Elements of game design, part 6: Visual composition

To work on visual composition is to plan what eventually will become 3^rd dimension and even 4^th. In order to nail the feel and style of an environment, character etc. There needs to be a full understanding of the fundamentals that can be learned from the great classical artists. Things like understanding 3D form and lighting, using these to create a feel, a mood, to visually communicate your ideas. These are all required when creating these fundamental attributes in game design.

These images are works from the game The Last of Us. As you can tell I am quite a big fan of this game. I feel it symbolises everything that I feel makes a great, engaging game. Every detail is perfect in my opinion. For example all of these landscape concepts depict the mood and feel for that  particular environment. The fundamentals are down. Use of perspective to enhance the 3D readability of the image. As well as clever lighting and layout, every single one of these images is immersive. They all stick to a very organic colour pallet with muted colours that tied in with all the other technical choices made for the imagery. Having seen and experienced the final outcome, they really stayed true to the images and style that they created in the early stages of  of design.   

This stretches through to the character development, including the monsters and enemies in the game. They followed the same believable and realistically possible structure that the environments had. Countless variations and different ideas are put into characters. Once a final design is decided, an illustration of the characters needs to be done in order to show their personality. Again they need to be readable just from just one image as well as a series of images.

To place the characters within an environment composition also shows how characters and environments tie together, to show an all-round immersive feel to the imagery. It gives us a chance to understand the human impact within the surroundings that have been created.

I feel that simplicity is key when coming up with the visual compositions. Over complicating an image can cloud the original message within the scene, and how people read it and interpret it. Using the great classical elements that made the great masters artworks, can enhance the impact of games concepts and design on the viewer. It is becoming an art form within itself. The games industry is becoming a lot more art conscious and is hiring and requiring more and more technically exceptional artists to produce their design and concepts work.

I stumbled across this article written by the film critic Roger Elbert, entitled ‘Video Games Can Never Be Art’ http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art This article was written on April 16^th, 2010. Robert Elbert passed away on the 4^th of April 2013 at the age of 70. He stated that Video games would never be art in the lifetime of anyone who has a current interest in them. But this is coming from a man of 67 who has seen a lot of new technological advances, but believes in the stigma that games cannot be art. I feel that The Last Of Us challenges his words. I feel it matches with other forms of art of storytelling but in such an advanced way. 

If people could see games for what they are now and are fast becoming, without the stigma they’ve seemed to have gained over the years, I’m sure many would question their own opinions. So many art forms are taken into consideration with modern games, from visual style to the music used. I feel they are on a fast track to becoming a controversial art form, that I personally love and these are elements that I always look for within a game.