Job roles within an indie company pt2
After looking into the job roles I could find of people within an indie company I have collected the ones that appeal to me. Here is the list of roles with their definition:
Concept artist- 'Concept art is an appearance of illustration the main goal of concept art is to express a visual demonstration of a temper for use in films,video games,animation etc. to visualise the conceptual thought before the final product. A concept artist is someone who generates innovative thoughts and makes communication between thought and visualisation.' Shamsuddin, K. (2013, pp. 819) [1]
Character Artist- 'As part of the Character Art team, you’ll be the creative wizard who transmogrifies 2D concept art into living and breathing 3D characters, translating your 2D skills into a 3D workflow. Armed with these skills, you’ll model and texture high- and low-poly characters in a fast-paced, flexible, and feedback-driven pipeline. Because you understand the difference between creating characters and simply assembling them, you’ll use your skill to craft and bring life to champion art.' Riot Games (2015, para.5) [2]
Animator- 'Animators in the games industry are responsible for the portrayal of movement and behaviour. Most often this is applied to give life to game characters and creatures, but sometimes animations are also applied to other elements such as objects, scenery, vegetation and environmental effects.' Creative Skill Set (2016, para. 3-4) [3]
3D Environment artist- 'The environment artist (also known as an environment modeler) creates backgrounds and scenery for video games—anything from architectural elements like pyramids or arenas to chairs and plants.' Get In MEDIA (2016, para. 1) [4]
Game Artist- Artists create the visual elements of a game, such as characters, scenery, objects, vehicles, surface textures, clothing, props, and even user interface components. They also create concept art and storyboards which help communicate the proposed visual elements during the pre-production phase. Creative Skill Set (2016, para. 3) [5]
3D Artist- Someone that works on environment, props and character modelling, also known as a 3D generalist.
2D/3D Artist- A combination of a Concept artist and a 3D artist.
Lead Artist/Art Director- The Lead Artist (also known as Art Director or Creative Manager) is responsible for the overall look of the game. Working with the Game Designer and Lead Programmer, the Lead Artist devises the game’s visual style and directs the production of all visual material throughout the game’s development. Creative Skill Set (2016, para. 3) [6]
Here's a quick video explaining job roles within an indie studio made by the guys at 'Bossa Studios' [7]
Here's a link to the original text this video was made from.
Using "The Door Problem" is an easy way to show what I want to work on:
Concept Artist: “I made some gorgeous paintings of doors.” England, L. (2014) [8]
Art Director: “This third painting is exactly the style of doors we need.” England, L. (2014) [8]
Environment Artist: “I took this painting of a door and made it into an object in the game.” England, L. (2014) [8]
Animator: “I made the door open and close.” England, L. (2014) [8]
Character Artist: “I don’t really care about this door until it can start wearing hats.” England, L. (2014) [8]
The only problem now is knowing how me and James are going to split up our end project. I now know I want to do the above jobs but how are teams split up within the industry? Is there a set number of people you need on each type of job role? To find this out I have looked at my research in pt1 and produced these charts:
I split up the jobs into categories; Art, Tech and Other. The results are what follows:
Automaton UK: 50% art 40% tech 10% other
Small Impact Games: 42.9% art 14.3% tech 42.9% other
Free Jam: 22.6% art 45.2% tech 32.3% other
Hello Games: 13.3% art 46.7% tech 40% other
Iconic Games: 33.3% art 66.7% tech 0% other
Antagonist: 50% art 50% tech 0% other
Ghost Ship: 16.7% art 33.3% tech 50% other
As you can see there is no set type of indie company however this research is inconclusive and frankly inaccurate due to me not knowing for certain that this is all the employees within the company and I have also decided myself whether something is art or tech when this is highly disputed as a lot of job roles fit into both categories. The only way I am going to get some professional data is if I do some primary research and ask people in industry myself; therefore I am going to be contacting people (as spoke about in the post 'How to talk to indie people'). After reviving feedback from industry I will go through the same process and I predict that tech and art will be level.
When It comes to working in a smaller company the roles tend to be shared more or people do more than just one job. As seen in the job roles of Antagonist where they have people working on multiple jobs. Another good example is Humble Grove which is a team of two working on a game called 29 [9].
29 [9] [10]
People tend to work to their strengths when in a very small team so whoever is better at a certain job will do that job; there isn't much other choice if there is no money to outsource someone.
I decided to contact the team and ask them how they split the work between the two of them, In a instant message on the 27th October 2016 Humble Grove stated that:
"We both did illustration at uni so we both have a say in the visuals, but tom does the programming and writing at the moment, and I do a lot of the art/character designs/environmental designs etc. We do find ourselves working on the same thing from time to time"
They mainly split there work up as follows:
Person 1:
- Visuals
- Programming
- Writing
Person 2:
- Visuals
- Art
- Character designs
- Environment Designs
This is also how I see me and James splitting up the work between us too.
Bibliography:
[1] SHAMSUDDIN, K. (2013) Evaluating Content Based Animation through Concept Art, Vol. 2. (Issue 11), pp. 819 [Online] Available from: www.academia.edu/5239068/Evaluating_Content_Based_Animation_through_Concept_Art [Accessed 09/11/16]
[2] RIOT GAMES (2015, para. 5) 3D Character Artist. [Online] Available from: www.riotgames.com/careers/18677 [Accessed 09/11/16]
[3] CREATIVE SKILL SET (2016, para. 3-4) Animatior (Games). [Online] Available from: http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles/325_animator_games [Accessed 09/11/16]
[4] GET IN MEDIA (2016, para. 1) Environment Artist: Duties. [Online] Available from: http://getinmedia.com/careers/environment-artist [Accessed 09/11/16]
[5] CREATIVE SKILL SET (2016, para. 3) Games Artist. [Online] Available from: http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles/325_animator_games [Accessed 09/11/16]
[6] CREATIVE SKILL SET (2016, para. 3) Lead Artist (Games). [Online] Available from: http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles/332_lead_artist_games [Accessed 09/11/16]
[7] BOSSA STUDIOS (2016) THE DOOR PROBLEM. [Online film] Available from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV6xMlqP8G4&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 09/11/16]
[8] ENGLAND, L. (2014) “THE DOOR PROBLEM”. [Weblog] LIZ ENGLAND. 26th June. Available from: www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/ [Accessed 09/11/16]
[9] HUMBLE GROVE (2017) 29. [Online] Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux. London/Tokyo: Humble Grove
[10] HUMBLE GROVE (2016) 29. [Online image] Available from: https://humblegrove.itch.io/29 [Accessed 09/11/16]