Game Artist

A game artist creates 2D and 3D art for video games. As a game artist, you design characters, choose colors, create textures, and map out backgrounds to create the look and feel you want for your game. Although this is a computer graphics focused process, you still use traditional hand sketching in the beginning stages of things like character development and background layouts. In other words, a game artist is a graphic artist or 3d modeler who focuses on video games. This means that half of your job is defined by the work you do, and the other half by the industry which you are in. For the first, your specific tasks are to imagine what your item will look like and sketch out preliminary designs for it (like what a concept artist would do). You then develop your sketches into forms that ally with the game’s desired feel (wholesome? violent? futuristic?) and turn your chosen sketches into 2 or 3D computer graphics. For this last step you need a deep knowledge of computer modeling and animation. The fact that you do this work in the video game industry adds another dimension to your work: It means you need a lot of imagination. This industry offers a unique amount of freedom because you are creating worlds that don’t exist—your hero might need to fight a Fjowkin and you get to decide what that looks like. As a result this is an extremely creative position, although the trade-off for such creative freedom is that the pay isn’t typically high.