The theory and application of digital art in games
Digital graphics are found practically everywhere in modern computer games, right from the moment you look at the case of the latest game till the end credits when you feel the epic achievement of completing the game before your friends.
Every illustrator, artist and 3D modeller uses digital graphics for games, the concept art at the very beginning of the game creation process is often first traditionally drawn and the scanned into digital editing software to make changes, additions and so it can be transported easier, then when the 3D models are created they are swapped from 3D software to picture editing software back and forth to make fine adjustments to levels and characters alike, and then finally when the cover art is created they are usually created with vector graphics.
In these modern times there are many styles of graphics art that artists have the choice to use, mostly being vector and raster images. Raster images are used highly in-game, where as for concept art and for game cover art, as vector graphics provide a cleaner image at all resolutions but is too high a resolution for in-game as game engines struggle to run graphics at that level but a raster of bitmap graphic can run in a game engine as it can be pixelated at certain resolutions.
Console graphics differ between each console for example the PS3 has the highest graphics capability by far and can handle 3D graphics right down to cel shaded graphics, whereas a mobile phone game would only be able to run cel shaded graphics at best due to its size and smaller power.
Then there is the middle range console like the Xbox 360 or the Wii which is a little bit below midrange, these consoles can handle close to the highest graphics but would struggle and run slowly.
The packaging art for games is usually done with some sort of vector editing software for example Adobe Illustrator, this is because a vector image does not become pixelated at high resolutions and still keeps its shape at low resolutions.
A bitmap image, will lose its shape at low resolutions and will become pixelated at high resolution, but it will run much smoother in a game, so it is usually a better choice to convert images into a bitmap to put them into a game engine.
Creating art for games is different depending on its purpose, for example creating digitak art for a mobile game would use something like ToonBoom or Adobe Flash as they usually use 2D graphics and can be animated using the same software, where as a higher resolution game or a game with 3D graphics would use software like Autodesk Maya, then into other software like Zbrush and then it would go back to Maya and Back to Zbrush and then into more editing software for example Adobe Photoshop.
Creating art for cover art is a little different, it would probably start with traditional art i.e pencils, paper, ink and paints and then this would be scanned or redrawn onto the computer with a graphics tablet.
Graphics have to be optimised to fit their intention, for example if created for a mobile game then it can be created at the highest possible resolution but would have to be downgraded to the lowest so that they can be put into the engine, but for the PS3, then the graphics would have to be created at the highest level to compete with the leading games and then put into the game engine at that resolution.
