Game Design - Combining Interests - Shadow Urtheart

This tutorial will give you an idea of what skills in the industry work well together and should be looked into as extra learning if wish to specialise in one of them.

While many people used to specialise in one area of games design, an important development in has been the ability for people to cross-over and help others in the pre-production stage and act more as team. With this certain skills have become much closer, and this is noticeable in the way programs are designed.

The biggest combination of skills has been within the 3D area, combining Modelling, Animation and Texturing, which are very noticeable in programs such as 3D Studio Max, in which all 3 are possible.
Although most people will usually again specialise in one area, they will not only have a broad understanding of the other two areas, but also be able to produce a finished product to a high standard as they will need the other skills to test their existing skill on a finished piece. Because of this wide variety of skills needed within the area of 3D production many people will dedicate a fair few years to it to expand their skills in the different areas.

Having the ability to test textures on your model and to check that it can be correctly rigged helps cut production time and costs and hence why it is important to have good knowledge of each area, whatever one you specialise in.

Another important combination is that of Concept Design and Art. Although the companies will always have a lead designer and a lead artist, most designers will usually have to sketch out their own ideas as visual references. Although none of the art produced will usually be released as the final art in these cases they will be used heavily by the 3D modellers and other artists to create the necessary aspects of the game, and as such a good study of profile views, as well as knowledge of how a 3D model can be made using reference images.

Although the level of artistic skill involved here is not as high as those who want to go for the Concept Artist job, a good understanding of anatomy is still required, as well as the need for clear sketches and annotations.

The combination of Level Designer and Texture Artist may seem strange at first, but as far as architectural textures go, level designers are best suited to creating these effects, especially since they can be done with photo-manipulation rather than creating brand new images. This obviously requires a different style of art compared to Concept Artists, but can greatly help with making items such as walls, doors and other surface structures, which can be input easily into most game engine modifiers such as Unreal Editor and Hammer.

The most important person in a team is the Lead Designer, and as such this person must cover all other areas. Because of this, anyone who wishes to progress to this level needs a good understanding of every aspect of pre-production. Although a Lead Designer will not do much in terms of modelling, Texturing or Animation, they will need to be able to do it to a fairly high level as to lead by example to others under him, this is on top of being responsible for the quality of the final documentation and art which is to be presented to publishers.

The lead designer (along with the lead artist and other senior members of staff) will be the people who present the full pre-production efforts to the developers and work with the development team to produce the game.