Visual Arts
Looking for a great way to put your digital art skills to use? You've come to the right place. Along with the film industry, the games industry is one of the fastest growing places to build your career as an artist. Traditional hand skills and digital know-how are both in demand. Artists who want challenging creative work that's fast-paced, collaborative, and fun, should check here first.

Salary Info

Low: $57,000 (artist with 1-2 years experience)
High: $68,000 (lead artist/art director with 6+ years experience)
Average: $58,500
Highest: $200,000

Artist Sub-Types

• Intern Artist
• 3D Model Builder (objects)
• 2D Conceptual Artist
• 2D Texture Artist
• 3D Cutscene Artist
• 3D Character Builder
• 3D Character Animator
• Level Builder
• Art Director
• Art Technician

Intern Artist
As an intern artist you'll start your game career with very basic skills, but with great passion and talent. The team at your first job will teach you the craft as practiced at that company - you will be expected to learn the particular way it's done there among all the possible ways to do it. It's not glamorous, and it doesn't pay much, but it's a great way to get the foot in the door. As the most junior member of the art team, you will be expected to do a lot of the 'grunt work' and take a lot of the less rewarding tasks. Nevertheless, it's much easier from the inside to find opportunities to demonstrate your talent, and to learn the latest graphics tools. Stick with it, do good work, and you'll soon be given a more creative role, and probably offered a job with the company. At very least, you'll have real game credits to add to your portfolio.

3D Model Builder (Objects)
Like an industrial designer, the 3D object specialist designs physical objects, like vehicles, furniture, weapons, and the like. To be a 3D model builder you should be very organized and be able to build models quicker and quicker over time as you generate a good library of basic pieces. You also need to know "when to say when" - the amount of detail appropriate for a feature film and visible in the software is not necessarily going to be visible in the game. So you have to develop a sense of what's possible, and stop yourself before you waste time on unnoticeable details. The best object builders have some training in industrial or mechanical design, and therefore understand machinery, balance, gearing, materials science, and other elements of physical engineering. If you have the knack and the training, model building is a rewarding, focused job with a major impact on the game.

2D Conceptual Artist
If you love to invent worlds, people and creatures on paper, then Concept Artist might be just the job for you. A good video game conceptual artist needs the classic "hand skills" of the traditional artist to generate high quality images quickly - images that will inspire the team and might even be used as temporary art in the game. You'll need to especially good at 'perspective style' artwork and real and organic architecture. You might also create storyboards for movie sequences, so you'll need to be able to sketch important movie elements quickly without getting bogged in unnecessary detail. You will probably not create any actual in-game art, but will be responsible for the basic 'look' of many things. In design brainstorming sessions you'll sketch out ideas on the fly. At the beginning of the project, you'll create a lot of the art that appears in design document, and at the end, your art may be featured on the web site and in the manual.

2D Texture Artist
As a texture specialist, your job is to design the visible surfaces that cover the architecture, environments, creatures and objects in a 3D game. From the marble wall, to the faces of the characters, to the reptilian skin of the local fauna, the believability of the world will depend on you. Your primary tools are Photoshop and a 3D program, and you'll work closely with the 3D background artist. There are a few different techniques commonly used to create textures; you'll need to know all of them, and be able to choose the best one for a particular job. Some of the more common methods you'll use are photo manipulation, hand painting, flattening detailed models, algorithmic textures, and bump mapping. Finally, you'll work with the 3D modelers to devise ways to increase the speed of the game by reducing polygon count with clever texturing.

3D Cutscene Artist
Working with the conceptual artists, you'll follow a storyboard to generate a high quality cinematic movie sequence, either through prerendered full-screen animation, or with in-game scripted scenes using the game's engine. All linear cutscenes (non-interactive exposition in the game) require virtual camera movement, lighting, character and object animation, special effects, backgrounds, and props. You'll work with a sub-team of artists to develop these scenes, while concentrating on your own specialty. This part of game development is most similar to traditional film animation, and in fact, pre-rendered scenes may be outsourced to an animation company rather than produced by the game team itself. In-game cutscenes are usually produced by the game team, and may be created during a cycle in the overall development of the game rather than by a specific person on the team.

3D Character Builder
As a 3D Character Builder you'll create the characters in the game, which could be either low or high-resolution models depending upon the platform and the design of the game. With the new consoles there is less distinction between those two versions; though game characters are still not as highly detailed as pre-rendered ones, they're very close. To create the characters, you'll work closely with concept artists and programmers, and possibly external license holders, to translate concept art into 3D game characters. This may or may not include texturing and animating the character, but you will still need to be familiar with the entire animation process in order to generate a character that will move naturally after bones are added. You should also have a thorough understanding of animal and human anatomy in order to make fantastic characters believable. A new tool available to 3D builders is the 3D scanner - a physical model of the creature made by a sculptor is scanned into the computer and "cleaned up" and textured by an artist.

3D Character Animator
Much like a traditional cel animator from the 2D animation world, the 3D character animator must be thoroughly familiar with, and have a gut sense for, creature locomotion and human expression. The most beautifully built character in the world will look terrible if it is poorly animated, and appears to lack weight, momentum, or personality. An added challenge of 3D character animating is that it often requires lifelike and naturalistic movement from realistic-looking creatures and people. The realistic aesthetic forgoes the exaggeration and key poses that are the hallmarks of expression in 2D animation. Motion capture is finding its way into the games industry, breeding a sub-specialty of animation. After an actor is mo-capped, the character animator applies the movement to the game character, hand-repairing and enhancing the action to look realistic and natural.

Level Builder
Depending on the software packages used to create the game, there may be a need for an artist skilled in one of the common 3D packages, such as 3DSMax, to lay out the levels that have been designed by the designers. This position generally entails less responsibility than either the 3D artist or the world designer, but combines aspects of both. On big teams, you'll work closely with the level designer to place structures, objects, and characters into the actual game levels. You'll also handle technical details like fixing seams if things don't join up properly, setting triggers for doors/characters and testing to make sure the level plays the way it's supposed to. For someone with basic training in the appropriate 3D packages, this can be a great way to get into either the design or art teams. However, many companies use proprietary world building tools rather than high-end 3D packages to create their basic game architecture, so it's not as widespread as most other art roles.

Art Director
By the time you've worked your way up to Art Director, you're the guru that knows all tools, technologies and methods. In addition, your creative ideas and artistic ability can inspire by example, and if need be, you can step in to fix problems as they come up throughout the production cycle. At this level of achievement you can spot subtle problems in someone's work, quickly identify how to fix them, and tactfully communicate those changes to the artist. You'll work closely with the producer & designer to manage the throughput of the art team, and will be a defender, negotiator, and motivator for the artists. This is the highest ranking art job, but it's not for everyone, because you'll spend a lot of time in meetings and managing people, and little to no time creating art. If you're the Animation director, you'll do these things with a focus on the animating artists, especially character animators. To fulfill that role, you must completely understand classical animation, motion capture techniques and tools.

Art Technician
The Art Tech is a problem-solver and troubleshooter among the artists, using your years of acquired wisdom to help art teams overcome technological obstacles and software quirks. You will help interface between the artists, the programmers, and management when it comes to software and hardware issues. If your company's games include pre-rendered movie sequences, you may be responsible for managing and scheduling the server farm - the network of computers that does the "heavy lifting" to render these movies. Often, the art tech is the art department's software and hardware buyer, serving as the liaison with graphics software companies to help corporate management decide which software packages to buy -- an important job when each "seat" of software and hardware can cost tens of thousands of dollars! To be an art tech, you must be extremely knowledgeable in the art packages (especially 3D) that are used in your company, and in any content tools or plug-ins used by the game engine. Teaching and communication skills are also important, in order to answer questions and share techniques effectively with the project teams.