I guess you could call the art director the supervisor for the art team. He/She is expected to stretch the capabilities of the team to ensure a high quality outcome and to set standards. The Art Director will probably rarely create a piece of art on paper, but in their head, and explaining the ideas with the team, who then expand it further.
Other Responsibilities include working with the recruitment team to ensure that the art team is the best they can get, mentor less experienced artists and delivering constructive feedback on the ideas produced. Aswell as being an exceptional artist, you also need to have very strong communication skills. You will constantly be giving feedback and advice, aswell as being able to problem solve and make effective decisions.
As for myself, i would rather be an artist, rather than the director or manager, as you get to produce more artwork/models, which is what i enjoy. Also due to the face that my verbal communication skills aren't brilliant to be honest, mainly due to lack of self confidence.
Fiat 500
Ok then, ive really wanted to get used to 3d max so i've followed a lot of tutorials recently at http://www.3dtotal.com/ . I've been working of the fiat 500 tutorial over the past week and this is what i have so far:
There is still a lot to do including the windscreen, boot and detailing.
Organic Creature
For my creature i decided to create an evil slug. This was my first shot at a digital painting and i'm fairly proud of it, took me almost 2 hours. I really need to get a graphics tablet too.
Im also working on another version of it looking calm and not very dangerous, therefore it will be called the underestimated slug.
Game Design
So, Game design, one of the largest and most important parts of the creation of a game. Back in the early days, most games were looked apon and praised, with little critisism as they had nothing to compare it with, unlike today. There are hundreds of thousands of games out in the self and game designers have a tough time creating something unique. Think about it, games such as crysis may look rather pretty, but deep inside that thick makeup is an average FPS, you go around each level shooting people/aliens, end of. Obviously each game has some small areas which help it stand out, using crysis again as an example, you have a super duper suit which can make you invisble, or super fast, all this makes the gameplay more enjoyable.
Speaking of gameplay, i personally fell this is the most important factor of a game, sure its nice to have realistic graphics and fancy explosions and so on, but whats the point if its boring to play? Back at home, every now and again i'd stand up an look through my shelf of PC games, and in the corner covered in dust would be a classic, such as Diablo 2. Man I love that game and still do. I still play it to this date, even though it is almost 9 years old now, and 2D (even though the levels were made rather well, so it looked 3D). The controls make it easy to play, and many shortcut keys can be made for advance players. The option to play as one of 7 characters and the fact you can go through it on 3 difficulty levels makes the replay value great. The weapon and item generator makes it so you dont always find the same sword in every single play through, there are literaly hundreds of unique/magic/rare/set piece swords, bow, staffs etc out there.
Speaking of gameplay, i personally fell this is the most important factor of a game, sure its nice to have realistic graphics and fancy explosions and so on, but whats the point if its boring to play? Back at home, every now and again i'd stand up an look through my shelf of PC games, and in the corner covered in dust would be a classic, such as Diablo 2. Man I love that game and still do. I still play it to this date, even though it is almost 9 years old now, and 2D (even though the levels were made rather well, so it looked 3D). The controls make it easy to play, and many shortcut keys can be made for advance players. The option to play as one of 7 characters and the fact you can go through it on 3 difficulty levels makes the replay value great. The weapon and item generator makes it so you dont always find the same sword in every single play through, there are literaly hundreds of unique/magic/rare/set piece swords, bow, staffs etc out there.
My Sorc smakin' some fools
Anyway, although game designers have a tough job of thinking of something new, they do have a lot more technology to work with, to make ideas work. One of the best advances is the amount of storage space avalible on disc. Sony's PS3 now uses Blu-ray to put their games on. These allow upto 25GB worth of data. This enables the game design to think of many more bits abd pieces to make the game more unique. Sony are currently working of a double sided blu-ray disc, capable of storing upto 50GB worth of data. Just think, with all that space you could merge 1 of each game of a different genre together and make something wild. But that would be stupid...or would it?
Previews, reviews and comment - Writing about Games
Many games that are released to the public tend to be reviewed by critics. When i say critics, this doesnt just mean someone who is an expert with the theory of games, but gamers themselves. You see many internet websites and forums where gamers can rant on about the last game, and others where each area of a game is analysed by a professional.
The trouble some reviewers have is the fact that many games can be very similar, especially first person shooters, reviewers have to try and pick out small areas which are unique to the game, Aswell as this, there is the problem that people are only interested in a certain genre or franchise, otherwise known as Fanboys. You can often find reviews of well known games such as Halo or Call of Duty, with comments saying that the reviewer is completly wrong, usually along the lines of this: "omg halo 3 rulz, i give it 10/10, not 7/10 you n00b". On the other hand people who dislike a genre may say that it is a terrible game and should be rated 1/10, when clearly it shouldn't be. This can often irritate employees who write these reviews as a lot of effort can be put into them, on average, sixty thousand words are produced to fill a 150 page magazine, baring in mind this has to be done in 19 working days. Due to the amount of the work load that needs to be completed, some reviews tend to be rushed, therefore they can't focus a great deal on the subject.
However, not everyone creates written reviews, there are some people who create video reviews. The one reviewer that stands out the most for me is a man known as 'Yahtzee' who creates the zeropunctuation reviews. The fast talking along with a simple flash animation to go with it makes it incredibly fun to watch, mainly because they are simply hillarious. If you don't know who I am on about click on the link below and enjoy :)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
The trouble some reviewers have is the fact that many games can be very similar, especially first person shooters, reviewers have to try and pick out small areas which are unique to the game, Aswell as this, there is the problem that people are only interested in a certain genre or franchise, otherwise known as Fanboys. You can often find reviews of well known games such as Halo or Call of Duty, with comments saying that the reviewer is completly wrong, usually along the lines of this: "omg halo 3 rulz, i give it 10/10, not 7/10 you n00b". On the other hand people who dislike a genre may say that it is a terrible game and should be rated 1/10, when clearly it shouldn't be. This can often irritate employees who write these reviews as a lot of effort can be put into them, on average, sixty thousand words are produced to fill a 150 page magazine, baring in mind this has to be done in 19 working days. Due to the amount of the work load that needs to be completed, some reviews tend to be rushed, therefore they can't focus a great deal on the subject.
However, not everyone creates written reviews, there are some people who create video reviews. The one reviewer that stands out the most for me is a man known as 'Yahtzee' who creates the zeropunctuation reviews. The fast talking along with a simple flash animation to go with it makes it incredibly fun to watch, mainly because they are simply hillarious. If you don't know who I am on about click on the link below and enjoy :)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
My TF2 Map - cp_defcon
Well over the past couple of months i have been slowly working on my own map for Team Fortress 2. For those of you who are familiar with tf2 it is a 3cp map, similar to cp_gravel pit, where A and B have to be captured before C is unlocked. It is based in the desert where RED have set up a missile facility in an old mining area. BLU realise this as a threat and plan to capture the area. Here's some screenies. There is still a lot of detailing to be done, such as the 3d skybox and the tops of the cliffs, aswell as fixing all the graphical bugs you may see. 
Here's the link to the rest of the screenshots, which are at a higher resolution :)
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