Week 7 Assignment

Art direction has always been an interesting profession to me, as really art directors are the core designers of the project. The impression that i've recieved about art directors is that they get the freedom to set their own design as a baseline for other artists, in which they work around and further develop the original idea. I think this is great as this shows that the art director isn't limited to just his designs, but gains the points of view of others that the director may not have thought of, that could be complementary to their original design.

However this position also proves that the art director has a great responsibility as they are afterall the leading creative designer. Even though the art director is the main artistic creator this doesn't mean they are at the highest level of the heirarchy. They would have to answer to artist managers who set budgets and deadlines, then we have the developers of the original idea for the project. A good example of this (at least in film) was a documentary i watch on the creation of General Grievous in the latest Star Wars film, in which George Lucas Would approve certain designs for the character and whittle them down to his favourite pieces.

Nonetheless I do think there are subtle difference between the game and film industries of art direction. With film i think that Art direction is simply just creating the foundation and directing ideas. Whereas with game there seems to be more involvement. Like for example the art director Phillip Bossant would have to do playtest and sort out coding issues, which would even occur in the film industry.

I think that a key aspect to becoming a good art director is communication. Communication is vital because an art director doesn't create designs solely on their own presonal creations, but is rather a gather of others ideas. Therefore good communication and relationships between co workers is very important, as essentially a better relationship will result in higher motivation leading to greater results from their peers. This is one of the main resaons why I think that any industry that employs art directors prefer experienced workers of the field, as an art director doesn't just have the resposibility of being a creative thinker but also needs to be confident, a good communicator and have the ability to take risks.