What I Have Learned in Game Art

Being in the Game Art Major for 2 years now I have collected a vast amount of understanding about the career path I have chosen to take. Much more compared to when I first walked into Ringling. Yes, When I was a freshman I had some form of understanding of what I would need to accomplish by senior year. I would have to learn how to comprehend color, value, and perspective to best illustrate my concepts, model characters, objects, environments, animate motion, and much more to complete my senior thesis. However, this sophomore year within the first month of being in class I have discovered there is much more to it.

A couple of the biggest things in sophomore year that I have learned is how much thinking and planning that goes into a game, even in it's raw stages. Sometimes to best illustrate your concept you have to get inspiration from the world around you, which requires an understanding of what you want and how to get resources of it. While I knew good communication and body language would be a positive asset in such a communication based work field, I never considered how vital it would be. If I was still a soft spoken student with a meek body language, I would not have made it through freshman year. Additionally there is so much organization into the game's levels, it obstacles, it's rules, it's end goal, and how it makes the player feel. The end goal of a game company is to make a game that the player would walk away from with satisfaction of completion, but it is not always obvious what will make the player feel satisfied. Sometimes that idea is a shot in the dark, and it is up to the game company to come up with the best guess.