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HEADS-UP DISPLAY

loving the bones

the beauty of the game asset

Varoux. it still a texture? Consider this
lightmap by Thomas Varoux, with
its countless halos. You might
imagine it lighting a space station
at twilight, or a vast Himalayan
palace at dusk. You imagine
invisible models—impossible
models with non-manifold
geometries. When you can see
only the shadow of a world, its

shape is infinite.
If you did not know what
a lightmap was, then it would
cease to represent light. This
character sprite sheet by Anna
Anthropy, viewed in a similar
way, might cease to represent a
walk cycle. Andy Warhol famously
painted a grid of Campbell’s soup
cans, reducing their individual
characteristics to the sum of an
abstract pattern; the sprite sheet,
then, could reduce each frame’s
differences and emphasize the
common iconography. Does
Laro. each frame depict the same
character in different poses and
perspectives, or is each frame a
we peel It’s great to celebrate the efficient pack ratio on his separate character?

skyscrapers visual arts in video games—but texture flat for the Black Box Or maybe Warhol just liked

like apples. concept art is not what defines tank-buster rocket launcher, soup, and we just make assets

We dice light into slivers and game art. It’s not the actual thing how very little texture space that appear in entertainment
arrange those golden shards into that goes into the game. We tell is wasted, yet the overall texel products and that’s all there is to
vast mosaics; we transform time people it’s game art anyway, resolution is evenly distributed. it. You can think like that, and you
and shape into swirling color and because concept art conforms Here, Laro has skillfully painted wouldn’t be wrong. But you might
use it to map river flows. When to society’s existing notions a fantastic gunmetal, a very end up bored and stuck on easy

we make people, we chop off their of paintings as art. This is the narrow range of matte mid- mode, and being bored is worse
faces, flatten and bake these aesthetic equivalent of easy gray values that still provides than being wrong.

human pelts, then tattoo makeup mode; this is lazy. a great sense of contrast in the —Robert Yang

onto their unblinking eyes. Let’s try a higher difficulty material. This piece is a classic
As game asset artists, we setting, a more playful and in the way most industry game

perform these countless miracles complex mode of thought. Let’s artists might appreciate a flat
and atrocities every day. But try to understand and promote surface; it is topologically
when it comes time to curate the the real-time art asset as its own elegant and demonstrates
public face of game art, we hide medium of visual art. I will focus masterful technique.

that which imbues our real-time on the game texture—specifically, We can also think of
art with drama and magic. We’re these three masterworks, coming textures as more conceptual
content to tape a dozen landscape soon to a museum near you. pieces. What if you produced
paintings and portraits onto a wall, If you’ve ever found a new flat paintings without actually

then point to that concept art and hat or weapon in TEAM FORTRESS texturing anything, or what if
say that is game art, as we see in 2, there’s a good chance Rob you never saw the corresponding
public exhibitions like Into the Pixel. Laro painted it. Note the very model? Conceptually, then, is
Anthropy.
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