Does an artist have to know how to implement in the engine?
A few days ago Soph Podesta (I recommend you follow her) made a tweet (I refuse to call her “X”) in which she raised something very simple but fundamental:
For you, does a video game artist have to know how to implement in the engine YES or NO? Justify
Honestly, this topic, even without being an artist, interests me a lot because for me it is a question of teamwork and not so much of roles. Before giving my opinion it is clear that I do not have to be right and it must be said that we are not talking about becoming a “Tech Artist” or anything like that.
The question is oriented to whether an artist who only takes care of (digital) drawings, we can also call him/her an illustrator, should know how to import the resources that he/she creates into the engine and “implement” them (if they are sprites for an animation, put them in the corresponding one, in the order that they should be, if it is a background or tiles for a tilemap, know how to generate them and test them, etc.)
On the one hand, my philosophy is that all developers should understand all the roles and the implementation in the engine is a part of the whole. This is a bit because of my own way of being and a bit because of the inherent obligation that I had when studying a university degree (where you have to go through all the subjects, which cover different roles, and do the practice).
I understand that specialization is the most important thing and that these are the most sought after devs; however, I am slowly beginning to see a growing trend in requiring a “T-Shape” approach, where no matter how much of a specialist you are, you have to have knowledge of other disciplines that make up the development of a video game. And I don’t only see it in medium-sized studios (in small ones, out of necessity, you can’t work in any other way than wearing “many hats”), it is also seen in job offers from large studios.
So, should I? From my point of view, yes. It is not mandatory, I wouldn’t stop working with an artist just because they don’t know how to do it. But it is more than obvious to anyone with experience developing that it is an important plus.
How many times have we found ourselves in the following situation?: Artist: There I am done with the assets for such a thing. Programmer: ok, I’ll import them now and check … After a while Programmer: look, this and that Sprite didn’t come out right, and the color of this background doesn’t look right in the game. I already checked with the designer and he told me that it needs to be modified Artist: uh, ok, I’ll do it now … After a while Artist: I’m done with the assets for this thing. Programmer: ok, I’ll import them now and check
The death loop, as I like to call it, the one that happens every “little while” takes up a lot of development time. And the description I made is one of the simplest situations, let’s not even talk about when the artist was already doing something else “urgent” when he was told that the previous thing required modification… ufff.
An artist who can implement in the engine cuts all these “dead” times, can produce the assets, test them in the engine, detect defects or necessary improvements in advance, speak directly with the designer, and all before it reaches the hands of a programmer (who, on the other hand, is not always the most suitable person to determine if an asset is correct or not to be implemented). I’m not even talking about implementing to push to a branch and having those changes directly implemented by him or her (yes, I know that artists hate GIT and that there are better VCS, but that’s a discussion for another day), I’m simply saying that they can do this workflow:
- Create the asset
- Open the engine
- Import the asset
- Implement it where it should be
- Decide if it meets the requirements or consult if in doubt
- Once this decision is “yes, everything is OK” let them know that the assets are ready and upload them where appropriate.
In my opinion, this way we improve teamwork a lot, we cut development times that often make no sense and we raise the quality of the development process a little.
Credits: Image by Freepik