So… guess it’s my time for confessing, huh?
Name’s Rado. I am the art director of Becoming Pablo and a living relic of game dev in the team (by all means, feel free to throw sweets and booze onto this one). I am a foreign addition from Poland, domesticated by the Tentworks team.
How It All Started
The very first game I worked on was more like a “hey, it’s vacation time, we have $200 and pocket money from our parents, let’s make a game and get rich” amateur project by some me and some US students, back in 1996. At the time I was too dumb to know better than to not engage in adventures like that. On the other hand - if it’s true that we learn from our mistakes - recounting the number of ones I did during the last 30 years I’d like to think I’m quite ‘learned’.
I began my game dev road in quite an unusual place - as a historian of art, working with 3D techniques of computer reconstructions of objects of art. Sadly or luckily, I tend to look at it with mixed feelings, as salaries for university lecturers in Poland in the late 90’s were ridiculously low. So I looked long and hard at what was on the table and decided to utilize my rather exotic (back in the day), set of skills, in another field.
Leading a Team
Since then, I went through being a 3D Architectural Viz Artist, Vehicle Modeler, Tech Artist, Art Lead and finally, around 8 years ago, an Art Director. With those experiences in my backpocket, I now firmly believe that there are two types of ‘generals’ or two major approaches to leading a team.
There are ones that just give pointers and directions. They do not really ‘DO’ anything with their bare hands or dig trenches, instead, they tell others about their vision and use their team as a tool for fulfilling their own vision. That’s one type. Sometimes it is super successful, other times super toxic, with an omnipotent figure looming somewhere high over the heads of sweaty laborers. From what I’ve encountered, approaches like these are more common in big studios - those who can afford a guy whose sole job is pointing fingers.
Another type are ones that try to lead by example. Getting their hands dirty (and boy, believe me, once you have to dig in, it ain’t smelling like roses) and actually sitting in the mud with their team. Now, for good or bad, I like working with game art too much to just restrict myself to walking around and giving directions. I prefer jumping into the fray with my team.
The Challenges of Game Development
Challenges? Oh sure…
I mean: just imagine that you have to create a diorama. A huge one. Containing 10,000 parts. You do not know what it will consist of or how it will look, you just have a very vague idea of how it will function. You have a team of various artists you do not know. You do not really know who is good at what, who needs a kiss or a kick in the butt in order to be effective. Nobody will tell you what kind of resources are needed and what timelines are - nothing.
Now, add the fact that this diorama has movable parts, the vision changes along the way, there are delays caused by sicknesses, national holidays, sick dogs and all sorts of random shit can happen. The workers may even hate doing the same thing 10 times in a row (yet some things have to be done 20 times until they get it actually right)… and that’s just the beginning.
So yeah, it is not just “I will walk outside, look at the moon and muse and somehow that will send me the vision”. NOPE - nothing like that, actually.
Communication and Creative Balance
So… why do I even bother?
Because after going through all the elbow grease, sweat and blood, when you start to finally see the project taking shape and your team, the people you work with on a daily basis being proud of their time spent on the project, it feels pretty much like: this.
To me, the whole process resembles cooking. Some things spill here and there, you have to taste, then add some more of this and that, then taste. So the first challenge: find common ground when it comes to software. As you might know, there are plenty of ways of skinning the cat and even more tools to do so (and I mean 3D packages, not knives of course). Each and every artist has his/her favorite tools and it is a bit like with languages: yeah, you can learn new ones, but if you have a choice, you’d rather use the one you're used to.
After that step we gotta learn communication and that’s actually the single most important thing in any team. What do I mean when I say “make it more stylized”? What does “warmer palette” mean? What do I mean when I am saying that something needs to be closer to OUR style? It might sound absurd and at the very first glance- obvious, but it is absolutely fundamental. Only then can one actually start working. But then again, it is an entire minefield ahead; how many models do we need? How many polygons may artists use for it to make it look good and at the same time not kill the user’s gaming device? What should be the size of the texture? How many textures can we load at the same time? How to manage loading and unloading of assets in real time… and so on and so forth (as you can see we still have not even started with the ‘artistic’ side of things).
Why I Keep Doing It
To me, the whole process resembles cooking. Some things spill here and there, you have to taste, then add some more of this and that, then taste again, sometimes throw stuff away or change your plan. This may mean to not do it ‘by the book’, by adding precisely and religiously counted three grains of pepper and one pinch of salt. It does not work that way. So, we are cooking all the time and I really hope you will like the final results.