Task 14: Elements of Game Design, Part 5: Planning and Concepting

Task 14: Elements of game design, part five: planning and concepting

The idea of planning and concepting comes as an essential tool for an artist in the games industry. Because of what the process, that the artists go though, gives them in terms of input to a certain idea that would eventually end up merged with other ideas to result in a final project that stands out, taking all the best and coolest parts of each idea and combining them.

                This process has to begin at the basics. Thumbnailing images of various ideas helps in building a strong set of maybe one hundred different thumbnails, which would then be whittled down variety of ideas, about fifty, sixty thumbnails, these are including the best of the former one hundred to take on even further. The next step in this initial stage would be to further cut down the number of ideas that an artist may have to a realistic ten to twenty plans, which would make for a good selection of quality plans to choose to work with to then build a final project from.

                Another key part to the planning and concepting is the placement of the subjects in the images that the artist is producing, thumbnailing would again be sufficient here as it allows an artist to experiment with the placement, tweaking the images in each progressing sketch. Speed is also a key factor when producing the thumbnails for viewing and taking ideas from, this method ensures that all angles have been covered and cut or included within the final and makes sure that the decisions made are for the better and faster outcome.

                As mentioned earlier, the speed at which an artist produces concept work or thumbnails is key. In thumbnails the more that are done, the better the input of ideas will be for when the project is set up and running, planning for seven hours and then creating a great final piece in one hour or two is better than spending seven hours on a final piece that was only planned for an hour or two and turns out not too great. It just improves an artist’s decision making throughout the final piece almost on a subconscious level, as they would have used parts from one thumbnail that looks great, that they never would have thought to include if they hadn’t of gone through the thumbnail process first in order to get this idea.

                Organisation is vital to how well and how good a project looks and feels. If there is no organisation like; lack of time management, poor motivation and work ethic, a project will fall apart. Managing time well is tricky at first but reaps benefits when used properly, a decent amount of work gets done and keeps stress levels almost none existent, which helps produce the best work, under stress, work can be rushed and some key elements will be missing that can only be included through processes that stress tends to try and skip to finish the project faster. Keeping a good time and work management produces better work and then an artist can have time to correct mistakes that they may find in their work.

                These are the skills that i believe are the most important to get to grips with and start practicing, on a regular basis.