Games Art and Design at Murdoch University
The Bachelor of Creative Media in Games Art and Design concentrates on three main production roles : Production Artist, Concept Artist, and Games Designer. Each role has very different job requirements and the Games Art and Design major deals with all three.
Designers make the game’s levels hard enough but not too hard, talk to consumers in focus groups and collaborate with programmers and artists to keep the vision coherent. Senior designers make difficult decisions about adding or cutting features to make deadlines and how to re-work an Xbox game being ported to iPhones. Rarely do they get paid to think about brand-new game ideas. Skills: communication. Game design. Creative idea development. Leadership.
Concept Artists convert designer’s vague words into concrete images. They sketch both ‘visionary’ concept art and detailed, “blueprint” type drawings rapidly and consistently. Production Artists depend on these drawings to build their models in a style that matches the designer’s original vision. Skills: 80% “raw” drawing & painting skill. 20% Visual interpretation and communication.
Production Artists are the ‘worker bees’ of game art: they create assets such as 3D models of monsters, and sword swing animations. Their job titles include: 3D modellers, animators, and “true” tech artists (writing scripts and helping modellers). Skills: software; 3D modelling; animation; 2D painting
THE STAFF
Brad Power- “My previous industry experience was as the Lead Designer at the Perth studio of AAA developer Interzone Games. I am also a member of a local independent games development company: RocketHands. My research interests include artificial intelligence and emergent game systems, and the psychology of game design and user interface design, with respect to gameplay ramifications.”
For more information on Games Art and Design at Murdoch, visit https://www.murdoch.edu.au/study/courses/undergraduate/mj-gmad