textures. Not long after mastering that task comes the slightly more advanced graphical kung fu - the high-pass filter. Terrain/Environment artists in particular use these two techniques day in and day out. Luxology has made these tasks even easier, and thrown in some other useful related features to boot, with their imageSynth plugin for Photoshop. It's available for $99 and we at BHG give it the game art seal of approval. Watch their tutorial video one here (two, three, and four available post purchase).
Next, allow me send out major kudos to whoever over at Microsoft devised the 360's brilliant gamerpoints achievement system. I'm finding myself frequently comparing my relatively low score to that of my friends and colleagues (guys look out behind you, I'm on a mission). At the moment I'm playing through Tomb Raider Legend, hitting pause in order to refer to http://www.achieve360points.com/ to maximize point gain on each level. I went so far as to purchase Galaga on XBLA a few days ago with no other purpose beyond picking up a few easy achievements. I'm considering an XBLA UNO purchase as I hear it has a number of points that are ripe for the taking. Yep, you heard me... UNO, simply for points. I know it sounds weird, especially if you're a non-gamer. However according to the Hollywood Reporter I'm not the only geek looking for an easy score these days .

A Whole New Mind and OneNote

I recently picked up Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. It was an enlightening and inspiring read and I've been singing its praises in the hallways at Big Huge. Pink, a former White House speechwriter for VP Gore, describes the business world as moving from the Information Age into the Conceptual Age. In order to prosper in this new world order he recommends nurturing your inner artist by pursuing right-brain creative thinking. He reasons that adding right-brain skills to your repertoire can give one the competitive edge in an environment where more and more left-brain centric tasks are being outsourced to India, Russia, China, etc... As a game artist I came away with a heightened appreciation of my profession as the fields of gaming and creative art/design were called out as areas of continued growth and high demand. And while on the subject of gaming, Pink noted that "a growing stack of research is showing that playing video games can sharpen many of the skills that are vital in the Conceptual Age".

A specific suggestion from the book describes how to foster right-brain thinking by creating an inspiration board. Pink explains that "each time you see something that you find compelling - a photo, a piece of fabric, the page of a magazine - tack it to the board. Before long, you'll start to seeing the connection between the images that will enliven and expand your work." At Big Huge we've been doing this in digital form for some time and refer to this collection of notes and reference imagery as Style Sheets (I've heard of other game companies refer to it as an Art Bible). It's a large image repository for the creative team to continually refer to, and an important tool that helps us maintain a singular vision and style. Over the past few years we've tried numerous Style Sheet authoring methods from Word to Wiki to HTML. Each method has had its own strengths and weaknesses. Lately we've moved our Style Sheet creation to OneNote. So far we've been EXTREMELY impressed with its ease of use and the ability for numerous team members to simultaneously create, organize and share information. It addresses nearly all of the weaknesses of the previously mentioned authoring tools - I recommend it highly (and sadly, I'm not receiving a kickback from Microsoft for this glowing praise). OneNote trial available here.

Lastly I'll offer up an additional book recommendation, which also happens to be my favorite art book of 2006... Revolution: The Art of Jon Foster. I'm a huge fan of his angular, off-balance compositions and rich palette of unusual yellows and greens. Along with the eye candy Foster throws in a good bit of behind-the-scenes technique and process description.