artdepartmentconfidential

Attendance - 32 (8 ADs, 10 LAs, 5 Artists, 9 Producers and other personnel)

Art Team sizes - Over 50: 3, 25-50: 4, 10-25: 7, Under 10: 8 (I realize this doesn’t add up, but we had some late arrivals)

Attendance was down all three days and many ADs I spoke with mentioned a greatly decreased presence at GDC this year.

Discussion:

How has the slowdown affected your departments, particularly staffing? One attendee noted that he was only hiring senior personnel. Meaning that headcount was a more important factor than a particular salary cap. Obviously, if you are limited by number of people, you will naturally want the best and most experienced. One attendee noted that they hire experienced specialists who can develop pipelines so that their outsourcers are better prepared. (A more detailed outsourcing discussion gobbled up most of Day 2).

Another mentioned that his company was able to staff a half their project team using local temporary contractors. This has worked very well for them since they are in a talent-rich urban area.

Preproduction - How to run it, when to know that it’s over.

Many goals were thrown around and “markers” mentioned to note the end of preproduction and the start of production. These include: establishing the art pipeline for every asset type in the game, ensuring tools are designed, written and tested with a final in-game asset and establishing asset lists and a schedule. One attendee noted at the end though, it always feels like preproduction ends about “three months before we ship”. This was accompanied by many smiling faces and nodding heads.

Three Days, 90+ attendees, dozens of vague recollections

Written feedback was sparse and all of Day Two’s comments and ratings were MIA. Outstanding. If you were there on Day Two, now’s your last, and one and only, chance to add your comments.

Along with some very positive comments, here’s a sample of some suggestions:

Hold in a large room to accomodate more people. (x3)

Too much jumping around. Break up topics more, make each day devoted to one or two issues.

Session should be twice as long.

Make this an all-day tutorial and break up topics.

This room is inappropriate for any presentation. Between external noise, an A.C. fan, you CANNOT hear anyone.

I pretty much agree on most of these points. I’ve been resistant to breaking the topics down up by day but I’ll explore the idea with the GDC folks next year. Any suggestions on a three-part break-up? I was considering:

Day One: Lead characteristics, roles and responsibilities - selecting and growing leads, managing the transition from asset production to management.

Day Two: The leads role in improving Pre-production and Production, outsourcing, marketing and tools topics.

Day Three: Handling difficult situations and personnel issues.

And any other thoughts or suggestions for next year are always welcome.

Ideal and Reality of Dual and Equivalent Career Paths - Day Two discussion topic

This subject came up towards the end of Day Two and I don’t think it got fair time coverage for the number of people who seemed interested in discussing it.

Dual and equivalent career paths are necessary to ensure that the right people choose to become leads for the right reasons. I want to create an atmosphere where an exceptionally talented artist can truly feel that his or her career is advancing without them moving away from what they excel at and presumably enjoy. And for my project’s sake, I want these people doing what they do best 100% of the time without management commitments. The trouble is we are swimming upstream when it comes to changing conventional perceptions of career advancement or even suggesting that in this industry it’s perfectly fine to advance along a Senior Artist track as opposed to a Lead Artist track. I want it to be but it isn’t, at least, not yet.

Art Director/Lead Artist Round Table - GDC 2008

In attendance - about 140 over three days - a mix of Art Leads and Art Directors, Artists and a few “others”.

I did not keep the notes attached to what day they came from; rather I grouped them all together by general subject matter.

There are some redundant and contradictory points herein - such is the way roundtables frequently are and I have preserved these instances where I felt it was appropriate.

I want to thank Greg Foertsch for taking detailed notes each day. This document would not be half as complete as it is without his efforts.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions I would very much like to hear them. And this year we have a persistent site for continued discussion without the hassle of forum security.

Thanks again to all the participants!

How Big is Next Gen in Reality?

In 2005 we were all put on notice that Next Gen meant massive teams and big development spends. Now that many of have been through at least one Next Gen cycle, what are some lessons learned regarding the team scales, asset complexity and tools?

My goal in asking this question was to find out the common experiences among next gen developers; the good, bad, and just unexpected. Below are some of the discussion comments.

• Needed to hire more tech artists because of tools needs not fully met from programming
• Needed to reinvent tools
  • some didn’t transition to next gen
  • too complex because of next gen
  • didn’t become functional soon enough
    • Seth - This is a constant concern I hear very often (and experience personally). I’d be interested in hearing solutions that people have developed to get more tools in place early or creative ways of coping, and doing prepro work in the absence of tools.

• Integration of new software into the art pipeline - Zbrush, Mud Box
  • Seth - Plus associated training time for art staff?
• Most people would have preferred reworking some of their old tools
  • Seth - Why was this not considered?
• Needed a balance between Tech and Aesthetic
• Leads needed to become more tech oriented
  • Seth - Did any wash out of the lead role or did they adapt? Was there any neglect of the aesthetics?
• Engineers weren’t ready for the transition and art took the blame
  • Seth - It’s rarely a one-sided street when it comes to blame. I’ve heard at least an equal amount of constructive criticism directed at tech teams supplying overly optimistic time and technical targets.
• Lighting wasn’t accounted for
• Engines that made the leap successfully scaled up slowly
  • Seth - Great idea when your production schedule allows for it.
• Multiple SKUs was a problem
• Some publishers expect teams to up-res from the Wii to the XBOX 360
  • Seth that is an aesthetic problem. Has anyone dealt with the more technical issues surrounding going from the PS3 or 360 down to the Wii or PSP?
• Artists needed training in new tools. How?
  • Info bombing
  • Looking at other work
  • Everyone takes time to use and battle test a new tool when it is introduced
  • There is a need for a technical writer for documentation of internal tools
  • Retention issues from the jump

• Seth - Did artists resign due to the pressure or were they lured away to other companies?

• • Automated processes when possible (update tools for all team members through a login script)

Attributes of a great Lead Artist?

How are they different from Senior Artist roles? What’s most critical? Can you train an art lead?

Should the Lead role be rotated or should it be a permanent title as projects permit? Lead re-entry issues?

Can there be dual and truly equivalent career paths for production and management focus?

• They need to be more technical to compliment a “vision” art director
  • Seth - Does each project need two Art Directors?
• Must be someone that can keep a team moving/motivated
• Should have strong management skills in relation to the number of direct reports
• Trustworthy - to the team and management
• Some companies are resorting to a combination of leads that have different skills - tech/vision/manager
• Should communicate a vision and be decisive
• Great communicator
  • Can communicated to different audiences (tech, execs, and team)
  • Can handle cultural and language barriers

Lead training? Seth - Nearly everyone present expressed a need for management training. Has your GDC experience led to any additional training in this area?

• Seth - Can leaders be trained?

• Some companies do quarterly training
• Lead candidates are identified early (some years before expected to be promoted) and are groomed
• Some companies are using external trainers
• 360 reviews are helpful to training a lead

Do leads need to be good artists?

• They need to be capable of implementation and a generalist skill set is preferred
• Recognized that if the have been leading for awhile they most likely have not been making art
  • Seth - This is can be a big problem when leading one project after another. It’s difficult to maintain skills.

Earning and maintaining the respect of the Team?

• Working on cool stuff vs. the mundane
  • Seth - The point here is that the “cool stuff” should probably be preserved for others on the team. Also, I believe the lead should never be tasked with any critical-path tasks.
• Doing personal work

• • Confusion over who owns your personal work

• Seth - To be safe, assume that anything done on company time and equipment is not yours.

• Allowing time for personal exploration for artists and yourself
• Differing opinions on the need of a physical portfolio for a lead
  • Seth - The game itself is a portfolio piece.
• Leads don’t need to be game players necessarily, but they need to know the competition

Do leads rotate?

• High demand, so good ones don’t
  • Seth - True, but should they rotate?

Who sets the vision? Art Director or the Lead Artist

• Seemed to vary a lot between companies - some confusion on the roles
  • Seth - Terminology does vary in part because the organization and scale of game companies is so varied.

What do Artists expect in a Lead?

• Art Directors tend to get caught up in minutia
• Clear and consistent vision
  • Seth - One of my personal mantras is that feedback needs to be clear, complete and consistent. Three Cs. Nothing is more frustrating to an artist than getting initial guidance or iterative feedback that is lacking in one of these areas
• Decisive
  • Listen and be flexible but have a cutoff
• Need to be on top of the schedule and resources
  • Seth - Use your Producer or Art Director for support.
• Need to be accessible
  • Seth - This is critical. As a lead your first job is to ensure that your team has everything they need at all times to do their job at maximum efficiency.
• A mentor
• Have a presence on a project

What do Leads expect in A.D.s or management?

• Resolution of resource competition

• Firefighting

The blog is done thanks to the tireless efforts of Dennis Shirk, a man of towering genius in the blogoshere. Now I have to compile the emails from the collected business cards.

-Seth