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GDC

CONFERENCE  

|    Visual Arts
    VISUAL ARTS

The Visual Arts Track strives to educate artists and technical artists about methods for producing game art and animations; from stellar concept art techniques to post production best practices. Our focus for GDC 2013 is how to produce exceptional art while reducing costs.

Arrow Search for all Visual Arts Track sessions

2013 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS

Building the Touchy-Feely World of Tearaway
Rex Crowle (Media Molecule)
 
Game worlds with touch interfaces are everywhere, but is it possible to build a world you can FEEL with your fingertips? We've built a touchy-feely world out of paper. A digital papercraft adventure that you can hold in your hands, and interact with, in a uniquely tactile way on Playstation Vita.Learn about the challenges we had in designing and building a world that can flex, fold, tear and crumple under the fingertips of players. And the digital tools we designed to allow the game world to be built so realistically that it can be spooled out of any printer and remade in real paper as players progress on that journey. Tearaway is the next game from Media Molecule, creators of LittleBigPlanet, and aims to bring a new form of creative gameplay to players, both with a new tangible craft aesthetic and by actively encouraging a creativity-loop outside of the game world.
The Art Direction of DmC Devil May Cry
Alessandro Taini (Ninja Theory)
 
Discover the artistic journey that Ninja Theory embarked on in re-imagining and rebooting Devil May Cry and its iconic protagonist Dante. See the beginnings of the process, from concept and inspiration, through to the 3D realization of the game's bright and bold art style. Visual Art Director, Alessandro "Talexi" Taini, discusses how fashion, music, architecture and art influenced Ninja Theory's decision's when they explored how to bring Dante and Devil May Cry into the here and now. The presentation will be art heavy, focusing on the visual rebirth of the series.
Sand Rendering in Journey
John Edwards (thatgamecompany)
 
PlayStation Network title Journey takes place in a vast, glittering, lonely desert. Thatgamecompany spent 3 years developing Journey, continually refining (and rewriting) the sand rendering technology. The talk will cover all the technical details of the final sand implementation, and in the process, cover thatgamecompany's approach to graphics in general. 97% pretentiousness-free!
Creating Amazing Characters
Scott Campbell (Independent)
 
How do you create memorable and distinctive characters? In this presentation, production designer, art director, and illustrator Scott Campbell will share his creative process for creating amazing characters. Scott will begin by describing his approach and showing past works, then move into a live demonstration where he will develop a new character design, sharing his thoughts during the process.
Building SimCity: Art in the Service of Simulation
Ocean Quigley (Maxis)
 
The art in SimCity has a big job to do. It's providing the player with a toolkit for city creation, it's enabling the illusion of a living city, and it's showing the player what's going on in the underlying simulation. In this session, Ocean will go over the motivations that drove SimCity's aesthetics and the methods that were developed to achieve them. He'll describe the techniques that were used to make SimCity's dynamically composable world, and the techniques that were used for authoring the buildings, vehicles, networks, and Sims that populate it.
Cutscenes Everywhere: The Tech Behind StarCraft II's Storytelling
Matt Schembari (Blizzard Entertainment)
 
This session will present how the new cutscene editor and its underlying engine were built in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. The talk will review the design process, and how having a user-focused approach shaped both the tool and engine alike. It will then provide an overview of the technical design and architecture of these systems. Finally, the talk will discuss the emergent workflow that resulted in having the artists so heavily involved in the development process of their tool.

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