London plays host to gaming industry
This past November the Forest City was host to Digital Interactive Gaming London.
The gaming industry conference held keynotes and discussions, and brought in many game developers from across the country to the London Convention Centre.
Canadian developers at the event reined from Montreal to Vancouver, as well as local game development studios Digital Extremes of London, developer of “Dark Sector,” and Silicon Knights of St. Catherines, developer of “Too Human.”
The first event of the conference was a presentation by David Taylor, an art director on “Need for Speed: Undercover” out of EA's Vancouver studio. The presentation was a fascinating look at what it means to be an art director in the video games industry, detailing many of the meticulous and difficult duties of art directors. I caught up with David after his hour-long presentation, to well over 200 industry guests and post-secondary students, and asked him a few questions about being an art director and his presentation.
Interrobang: What is the career path for an art director?
Taylor: Generally depending on what industry you're in, art directors share responsibilities with other careers, so you can come in from a lateral career, like advertising or film or post-production, but in terms of game development it's around about 10 years experience.
You've got to have made a lot of mistakes before you become an art director because I think at that level every mistake is extremely expensive. Within EA our art directors normally have between 10 and 20 years games experience and that doesn't mean you don't get any opportunity to have an input on art direction before that. So you know, after five or six years you may be leading a group of people on the visual look of a certain part of the environment or the look of the characters, but in terms of overall art directions of the product, it's around about 10 years.
Interrobang: How much of your education is a result of working in the industry?
Taylor: There's a few good found foundations you get from Fine Art, but I would say most of it comes from within the industry. I think it gives you a level of confidence to come in with your educational background, but then it's making mistakes and learning from them.
Interrobang: In the past, concept art has been mostly drawn, but as you pointed out a lot of it is now photography, do you see this as a growing trend?
Taylor: It depends what the concept art is for. If it's for character design or vehicle design or something, of course illustration is perfect for it, but if you're trying to convey mode lighting, anything that relies on a concept of realism, map painting is probably the way to go. The actual concept we developed was not from photographs, that's all map painting. There's no point in kind of just painting light with a brush and saying that's what our lighting is going to look like because that often doesn't translate well to 3D.
More presentations followed Taylor's throughout the day and I tried to get more interviews. We were unfortunately turned down for interviews with both Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack and Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond, however all was not lost.
I was introduced to Ubisoft Montreal's communications manager who broke it to us that Jade wasn't going to be available to anyone for interviews, so we started talking to him instead. We talked about Ubisoft's recently released “Prince of Persia,” jobs in the industry, and mentioning that I myself am aspiring to be a video games journalist; we even got invited to be on Ubisoft's press list. Shortly after the event Ubisoft actually sent us our first press release--which is unfortunately old news now--and confirmed that they will happily send us review copies of their future games to review for the Interrobang.
This was the first year of DIG London, and spirits were high as the day rolled on with more presentations and hosted discussions between developer heads for the conference to return for 2009.
I certainly hope so, and I'm already thankful for the event this year. Walking out of the London Convention Centre it was obvious that I wasn't the only one with that on my mind.
The gaming industry conference held keynotes and discussions, and brought in many game developers from across the country to the London Convention Centre.
Canadian developers at the event reined from Montreal to Vancouver, as well as local game development studios Digital Extremes of London, developer of “Dark Sector,” and Silicon Knights of St. Catherines, developer of “Too Human.”
The first event of the conference was a presentation by David Taylor, an art director on “Need for Speed: Undercover” out of EA's Vancouver studio. The presentation was a fascinating look at what it means to be an art director in the video games industry, detailing many of the meticulous and difficult duties of art directors. I caught up with David after his hour-long presentation, to well over 200 industry guests and post-secondary students, and asked him a few questions about being an art director and his presentation.
Interrobang: What is the career path for an art director?
Taylor: Generally depending on what industry you're in, art directors share responsibilities with other careers, so you can come in from a lateral career, like advertising or film or post-production, but in terms of game development it's around about 10 years experience.
You've got to have made a lot of mistakes before you become an art director because I think at that level every mistake is extremely expensive. Within EA our art directors normally have between 10 and 20 years games experience and that doesn't mean you don't get any opportunity to have an input on art direction before that. So you know, after five or six years you may be leading a group of people on the visual look of a certain part of the environment or the look of the characters, but in terms of overall art directions of the product, it's around about 10 years.
Interrobang: How much of your education is a result of working in the industry?
Taylor: There's a few good found foundations you get from Fine Art, but I would say most of it comes from within the industry. I think it gives you a level of confidence to come in with your educational background, but then it's making mistakes and learning from them.
Interrobang: In the past, concept art has been mostly drawn, but as you pointed out a lot of it is now photography, do you see this as a growing trend?
Taylor: It depends what the concept art is for. If it's for character design or vehicle design or something, of course illustration is perfect for it, but if you're trying to convey mode lighting, anything that relies on a concept of realism, map painting is probably the way to go. The actual concept we developed was not from photographs, that's all map painting. There's no point in kind of just painting light with a brush and saying that's what our lighting is going to look like because that often doesn't translate well to 3D.
More presentations followed Taylor's throughout the day and I tried to get more interviews. We were unfortunately turned down for interviews with both Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack and Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond, however all was not lost.
I was introduced to Ubisoft Montreal's communications manager who broke it to us that Jade wasn't going to be available to anyone for interviews, so we started talking to him instead. We talked about Ubisoft's recently released “Prince of Persia,” jobs in the industry, and mentioning that I myself am aspiring to be a video games journalist; we even got invited to be on Ubisoft's press list. Shortly after the event Ubisoft actually sent us our first press release--which is unfortunately old news now--and confirmed that they will happily send us review copies of their future games to review for the Interrobang.
This was the first year of DIG London, and spirits were high as the day rolled on with more presentations and hosted discussions between developer heads for the conference to return for 2009.
I certainly hope so, and I'm already thankful for the event this year. Walking out of the London Convention Centre it was obvious that I wasn't the only one with that on my mind.
