Creativity - The game artist

I sometimes feel that on this course I cant be as creative as I want to be in my projects. But if I do get a job in the creative industries how much creative freedom will I actually have?

Seeing as on this course our goal is to earn a career as a game artist; we've had a few people talk to us about what working as a game artist is like. When Ben Mathis gave a lecture he talked about his experience working as a game artist as well as his own personal projects. He commented on how the work he did as a game artist was very controlled and he had very little creative freedom when it came to designing assets for the games he would work on. All the design decisions are made by the art director so if an artist designs a character and the director believes it doent fit well in the game it will be scrapped or the artist will be asked to alter it. This constant critiquing from the art director could be tiring for a game artist, in fact Ben Mathis said he would often come home after work and redo something he had designed that day how he would have made it if it was his own game.

Ben Mathis said he though rather than having an art director it would be better to just have a team of artists working together to come up with ideas and making decisions as a group. This would allow the artists to be much more creative and would make their jobs a lot more satisfying, but would this benefit the game? Having an art director surely helps to maintain a certain level of quality and consistensy throughout the look of the game. An art director is able to look at the game as a whole and see how well certain bits fit in. The art director is responsible for all the art that goes into a game. Their job is to ensure that all art within the game matches the artistic style and quality standard that they have set, and they also help to organize the team and help make sure the project is completed on time.

Because of the constraints of time and money; creativity of the game artist is tightly controlled. But I imagine this is true of other parts of the game production process. How creative is the music composer allowed to be? I suppose it all depends on the game director and the type of game that is being made. The least creative type of game I can think of would be a game based on a film. All the character designs, landscapes, music, storyline is already there in the film so there is very little creativity needed in the design process and I suppose thats how developers manage to get those games out so quickly. And games that allow the most creativity are the the more ambitious games that usually come from bigger developers that have more time and money to spend on the design process.