Drawing Basics and Video Game Art: Classic to Cutting-Edge Art Techniques for Winning Video Game Design

"This book supports my own 30-year crusade to demonstrate that games are an art form that undeniably rivals traditional arts. It gives detailed explanations of game art techniques and their importance, while also highlighting their dependence on artistic aspects of game design and programming.”
 
— John Romero, co-founder of id Software and CEO of Loot Drop, Inc.

"Solarski’s methodology here is to show us the artistic techniques that every artist should know, and then he transposes them to the realm of video games to show how they should be used to create a far more artful gaming experience ... if I were an artist planning to do video game work, I’d have a copy of this on my shelf."

— Marc Mason, Comics Waiting Room

Video games are not a revolution in art history, but an evolution. Whether the medium is paper or canvas—or a computer screen—the artist’s challenge is to make something without depth seem like a window into a living, breathing world. Video game art is no different.
 
Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is first to examine the connections between classical art and video games, enabling developers to create more expressive and varied emotional experiences in games. Artist game designer Chris Solarski gives readers a comprehensive introduction to basic and advanced drawing and design skills—light, value, color, anatomy, concept development—as well as detailed instruction for using these methods to design complex characters, worlds, and gameplay experiences. Artwork by the likes of Michelangelo, Titian, and Rubens are studied alongside AAA games like BioShock,Journey, the Mario series, and Portal2, to demonstrate perpetual theories of depth, composition, movement, artistic anatomy, and expression.
 
Although Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is primarily a practical reference for artists and designers working in the video games industry, it’s equally accessible for those interested to learn about gaming’s future, and potential as an artistic medium.

Also available as an eBook

• The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design
• How to Become a Video Game Artist: The Insider's Guide to Landing a Job in the Gaming World
• Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques
• Designing Creatures and Characters: How to Build an Artist's Portfolio for Video Games, Film, Animation and More
• Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design
• Big Bad World of Concept Art for Video Games: An Insider's Guide for Students
• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition
• Game Programming Patterns
• Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games
• Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop: Characters