Gaming Artists - Dubious Designs
Every day one hears about some or the other new gaming product that has entered the market. The computer gaming industry is one of the fastest growing industries now - a - days. With the developments in technology, they have not been restricted to computers only. Each day new consoles, gaming box sets and play stations are being developed and launched. New and innovative ideas for games for phones and tablets also need to be presented regularly.
A Game Artist has to create art for these games. They are responsible for developing all those aspects of a game which involve visual art. With the demand of games for computers, phones, consoles increasing by the day, gaming artists are in huge demand.
A Game Artist does all the work right from thinking of an idea for the game, planning the game, designing it as well as it features up to coding the game and all its intricate features, adding the animated features and giving the game its final form.
In India, the payoff for gaming artists is not very much as the Indian gaming industry has not reached maturity as yet. For beginners, the salaries lie between 10,000 INR and 20,000 INR per month. After three or four years of continuously working as a game artist, one eventually gets promoted to the post of Senior Game Artist. A Senior Game Artist can easily make anything between 40,000 INR and 50,000 INR on a monthly basis. After working for an additional seven to eight years, you can get promoted to the post of Art Director and further on, to that of a Senior Art Director. At these positions, you can earn upwards of 1,00,000 INR on a monthly basis.
Those interested in making a career in this field should take up Science at the class 12 levels. Then they should go for a Bachelor’s degree course in Fine Arts with Visual Communication as the concentration. Many well- known technical institutes also provide training in the fields of animation and gaming which prove to be of great help. Game art is nothing but an extensive amalgamation of Computer Science and Art, with Art playing the dominant role. So if one is aspiring to become a game artist, a degree in Computer Science can give you an added advantage. Also, knowledge of languages like C, C++ and Visual Basic is a must.
The College of Art, Delhi and the Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), with centers in several cities are two very reputed institutes in India that offer such courses to interested students.
To become a successful Game Artist, one must have an artistic bent of mind. One should be very creative and have a fertile imagination. They should be dedicated towards their work and not have an objection to putting long hours of hard work as this a time- consuming and taxing job. A good game artist should be technology savvy and have the ability to work well with a team.
