Let’s Talk About Art and Graphic Design in Games

Is there good art in games? Is Modern Art ruined by good art? Do we actually mean design when we say art? Were the Legendary licenses so expensive that high schoolers were put in charge of art and design? Do gamers even know good art?

Which artists and designers are overrated? Underrated? Properly rated?

Please, share.

To start with an obvious one, Vincent Dutrait is properly rated as an illustrator if only because it would be impossible to overrate him. The man gets his name on covers and deserves it. Even in shadows there’s an incredible vibrancy to his colors and lines.

Detective: City of Angels
boardgamegeek.com/image/3469246/detective-city-angels

Museum
boardgamegeek.com/image/3116969/museum

Raptor
boardgamegeek.com/image/2520016/raptor

I’m also particularly fond of the work of Tomasz Jedruszek. No man or woman may be more important in establishing the visual setting of Fantasy Flight’s Game of Thrones. He doesn’t get the flashy work of illustrating main characters and memorable scenes. He gets the yeoman work of armies, castles and boats, so many boats, and he nails it, giving each a style and personality. Check these out.

thronesdb.com/card/02070
thronesdb.com/card/04035
thronesdb.com/card/01151

I saw the title for this thread and and said, “Yeah, how about we don’t.” I stand by that, I really don’t want to have this conversation because it hits too close to home. I’m probably going to explode on someone and make a scene, so what say we just cut to the chase and shut this one down.

You guys don’t fucking know. It’s easy to sit and bitch about this and that when it comes to art, but there’s a few takeaways here, one that should be obvious and one that won’t be u less you’re on the inside. The obvious one is that this discussion doesn’t fucking matter. We’re a niche here, our high and mighty standards don’t mean shit to the hobby at large and if they did, they would have caught on ages ago. Gamers are going to throw money at what they like and art might play a part in that, it might now. And here, at this site, we’re supposed to know better, we play more games, we’ve been playing them longer and we talk about them on a much deeper level than what you see at BGG, but don’t kid yourself, we don’t matter. We’re a niche. Full stop, give it up.

The less obvious thing is there’s often other factors at work that result in “bad” art in gaming. I wish I could spill the beans on it and name names, but publishers and art directors often don’t know jack shit about art either. Really, I’ve seen it COUNTLESS. FUCKING. TIMES. Really, I can’t give examples because the art community is a gossipy little fucker. But the problem often lies less with the artist and more with the requests being made of them.

Please, leave it alone now. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to resist poking my head in here and I don’t want to make an ass of myself. It’s not just my livlihood on the line.

Ugh. Like I said, I can’t just leave it alone.

I’ll give what insight I can as things on the artists end goes.

First off, working in this hobby doesn’t pay a livable wage whatsoever. There are a couple of companies that are GREAT to work for. Wizards of the Coast is pretty terrific, D&D is good, Magic is great. They pay very well, they give you many rights and benefits nobody else does. Ie, selling the original, making prints, supplying the artists with “white backs,” which are extremely limited cards that artists hand number and do sketches on. In short, they give you long term profit for your work in addition to paying you like you should be. Smirk and Dagger was good, too, Kurt being an artist himself and knowing what it’s like. Just about everyone else is happy to give you $100-$200 a piece and try to sell you on the idea of “It’s exposure.” If only exposure could put fucking food on your plate.

The absolute worst thing is when you do take a job, either well paying or not, and the piece is garbage due to revisions or poor requests. An artist always hopes that any piece they do will at the very least make for a good entry in their portfolio. Even if the pay is shit, you have this hope that maybe you’ll give it your all anywaycand someone down the line will be impressed enough to offer your work down the line. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened with my wife. She’ll hand in something that looks really great and then some art director, who likely needs to reject it just because if they don’t they have nothing to show for their higher ups that they’re doing their job, and it completely ruins the piece. It’s composition often that they don’t understand, color being a close second. She makes the revisions, more time that you aren’t paid for, and she feels like she can’t even promote that she did the piece after because it’s not up to her standards.

That’s about all I can say without getting in trouble. Find me in person, I’ve got a fucking DOOZY of a story about a really, really big job that went south.

Drew Struzan writes about similar experiences in one of his art books and he was an in-demand artist for movie posters.


All I know is that art I like will entice me to try a game but art I don't like won't prevent me from trying a game.

Really? Not even to celebrate those who make the pieces that make you want to nail the game board to the wall? I know a lot of complaining goes on here, but there’s plenty of room for appreciation, too.

Forgive me, I'm not going to look up names, as I'm a few glasses of wine into my Friday night. Some artists I like, and I'm not commenting on the games at all:

1. Guy who did the art for CMON Godfather
2. Artist for Wasteland Express
3. The artists who Jim Felli employed for Zimby Mojo, Bemused, and Duhr.
4. Cover artist for Escape from 100,000,000 BC or whatever the fuck
5. Josh Derksen crushed it on the maps for SEAL Team Flix. Just perfect work.
6. Cover artist for 1st edition Descent... I love that box.
7. Dungeon Degenerates... of course. I mean, come on.
8. I played Jamaica once. The only thing I remember was that it was a damn fine looking game.

ChristopherMD wrote: Drew Struzan writes about similar experiences in one of his art books and he was an in-demand artist for movie posters.

We have that book, it’s awesome. The state of movie posters is so depressing. They still hire him and consistently opt to not use his stuff.

DarthJoJo wrote: Really? Not even to celebrate those who make the pieces that make you want to nail the game board to the wall? I know a lot of complaining goes on here, but there’s plenty of room for appreciation, too.

Yes, really. We did this conversation many years ago, I know where it goes and I don’t want to go there again. It caused me to leave the site for the better part of a year. When I came back I had a Dark Knight Returns avatar and everything, it was ridiculous.

That was the beginning of a Year Without a Josh.

It’s up there with the Mr. Skeletor Seccesion, The Danny Choo Incident and the Barnes/Ruth Conflict in the annals of our dark history.

LOCKED

“You aren’t allowed to discuss art in games because it hurts someone’s feelings” isn’t a reasonable expectation. The magic is to be objective and civil.

The guy who did the box art for SEAL Team Flix got paid very well. The graphic designer did too, although it’s definitely arguable that neither of them was paid enough, since this is a visual medium and art matters.

Graphic design for games is hard to do. Probably harder than illustration, to be honest. All artists should be paid fairly for their work. I’ve always thought that if I ever got into publishing I’d pay the illustrator and GD a fair and agreed upon fee, with clear revision standards and clear design goals, and then give them a percentage of the gross sales.

I think the biggest problem with art is that it’s a custom product, most people don’t know what they really want, most people cannot enunciate the image they see in their heads, and that shifts a lot of burden onto artists. That’s why artists should definitely have canned contracts written up and delivered to clients to limit their exposure IMO.

Don’t forget the Brannygyn and Brittania man trouncings and the one sided epic rap battle

Michael Barnes wrote: That was the beginning of a Year Without a Josh.

It’s up there with the Mr. Skeletor Seccesion, The Danny Choo Incident and the Barnes/Ruth Conflict in the annals of our dark history.

SuperflyTNT wrote: “You aren’t allowed to discuss art in games because it hurts someone’s feelings” isn’t a reasonable expectation. The magic is to be objective and civil.

The self-awareness of my hyperbole didn’t really come across, but whatever. Besides, it was less about my feelings and more about saying something I shouldn’t and hurting other people’s feelings.

Or maybe I’m just making this up in an effort to bring back Friday Freakout?

Good and great art exists in games, but I think it certainly overshadowed by art that does not leave an impression. Adjacent to that is UX that is both good and bad.

The company I work for designs software for beverage distributors and I have found that the evaluation of good and bad UX tends to be pretty universal. I would expect this to be the same in the game design industry. The problem in my industry is when UX design is done without input from users or context of application.

Art is far too subjective to have an absolute metric. It sucks that artist have to sell pieces to a corporate structure that will not maintain their vision in order to pay the bills. The music industry is the same way with their own artists.


Gentlemen Thieves may not be the best game, but the art direction is what pushed me to buy it.

The board of Duel in the Dark is something I would hang on the wall.

I can't say that I have a game in my collection with art I would consider bad, but the cover art for Flashpoint is decidedly unimpressive.


Kudos to the artists who are able to work with a design team that maintains the integrity of the art.