One of the main job responsibilities for me as art director at Lodestone Games was to ensure that the art team had a consistent vision of the art assets that needed to be created for the game project(s) on which we were working. Given the complexity of game development, static 3D artwork, character 3D artwork, textures, texture formats, particle FX, game engine data formats, etc… the consistent vision the art team needed to understand went above and beyond the look and feel of the game. The art design specification documents I created gave the artists a single game-specific document that contained relevant information on:
- Look and feel, including both high level art concepts and specific detail for individual assets.
- Level design.
- Construction specifications (polygon counts, number of LODs, number of bones, etc…)
- Scale, orientation, and measurement units to be used in the 3D modeler of choice.
- Proper data formats to be used for 3D and 2D assets.
- Locations for gathering the required in house and third party plugins that will be used for the product.
- Information on in-house tools that will be used in the design process.
- Final delivery specifications.
Art design documents are not a replacement for the overall game design. They are a distillation of the art specific portions of the game design along with the technical issues that need to be considered during construction. Art design documents are created in close cooperation with the design and programming departments. This provides a more complete and useful document and helps to facilitate communication on all facets of the game between all of the necessary people.
Download the Soul Forge Art Design Specification