Art of the Game

Concept Artist opening at Big Huge

2008-09-05T14:52:00.004-05:00

We're looking for an experienced, exceptionally knowledgeable, talented, and motivated Concept Artist to contribute to our upcoming original RPG title (Xbox360, Playstation3 & PC), headed by internationally celebrated Game Designer Ken Rolston of Oblivion fame. This is also an opportunity to work alongside award-winning Big Huge Concept Artists Sean Andrew Murray and Jeremy Enecio. Together this talented duo has earned high accolade from Spectrum, Dominance War, and Society of Illustrators to name a few.

To view some of the concept work from our past titles visit our ConceptArt.org forum post. You can also check out what our art team creates in their spare time by visiting the Big Huge Art Blog.

If you think you're the right person for the job then click here to read the full job listing with directions on how to apply, as well as take a closer look at our benefits and fun office perks such as free sodas, extensive game library, pool table, ping pong, and bar modeled after a local Irish Pub just to name a few. We do all we can to adhere to our motto of "You Gotta Have Fun To Make Fun!"

A few concept examples from our past titles...

Into the Pixel 2008 - now accepting submissions

2008-04-30T14:28:00.003-05:00

Just got this email from the Into the Pixel folks and thought I'd share here...
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As a past participant of Into the Pixel (ITP) and/or one of our many ITP friends, we are pleased to announce that Into the Pixel 2008 is now open for submissions. As you know, Into the Pixel is the world's only exhibition that brings together the fine art and digital art worlds to explore and celebrate the art of the video game.

The sixteen artists that will be selected for this year's class will join a well-regarded group of notable artists, such as Daniel Dociu, Stephan Martiniere, Deane Taylor and Ryan Stevenson. The highly visible Into the Pixel collection, featured at both national and international events, will be shown at the Design-Center in Stuttgart, Germany during May 2008, and was recently on display at San Francisco's Hotel des Arts and the 2007 Toronto Film Festival.

We ask that you please forward this email to anyone you know who may want to submit their art for consideration by the 2008 ITP Jury. The deadline for submitting art is May 21, 2008.

For more information on this year's jury, past years' Collections, and/or to submit art, please go to http://www.intothepixel.com/.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS for ITP 2008:

May 21, 2008, is the deadline for submitting art.

The Into the Pixel 2008 Collection will be announced and electronically "unveiled" at the annual ITP Reception & Jury Panel discussion in June. A gallery featuring the framed 2007 art will also be featured at the event. (Date TBA)

The 2008 Collection will be unveiled to game makers at the E3 Media & Business Summit in July.

ITP will be featured at a public gallery at the "E for All Expo," October 3-5, 2008, at the L.A. Convention Center.

Into the Pixel is a joint effort of the ESA, Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and the Prints & Drawings Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

We are excited about this year’s exhibition and look forward to your submissions for the "Class of 2008" Into the Pixel.

Okami Art

2008-04-09T15:06:00.002-05:00

Capcom has created a website featuring art from Okami, check it out at http://www.okamiart.com/

Big Huge Games - Art Open House

2008-04-08T11:53:00.008-05:00

Big Huge Games will be having its semi-annual ART OPEN HOUSE this Thursday, April 10th from 5-8pm. There’ll be lots of food along with Big Huge artists demoing game creation techniques. Artists will also be on hand for student portfolio review and feedback. Big Huge is rapidly expanding with multiple projects underway for the Xbox 360, Playstation3 and Wii gaming platforms. We have more challenging and exciting work than we can handle and are on the lookout for talented and motivated students interested in paid summer internships.

There are a limited number of spaces for portfolio review. To reserve a timeslot please contact Jessica Hara at jhara(at)bighugegames.com

Space for the event is limited. If you plan to attend we kindly ask that you notify us at RSVP@bighugegames.com.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Driving directions from downtown Baltimore...

Bioshock Concept Art

2007-08-22T08:21:00.000-05:00

Picked up Bioshock yesterday and have been enjoying it immensely. The environments are phenomenal, oozing with character in a moody, foreboding Art Deco style. I applaud the art direction almost as much as the audio direction which is where the title really shines. To further celebrate the impressive visuals the team over at Irrational has released an art book (available in PDF format in two sizes; 15mb low-res and 75mb hi-res).

TF2 Illustrative Rendering

2007-08-15T17:03:00.000-05:00

The talented folks over at Valve have released a video showcasing Team Fortress 2's art direction covering topics such as real-time shading techniques, style inspiration and attention to character silhouette for improved readability.

Tech 5 Demo

2007-08-06T21:32:00.000-05:00

In the video series below John Carmack discusses id's Tech 5 engine. Graphics talk is front and center with Carmack going into further detail on the much hyped Megatextures tech. It's also nice to get a glimpse of their terrain authoring tools...

2007 Into the Pixel Selections

2007-07-08T11:30:00.000-05:00

Congrats to all the artists that were selected for this year's show. From the ITP site...

The Into the Pixel exhibit features 16 exemplary works of video game art, selected by a panel of jurors from a field of submissions gleaned from artists around the world. The exhibition offers an opportunity for published video and computer game artists to be reviewed and recognized by the public and by their peers in both the art and video game milieu.
Video Games are an influential aspect of pop-culture and entertainment whose impact goes beyond the digital arts to influence perspectives in art, cinematography, literature, and even fashion. Behind every game character and dynamic environment are artists whose talents birthed the image seen in the 3-D world.The 2007 Into the Pixel Art Collection premiered digitally at Creative Artists Agency in June. The printed and framed art will be unveiled in July at the E3 Media & Business Summit in Santa Monica, California. The Exhibition will open to the public at the new E for All Expo at the LA Convention Center, October 18-21, 2007.

My favorite of the group is Defeated Dragon by ArenaNet's Daniel Dociu...

All selections can be viewed here.

Age of Conan Dev Diary

2007-07-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

I've been a big fan of the concept work on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Funcom's upcoming MMO. In their recent Developer Diary, Art Director Didrik Tellefsen and Assistant Art Director Grant Regan talk about how they're realizing the vision of Robert E. Howard's work...

Assassin's Creed Art Direction

2007-07-06T17:18:00.000-05:00

Jade Raymond, Ubisoft Producer, talks art direction in the latest Assassin's Creed Developer's Diary. I've been watching this one closely and have it on my must-play list...

Big Huge Art Challenge Winners

2007-06-26T11:17:00.000-05:00

On behalf of the art team at Big Huge Games I'd like to congratulate the winners of the Big Huge Art Challenge. In the 3D competition Gavin Goulden took top honors with Donovan Keele taking second, and Ching Lau finishing 3rd. For his efforts Gavin will receive an Xbox360 Elite or $500, a team-autographed copy of Rise of Legends, a team-autographed Rise of Legends poster, and a Catan Xbox360 Live Arcade t-shirt. An interview with Gavin can be found here. The winning entry pose...

In the concept art competition top honors went to Marco Mazzoni with Brendan Keough taking 2nd, and David Mitchell finishing 3rd. Marco will receive a Wii or $250, a team-autographed copy of Rise of Legends, a team-autographed Rise of Legends poster, and a Catan Xbox360 Live Arcade t-shirt. An interview with Marco can be found here. The winning entry...
We'd like to thank Gameartisans.org's Fredrik Hultqvist for doing such a phenomenal job putting the contest together and keeping it all coordinated. Never one to rest, he's already got a new competition underway.

Recent Publications

2007-06-24T14:20:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I picked up a subscription to ImagineFX, a fantasy and digital arts magazine out of the UK. Their latest issue (July '07) is predominantly video game art related and features works from Heavenly Sword, Metal Gear Solid, Halo, Half-Life 2 and many more. The articles focus on concept development with tips and commentary from notable industry artists such as JP Targete, Xavier Marquis, Christian Bravery, Daniel Dociu and Viktor Antonov. If you're a concept artist yearning to break into the industry try to look past the rather steep bookstand price as it's well worth the import cost.

Another recent release out of the UK covers much of the same, EDGE Presents: The Art of Videogames. From the publisher... "As its title suggests, this new Edge special edition showcases the visual aspect of gaming, its 260 pages adorned with paintings, renders, sketches and more materials from some of the industry's leading artists.
Also included are interviews with key creatives in which they explain the thinking behind their work, with contributions from developers at Bungie (Halo series), Eden (Alone In The Dark, Test Drive Unlimited), Epic (Gears Of War), Maxis (Spore), Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword), SCEE (Wipeout) and Valve (Half-Life 2), to name but a handful."

And lastly, a few days ago I picked up a copy of the God of War 2 Strategy Guide, less for the guide and more for the included book bonus The Art of GoW2. While all the artwork is fantastic I found the attention paid to environmental design the most inspiring.

On a related note, the GoW2 concept art team (Andy Park, Charlie Wen, Cecil Kim, Dwayne Turner, Erik San Juan, Ryan Meinerding, and Scott Seeto) was honored with an art show and book signing this past May at Gallery Nucleus...

The Art of God of War art show / book signing
May 12 - May 13, 2007
Opening Reception Saturday May 12 7pm - 11pm

"We beckon all mortals to revel in the visual feast that is The Art of the God of War. Too often we only see the final product and not the inspiration that goes into creating that product.
This event will give everyone a chance to take a closer look at the artists and creative talent behind the scenes of one of the best games of 2007. The work, although commercial, proves worthy to be framed and hanged and appreciated by game lovers fantasy lovers and art lovers alike."

(Coin-op TV Show Coverage)

After seeing the show's poster design on the Gallery Nucleus site I called them up to inquire about its purchase availability. They quoted a price that seemed a little high for a poster and I nearly passed on it. Before deciding to pass I asked how many were printed and they said, "Oh... well actually it's one of a kind. It was the promo poster from our gallery. We didn't actually mass produce it." After hearing that I snapped it up. If you happen to own one just like it please keep that info to yourself and allow me to go on happily thinking mine is the only one :-)

Here it is...

Game Art Outsourcing

2007-06-14T11:38:00.000-05:00

The games industry is a fast-moving, ever-evolving beast. The release of new consoles and faster computers open up the potential for even more amazing visuals, placing ever-increasing demands on art production. In order to remain an agile and competitive department we've had to force ourselves to become comfortable with looking beyond the hallways of Big Huge for additional art resources. We used outsourcing to a small degree towards the end of development on Rise of Legends. Nearly all of our building LOD's were sent out of house. The team, while initially cautious, seemed quite happy with the end result. LOD work is not the most exciting of tasks and sending it out allowed internal focus to be placed on much more challenging and interesting work. These days our internal 3D artists often approach their work with the mindset of creating the ideal asset (by "ideal" we mean the item every artist, internal or external, looks to emulate when similar assets are produced). Once the ideal asset is complete then a detailed how-to tutorial is assembled to go along with it. Whereas word docs were the norm during Rise of Legends, these days detailed step-by-step videos are our tutorial documentation tool of choice (see earlier post on Camstudio). Videos of the actual software process along with artist narration provide an easy-to-follow template. Each time we bring a new fulltime hire, contractor, or intern up to speed via the video tutorials we save valuable veteran artists bandwidth. Another way to look at it, one 10 minute video viewed by six fellow artists provides the author with an additional hour's worth of production (NOTE: I asked one of our talented programmers to check my math on that last point and it received a thumbs up). I feel confident that talented artists willing and able to effectively communicate their techniques will be the ones that prosper the most as outsourcing gains increased industry momentum. I can certainly see a day where each and every artist in our department has their own external production staff of three to five individuals that they are charged with leading and directing.

Getting back to present day, at the moment we're working on a couple of art asset heavy titles and have increased the range and amount of tasks that we're comfortable seeking external help on. We've had the most success outsourcing items such as lopoly & hipoly modeling, zbrush, texturing, opening cinematics, icons and LOD creation. In order to streamline our contractor approach we've created a couple of new online tools - a contractor application form and message board. Advertising our application form (located at http://www.bighugeconnect.com/) on various websites and industry-related message boards has provided us with a steady stream of game art applicants. I have an outlook folder where the best of the best submissions are culled and sorted by specialty. Whenever we find ourselves spread too thin internally we simply send a few emails out to applicants previously marked as potential outsourcing partners. With their help more often than not we're able to quickly tame most schedule risks. We've also started a detailed log of how successful, or unsuccessful, our working relationships with external vendors have been. This allows us to favor those that seem happy working with us and that we're happy working with. The second piece of tech that we've added is a contractor message board. Once we sign an external artist up he/she is given a user pass and directed to a private, secure thread where their work assignment awaits (often with previously mentioned tutorial video). Contractors are asked to frequently document their progress via daily updates to that same thread. We in turn keep all feedback and direction documented there. Each side receives instant email notifications to any new posts. So far the message board system with email notification has limited one of the biggest dangers of outsourcing - lost production time due to confusion and poor communication. Recently we've also added an online billing tool that sends clear and consistent contractor payment request to our Operations Department. Additionally we're seeking a dedicated Art Outsourcing Manager that will continue driving it all forward.

Added bonuses of becoming more comfortable with outsourcing - team size flexibility along with additional recruitment opportunities. We can quickly increase our team size at will, reducing the need to carry a large art team in between contracts as well as being able to quickly ramp up art bandwidth. That ability is quite nice when suddenly we find ourselves with more work than we can reasonably handle. On the recruitment end we'll often try a potential fulltime candidate out with some initial contract assingments. The candidate gets to try us on while we try them on. If the resulting work is of high quality and communication is smooth on both sides then it's a promising sign that they'll be happy and productive in a fulltime position.

Areas where we haven't been as successful in outsourcing has been in animation and concept development. We've made it a point to increase our internal capabilities by bolstering the ranks in each of these specialties. Having strong internal concepting skills also has the added bonus of constantly fueling the team's excitement via a steady stream of inspiring visuals.

Here's some business cards that we recently printed up in order to further spread the word about our contractor application site (What are you waiting for? Sign on up, we'd love to work with you!)...

(card back)

(card front)

Character Modeling 2

2007-05-22T13:09:00.001-05:00

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Kevin Lanning's (Epic Games) tutorials on workflows for creating high-polygon and low-polygon Gears of War characters is fantastic. If you're a student interested in a behind the scenes peek of a next-gen character pipeline then don't miss out on this informative resource. CGSociety also recently ran an Artist Profile on Kevin.
In other industry deafening news - Starcraft 2 was announced! I was reduced to a drooling fanboy after checking out their teaser vids. My hopes are high that they've held tight to what worked so well in the original while introducing solid, evolutionary steps in the design and visuals. Starcraft is #2 on my all-time RTS list, just behind the original Command & Conquer (what can I say, I just have soft spot for the C&C 320x240 resolution with 10 pixel tall units. I'm still amazed at how they were able to cram all that animation detail into such a small space. 10 pixel grunts performing push ups and smoking cigarettes while proclaiming "Real tough guy!" was gaming in one its finest hours).
Here's some vids from Blizzard's recent announce...

Next-Gen Hair

2007-05-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

Freelance artist Paul Tosca has written up a detailed tutorial that goes over the hair creation techniques used on his Dominance War 2 entry. It's always nice to see talented folks willing to share their valuable tricks of the trade.

Dominance War 2 Results

2007-05-08T06:47:00.000-05:00

Taehoon Oh, Senior Game Artist over at Infinity Ward, took this year's top prize. Head on over and check out his interview along with some winning entry shots. Congrats Taehoon!
My top pic of the competition was muppet man's q-pid...
During the judging process I continually came back to this creation, discovering new details where the artist went that extra mile. Sure, other entries had flashier, over-the-top normal work or a more intimidating heroic presence, but this piece is masterfully balanced and well executed on all levels. The face is exceptionally well modeled and I appreciate the blend of reference material the artist used to create the heroine (Dallas Bryce Howard and Allysa Millano). On the texture end the UV's are nicely laid out with minimal wasted space. The modeling is clean and efficient with even polygon coverage, letting the normal map take care of the details. Of special note are the time and attention the artist paid to the graphical design elements. The "q-pid" logo along with "love glove" graffiti are just brilliant. The extra attention given to the armour markings and emblems was time well spent. Hats off to Muppet Man!

It's nice to see concept art being added to DW3, details here.

Catan for Xbox360 LIVE Arcade

2007-05-02T08:38:00.000-05:00

The Big Huge Games art team is pleased to celebrate today's release of Catan for Xbox360 Live Arcade by sharing some behind-the-scenes imagery. Head over to our post on ConceptArt.org (large thread, scroll to down for Catan material) for a sampling of avatar, card, logo, etc... artwork from our debut foray into LIVE Arcade territory.

CamStudio

2007-04-29T06:17:00.000-05:00

In game development, as in most other things, it's often the simplest of things that can have the biggest impact. Lately the BHG art team has latched on to CamStudio, a piece of shareware that has substantially improved the way in which we communicate with fellow artists as well as with other departments. Artists now regularly post "Do Not Disturb - RECORDING IN PROGRESS" signs on their door, hook up microphones and record Max and Zbrush tips and workflows.

We've began compiling a library of these recordings and it's turned into an efficient way to acclimate new hires and interns to our processes. Another huge benefit to our current project has been sending artist created videos over to our tools development team. Artists have pointed out particular workflows and tools in software that they're already comfortable with and programmers use the vids as a development guide. I've seen programmers scrubbing these vids back and forth, then pausing to code, then back to the vid for more scrubbing. Our proprietary Big Huge Engine tools that have been created as a result of this process have required far less back and forth communication between programmer and art end users. More importantly the tools are generally more art-friendly and familiar right out of the gate. I predict when it comes time to post-mortem our current project we'll place CamStudio video creation on the "What Went Right" list.

Starcraft Origami

2007-04-20T14:55:00.000-05:00

And now for something off-the-beaten path but still very much game-art related... Starcraft Origami!

More shots here.
A Big Huge game designer remarked, "Is it sad that I can identify all the units here? Or just a testament to the skill of the artist? Maybe more sad because I spent time figuring out that the Terran/Protoss combo was going to win in this battle."

Big Huge Art Challenge

2007-04-16T11:22:00.000-05:00

Big Huge has teamed up with gameartisans.org, the creators of The Dominance War game competition, to bring you the Big Huge Art Challenge. The contest consists of two sections, one for 3D character creation and another for concept art. The prize pool includes an Xbox 360 ELITE, Wii, PSPs, Catan T-Shirts, Rise of Legends posters, cash and more. (Full prize details here)

The Competition Brief: Shadow of the Colossus. God of War. The most memorable scenes in these games evoke images of a vast character scale difference that creates a compelling and over-the-top dramatic feel. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to design, model, texture and pose a character whose scale is enormous, gargantuan, and INSANELY HUGE. Anything goes as far as subject matter, be it robotic, organic, man-made, monstrous, animalistic or any creative mix in-between. To clearly convey scale, an average-sized human should be clearly depicted in the final work. (Full brief details here)

There's a lively forum discussion underway here. The contest went live today and there are already a few entries.

Spectrum 14 Selection

2007-04-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

We received news today that one of our marketing pieces from Rise of Legends has been selected for publication in Spectrum 14: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. The collection will be published by Underwood Books in November. According to Irene Gallo over at The Art Department there were nearly 7,000 entries this year. The Big Huge art team is proud to share in this honor with the incredibly talented group over at Blur who, in addition to the RoL opening cinematic, were responsible for the advertisement print campaign finished renderings. The full list of this year's participants is available here. Having Rise of Legends imagery recognized in the same field as work from Brom, Jon Foster, James Jean, and Dave McKean among others is quite cool. Here's the piece that made the final cut...

And for some behind-the-scenes imagery here's Blur's final concept mockup...

The above was based on Rise of Legends game concepts from Big Huge artists Ted Terranova and Jay Gillen...

Vinci Musketeer

Vinci Scout Flyer

Vinci Weaponry

GDC 2007 Wrap-up Part Two

2007-03-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

One of the more technically informative talks of the show came from Alexandre Amancio (Art Director, Ubisoft Montreal) entitled Re-thinking the Visual Pipeline for Next-Gen Games. The top takeaway dealt with texture usage as Alexandre warned that many art teams were making the mistake of incorrectly gauging next gen texture budgets. While this round of consoles generally allow for considerably more polys, video memory constraints remain a tricky hurdle and require the use of creative, multi-use textures in order to maintain crisp visual fidelity. He went on to warn that failure to heed texture budgets would inevitably lead to a painful collision course with harsh reality in the final months of a game's production. During this time he's seen stellar looking titles lose a great deal of their sparkle as teams scramble to bring their texture usage within budget.

A few other random session takeaways:

Distant Shots: diffuse is king, drop all other texture usage
Mid Distance: normal map is the primary driver of detail
Up Close Micro Level: specular map is the key to generating believable texture and grain detail
To enhance most any normal map create a render clouds photoshop image, run that image through the NVidia photoshop normal plugin, then overlay the resulting normal over your initial normal map to give it more variation.
The same specular map can be used for most all characters
Baking in ambient occlusion to vertex info gives credibility to an object (we used this technique in our building pipeline for Rise of Legends and were quite pleased with the results)

And finally to round out this report, the show demo that created the most buzz with the Big Huge art team was Crytek's CryEngine2. While I'm generally not all that jazzed over games that aim for a strict photographic visual approach I couldn't help but be drawn into their world and ogle the tech. Here's a video that highlights a number of their engine features including examples of dynamic soft shadows, real-time ambient maps, parallax occlusion mapping, and their signature breakable vegetation system...

GDC 2007 Wrap-up Part One

2007-03-15T20:48:00.000-05:00

This year's GDC was all that was hoped for. The Big Huge art contingent returned with notebooks chock full of valuable tips in art, marketing, management and recruiting. Part one of my wrap-up deals with the first talk attended, Merging Art and Marketing: A Look Inside the Gears of War Marketing Effort.

A few key takeaways...

Exercise extreme quality control with the early visual material you release on the web. Less is always more (marketing will always be asking for more) and images live forever on the net.
Drill down on marketing material due dates with the publisher in order to minimize last minute requests.
The art team must be committed from the start of the project for a great deal of marketing work in order to deliver a successful campaign. For example Marcus, along with the other main GoW players, had considerably larger textures than the rest of the game characters. This allowed him to hold up when rendered out for print.
Programmers should also support the marketing effort. Epic implemented a tiled billboard renderer. My notes say 90,000 x 75,000 pixels were rendered for one particular in-game shot. I may have added an extra zero, though I *think* that's what was said :-)
The goal of the Mad World trailer was to expand audience interest beyond the traditional action trailer. I think they nailed it with an outstanding use of non-traditional scoring. IMO, best game advert ever...

Stay tuned for part two...

Dominance War II

2007-03-05T21:19:00.000-05:00

Fredrik Hultqvist over at http://www.dominancewar.com/ has asked me to participate in the judging panel for this year's Dominance War II. I'm a huge fan of the competition and was honored to accept Fred's invitation. Last year's contest attracted a wealth of talented game art veterans, with Vitaliy Naymushin taking first prize with General Corum. Currently DWII is well underway with hundreds of submissions vying for $10,000 in cash and prizes.

GDC '07

2007-03-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

I've finalized my schedule for this week's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. As Big Huge gears up for a next-gen console RPG (led on the design end by Ken Rolston of Oblivion and Morrowind fame) we'll be paying especially close attention this year to any and all next-gen-console art pipeline tips and tricks. Oh, and we'll of course be making it over to the IGDA, Sony and Microsoft XNA parties as it wouldn't be GDC without over-the-top, late-night festivities. Keep an eye out here for pics and reports from the show.

Here's a quick rundown of the presentations I'll be attending...
Merging Art and Marketing: A Look Inside the Gears of War Visual Marketing Effort
Tech Art: Filling the Gaps in the Artist Driven Shader Pipeline
Lead Artists/Art Directors Roundtable (Wed)
High-Def Outdoor Environments
Art Department Confidential
It's More Than Making Coffee: Interns - How to Grow Your Team From the Ground Up
Re-thinking the Visual Pipeline for Next-Gen Games
Autodesk 3ds Max 9: Techniques and Strategies for Real-Time Shaders
Art Direction Vision: Defining, Communicating, and Delivering It
Lead Artists/Art Directors Roundtable (Fri)
Click here for a more detailed schedule overview.