Direction

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This page covers key thinking I apply to the role of Art director.

I want to translate my passion for gaming into every project.

My aim is to deliver beautifully crafted innovative games.

For me creative leadership has to engage, inspire and unite.


      

1. Making games should be fun

This motley bunch were created by the Playfish art team. In many ways they reflect the unique spirit of Playfish's art team and my personal attitude to game development: Making games is hard work but fun.

A team that enjoys their work makes a huge difference to the quality of a project. To fuel this approach I try to foster a friendly, positive and dynamic working environment.

Playfish became part of the Maxis group in 2011. We enthusiastically embraced their ethos of "Play with life" and the companies leaning towards simulation.  On this early project my aim was develop a humorous style that supported the games urban setting and its fun simulation game play.  We wanted to appeal to adults, be culturally complex and avoid traditional game cliché's.

The whole art team gathered to brainstorm key characters, nothing was off the table, all suggestions were explored. Beyond being fun workshops the results were charming, interesting and original for the market. 

    


    

2. Plan to be ahead of the pack

Two example images that capture Playfish's experimental style explorations.

I am a huge believer in combining conceptual innovation with mass market sensibilities. A game has to stand out from the crowd, ideally above the crowd.

To succeed innovation needs to be presented in an accessible and engaging way, and ideally it has to be associated with a polished, good value product.  Honest communication gets players listening to you, high quality control will then earn their trust, earn that and you can create a long term supporter.

I'm a strong believer that a full time Research and Development group is an ideal incubator for such thinking.  Everything from early style prototypes to dev tools can accelerate a projects development, creating valuable extra time to implement progressive features and apply polish. In my experience R & D is the one group many game companies fail to establish yet it's the key to being a market leader.

The images above highlight the "texture and visual depth" research phase for a tablet project. Because this process was designed to deliver visual innovation it eventually created a large amount of exploratory art, more than one projects worth style wise. 

    


3. Be water, my friend 

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. Be water, my friend
— Bruce Lee

    

Yes it's a quote but it's mega bad ass Bruce Lee and it's something I passionately agree with. My creative skills are defined and driven by each new project. A truly effective team should have the potential to adapt and evolve, be that creatively or technically. Personal and artistic growth are key factors in why I make games and I want to inspire my team to feel the same way - it's not just a job, we're here to improve every day.

If I can hire the best artists and share their knowledge across the team I've done my job right. I want my team to level up with every project. A creatively flexible team can always adapt to industry trends, the aim is to move effortlessly through genres and styles, no challenge too great.

The group below are an interpretation of the Sims Social character style. Even though Playfish was known for cute characters like the examples above, I wanted to deliver strong adult orientated personalities for this post Sims social project. The same art team developed the mature style in just three weeks. Again we tried to tap into modern tropes and cliché's so the demographic connected directly with the games setting. 


4. A clear vision

Working with Senior Art Director Duncan Brown I regularly collected and documented all prototyping work for Maxis HQ.

Covering character design, environmental art and UI we wanted to clearly explain the AD's thinking, the design process, why we aligned with particular styles and how our choices related to the market.

High quality control, creative visibility and regular honest communication between departments are the backbone of efficient game development.

Once a project moved past prototyping I worked with the Lead Artist and UI Lead Artist to create documentation defining every aspect of the game related to art.

Because this particular project was quite large, this set of documents covered everything from an artistic style guide through to a technical asset importing guide.


     

The above is a very light overview and there's plenty more I'd like to cover but.... 

EA owns it. Playfish was a particularly productive company, over a year of tablet prototyping we created a highly varied selection of game designs. Due to them being owned by EA I cannot go into any depth about particular projects. I am happy to talk about future positions in person or via email. Thanks for reading.