How are you supposed to judge artwork?

[marks]

disclaimer: copy pasted from my polycount thread

Really, what the hell are you supposed to look for? I've been invited to sit on the jury for the BAFTA (british acadamy of film & television) videogame award for artistic achievement, and I'm totally lost (this is either really good, or really, really bad).

It brings up a lot of very interesting questions that I'm not satisfied with my own opinions on, let alone objectively answering them. I mean ... what is art? How do you define artistic achievement? What is the yardstick that we are expected to use as artists to measure what is "good art" and what is "bad art" ? Is it even possible to categorise art that broadly (or at all)? Surely whatever I decide on is going to be completely subjective anyway?

What games do you think had great art - and why? What do you think constitutes an artistic achievement?

Discuss.

[Vilham]

more important question, how have you managed to get an invite with only a year in the industry

As to games with great art, games that look amazing (BF3, uncharted, crysis 1, etc) but also games that stylistically look great (dungeon defenders, orcs must die (to name some ive played recently.), Pixel junk games, etc).

[marks]

9 months*

[Rick_D]

in that light i would say it's something that pushes the boundries of our current tech understanding and provides a new benchmark for people to aim for.

like how every outdoor scene is judged against crysis, even though that game is nearly 5 years old. or how portal is seen as utterly stylish but never really goes out of it's way to try and "wow" you in the same way that say, modern warfare does (big explosions and semen everywhere).

"what is art" is going a little bit deep for the baftas and tbh they probably just want you to pick some shitty british studio that made something that wasn't complete shit - which is probably going to be the hardest part of the deal.

[marks]

they probably just want you to pick some shitty british studio that made something that wasn't complete shit - which is probably going to be the hardest part of the deal.

Depressingly close to the truth I think

[-HP-]

The more you think about it, the harder time you'll have figuring it out.

What looks good, looks good. Period.

[knj]

":25s1pjz3]

What looks good, looks good. Period.

that, plus i heared that the art you don't need to understand, you just read it

[Buddy]

":3nd8a13l]

What looks good, looks good. Period.

that, plus i heared that the art you don't need to understand, you just read it

Oh dont go there , thats not for practical art

With what you're supposed to do you should judge by common standards

Also there's art assets quality and art direction, 2 different things.

GL HF

[Campaignjunkie]

If we're talking about a commercial context, I'd say "artistic achievement" means the art direction: if the look is novel and influential (e.g. TF2 has started its own cartoony FPS genre, and single-handedly revitalized discourse about character design and readability in the game industry), if it has a consistent look, the assets do what they need to do, and the total effect is greater then the sum of its parts. Some assets in TF2 are flat colors or simple primitives with an AO baked into the diffuse, or cgtextures.com with the cutout filter -- but that's all they had to be, so who cares?

But BAFTAs have to go to UK people right? Just give the award to Rob Briscoe and the Dear Esther folks, just for the crazy technical tricks he's doing with material proxies and detail props. Judging is done.

[FrieChamp]

Just give the award to Rob Briscoe and the Dear Esther folks

If the game is released before you have to cast your votes (I assume that only votes for released titles can be counted) I'd say we're done here.

[marks]

If it isnt already on the shortlist, I cant vote for it (no matter how much I want to rob )

[Mr. Happy]

First, congrats,

Second, Don't worry dude, games aren't art anyways

lol jk, but seriously it is more of a craft, like birdhouses. The art tends to have a purpose, even in super artsy games there is still more purpose and clarity driving it than in say, a painting, since they are very different. Guernica makes no sense and hurts to look at but conveys the meaning well, but a game can't hurt because you are driving the action and no one wants to hurt themselves.

IMO what makes it good is how well each element conveys what its trying to convey and do all the elements work well together. how well the direction drives the themes of the game, show the characters personality, etc, is it consistent, suprising, original etc....

":tsdrcbtx]

What looks good, looks good. Period.

It's not easy to make a pretty game but there are a ton of talented people that do it very well...they'll all look good (I hope).

in that light i would say it's something that pushes the boundries of our current tech understanding....

I think what matters is how the boundaries are pushed to support the themes. if it's current tech with bazzillion pixels who cares. if its a bazillion pixels of "this is what our fresh new idea is" (like crysis) then thats amazing.

fuck it doesn't even need to push tech boundaries at all.

Games that do this...Amnesia, Portal and old-TF2 (obligatory mention), Journey (not out but look at how people stand out from the isolation...., and yet the desert is bright and happy yellow and the people are dark.....), Super Mario Bros., Everyday Shooter, Minesweeper, World of Goo...probably all obvious examples but hey.

"Art" is all about interpretation, but too much so today. Today's art community has made the word "art" meaningless with canvas painted entirely black, the idea that the experience can be separated from the artists intention of that experience, and rehashed acoustic music set to time lapse videos of a rehashed "experiment x without y contextualizing z with a flash mob." The best art is never random but has some clarity, and just calling something art never makes it "higher" than anything else. They say you can't define art, and then they say "art is higher than all" and it's basically just a circle jerk of circular logic.

But ya, I guess HP is right, don't think too much....but still, just....look at it deeply.

And look at the sound!

[Steppenwolf]

You can judge art from a perspective of craftsmanship but that is only part of it. Things that also need to be taken in consideration is how well it does in transporting emotion, telling a message or a story and the context of culture and the time it was created in.

Ultimately your judgement of art is completely subjective so just follow your heart. Some people get eyegasm from looking at a Pollock painting, other people don't consider anything art that wasn't painted by Rembrandt.

Me personaly if i had to judge game art from an intellectual perspective i would weight the story telling of Portal 2's environments more then the photo realistic and technicaly superior jungle environments of Crysis as an example (since both games were mentioned before). Reason being that i find it creatively more challenging to come up with something like Portal 2 environments then to recreate something that already exists in the real world.

[Mr. Happy]

I agree with that. Craftsmanship is important, but when I say games are a craft I don't think of the craftsmanship in quite the same way you'd think of it for wood working (are the mortises tight / are the vertex normals right), but rather in how well the art functions for it's purpose (purpose including pretty), the Crysis vs. Portal 2 being a good example (though Crysis' tech and superior realism does convey "island" very well). There are plenty of examples of "bad craftmanship" in Portal 2 (sloppy brushwork, gaps in geometry) that don't get exposed to the player which a high end watch maker would find unacceptable, that stuff doesn't matter. But older mediums don't need to convey anything well to be considered "fine art."