Game artists are those who creates art for one or more types of games. There are different types of game arts named concept art, character art, environment art, sound art, tech art, character animation, visual effects, sound design, user interface design and final video game on game design. As there are different types of game art, there are different types of professionals who are especially intelligent in their related fields. So, the different companies in the world have their respective group of excellent professionals in their respective game arts. So, to choose a good game artist among those companies is not as easy as chewing gum.
Game artists are people who are proficient in creating specialized form of computer art employing video games as the artistic medium. Game artists sometimes have to use the patched or modified video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures. In video games, game artists are responsible for all of the aspects of game development that are called for visual art. Game artists are very important for the games and so they are often credited in role-playing games, collectible card games and video games.
Moreover, the growing field of games is full of talented game artists from all over the world. Great game artists have paved a new era of digital art to lead creative teams and inspire the next generation of game artists. Game artists are responsible for creating 2D and 3D art for the visual elements of a video game, such as characters, vehicles, props, scenery, background, objects, colors, textures and clothing. All those things that game artists create are for the look and feel for game players. Although the career of game artists is focused on computer graphics, they still use traditional hand sketching in the beginning stages.
The look of a video game is a huge factor in its success, while its playability comes only second. Some game artists try to look as realistic as possible while others aim for a more stylized look. It is the job of a game artist to model and texture characters and objects to achieve the desired result. Essentially, the game artists are generally graphic artists who specifically focus on video games.
Game artists have to work under the supervision of a lead artist, and have the responsibility of creating specific art assets within a game. They may also create artwork for packages, promotional materials and websites. As there are different game arts and concepts, there are different game artists and the teamwork of those different game artists make a good game. Some game artists are very good at the design of human figures and characters and others in buildings and landscapes, and some in textures for 3D objects. They must keep the technical capabilities and limitations of the platform in mind that the game will be played on, and listen to feedback from QA testers.
Here are the best game artists who created iconic games in the world.
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Shigeru Miyamoto
The game artist is the greatest game artist of all time. What he has achieved is what the video game industry is modernized today. If one name the gamers all over the world would know, it would be the name of this game artist. Shigeru Miyamoto’s accomplishments has become an icon of the videogame industry. We do not need to say what he has achieved as he is the icon of videogames. Without him, the video game landscape probably would not be what it is today and his contributions help to revive and essentially save the videogame industry in the mid 1980s.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the game artist, designer, producer and game director of Nintendo as one of its representative directors, is the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchise s of all time, including Mario and The Legend of Zelda, which the latter has a series by Netflix. Even today, there is no one who does not know Super Mario. Both Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, that Miyamoto created, brought massive successes for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). These games helped Nintendo and the NES to dominate the console game market. His games has been flagships of every Nintendo video game console, from the arcade machines of the late 1970s to the present day.
John Carmack
Most of PCs gaming of 90s is characterized by this game artist’s exciting and innovative games. To name these games, they are Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, Quake and Doom. It is very common for a PC game player of 90s to play at least one of these games. The name of that game artist is John Carmack. John Romero may take the limelight on the occasions but Carmack’s assembly programming skills to make the 3D engines ahead of their time makes him the true pioneer of 3D gaming. He is now attempting to push games into yet another dimension by working on the oculus rift virtual reality project.
John Carmack is a game artist who worked as a computer programmer, video game developer and engineer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its games Commander keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake and their sequels. Like Carmack’s Reverse algorithm for Shadow Volumes, Carmack made innovations in 3D Computer graphics. In 2013, the game artist resigned from id to work fulltime at Oculus VR, where he served as CTO and later as Consulting CTO in 2019.
Carmack was born in United States by local television news reporter Stan Carmack. He grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, where he became interested in computers at an early age. He was introduced to video games with the 1978 shoot ‘em up title Space Invaders in the arcades during a summer vacation as a child. The 1980 maze chase arcade game Pac-Mac also left a strong impression on him.
Carmack has pioneered or popularized the use of many techniques in computer graphics, including “adaptive tile refresh” for Commander Keen, ray casting for Hovertank 3D, Catacomb 3D and Wolfenstein 3D. Carmack’s engines have also been licensed for use in other influential first-person shooters such as Half-Life, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor.
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game artist who works as a designer, director, producer, writer and film director. The game artist is famous for creating Final Fantasy Series, having conceived the original concept for the first title Final Fantasy and also having directed several later entries in the franchise, and has had a long career in gaming with over 100 million units of video games sold worldwide. This game artist founded Square Enix and founded the studio Mistwalker in 2004.
The game artist is one of the greatest game artists of all time, being recognized worldwide by games such as Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy Series. The masterpiece of this game artist is the Final Fantasy Series, which convinced the original concept for the first title of the film also known as Final Fantasy and also directed several subsequent entries into the franchise. Sakaguchi has a long career in video games with more than 100 million units sold worldwide.
If you talk about Sakaguchi, you cannot simply neglect the Final Fantasy Series. The game was released in Japan on December 18, 1987 and was successful throughout Japan. Under the supervision of Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy became an expansive franchise. In 1991, following the release of Final Fantasy IV for Super Nintendo, he won the position of Executive Vice President.
Hideo Kojima
Hideo Kojima is a Japanese game artist who works as a video game designer, director, producer and writer. As what is said above, he is a genius who is good at all; writing, illustrating, film-making and designing. He brought all his skills to Konami and helped create the series that revolutionized the stealth genre, Metal Gear. He also made the adventure game the snatcher and policenauts but the Metal Gear series really blew up with the release of the Metal Gear Solid 4 the PS1 and Kojima has been a household name ever since or at least any household that has a PlayStation or who has ever played PlayStation.
In the gaming industry, Hideo Kojima is regarded as an auteur of video games as this game artist developed a strong passion for action and adventure cinema and literature during his childhood and adolescence. Konami hired Hideo Kojima in 1986 for the games Metal Gear (1987) and MSX2 to design and write. Then that game become the foundations for stealth games and Metal Gear series, the best known and the most appreciated works. Metal Gear Solid that was released in 1998 for PlayStation is the game that consecrated him as one of the most acclaimed video game designers. Hideo is also well-known for producing the Zone of the Enders series, as well as writing and designing Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
Alexey Pajitnov
You may not know this game artist, but all of you must surely know his invented game. Whether you know he made that game or not, the game is in every phone even in keypad. The Russian game artist has earned his spot on this list for one of the most puzzle game of all time till now. This is the famous game known as “Tetris.” He did not earn the royalties of game for until 12 years after the release of the game. He did his masterpiece in his spare time while working as a computer programmer in the computer center of Academy of Science.
Moreover, this Russian game artist also worked on Hexic and Hexic 2 which many Xbox players would be familiar with. The full name of this game artist is Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov. He worked as a game artist, video game designer and computer engineer. While working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-funded Research and Development center, he developed his masterpiece Tetris in 1984. This game is pioneer of today’s games such as Candy Crush Saga, one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile game of its era.
He was named as the fourth most influential game artist of all time by GameSpot. In 2007, he received the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award for pioneering the casual games market. In 2009, he received the honorary award at the LARA – Der Deutsche Games Award in Cologne, Germany. In 2012, IGN included him on their list of Five Memorable Video Game Industry One-Hit Wonders, calling him “the ultimate video game one-hit wonder.” And in 2015, this game artist won the Bizkaia Award at the Fun and Serious Game Festival.
Warren Spector
Warren Spector is an American game artist who also worked as role-playing and video game designer, director, writer, producer and production designer. This game artist is well known for creating immersive sim games, which give players a wide variety of choices in how to progress. Producing both tabletop and video games, Specter has done plenty to earn his game in the gaming community. Consequences of those choices are then shown in the simulated game world in the subsequent levels or missions. He is best known for the critically acclaimed vdeo game Deus Ex that embodies the choice and consequence philosophy while combining elements of the first person shooter, role-playing, and adventure game genres.
Warren Spector involved in the creation of several acclaimed titles including Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock and Thief: The Dark Project at the time he works for Looking Glass Studios. And these games are considered as the Gems of the 90s PC. Now, he is working for OtherSide Entertainment, where he is part of the development team for the upcoming game System Shock 3. He also works with Disney to produce the Epic Mickey Series but Specter goes beyond producing. He is an academic critic and he always trys to change the way that people talk about games for the better.
Gabe Newell
Well, our childhood memories may be filled with Dota: Defense of the Ancients. Although you would not know him, you would know his masterpieces. Gabe Newell is an American businessman and the co-founder and president of the video game artist, developer and digital distribution company Valve. He attended Davis Senior High School and Harvard University in the early 1980s before dropping out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first iterations of the Windows operating system. Newell left Microsoft in 1669 to found Valve together with Mike Harrington leaving Microsoft in 2000, leaving Newell as the sole owner. As of 2020, Newell had a net worth of approximately 4 Billion USD.
We are all told to stay at school and study. But Gabe is different. He left Harvard and become a Billionaire. His works at Microsoft helped much when he founded Valve, one of the most successful game companies in this world. Gabe also created Steam as a way of selling the games that they have developed themselves like Half-Life and Counter-Strike. In 2013, he was added to the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science Hall of Fame. In the same year, this game artist received the BAFTA Fellowship award for his contributions to the video game industry. In October 2017, Forbes listed Gabe Newell among the 100 richest people in the United States with an estimated net worth of 5.5 Billion USD.
Will Wright
William Ralph Wright, also known as Will Wright, is an American video game artist and co-founder of the former game development company Maxis, and then part of Electronics Arts (EA). But in 2009, this game designer left EA to run Stupid Fun Club Camp, an entertainment think tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders. This game artist designed Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but then the game SimCity brought him to prominence. That game, SimCity, was released by Maxis, a company that Wright founded with Jeff Bruan. Then he built upon the game’s theme of computer simulation with numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt.
If you are lording over your carefully crafted city or micromanaging a suburban household, we would have to thank Will Wright for letting their inner control freak run. Will Wright is the perfect game artist for the most successful and addictive PC simulation games in the market as they derived from that game artist. You cannot understand about simulation without thinking about Will Wright’s iconic games like SimCity, SimFarm and of course The Sims.
Wright’s greatest success to date comes from being the original designer for The Sims. The game spawned multiple sequels, including The Sims 2, The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 and expansion packs. And Wright has earned many awards for his work. The latest work of Will Wright is Spore and it was released in September 2008 and features gameplay based on the model of evolution and scientific advancement. The game sold 406,000 copies within three weeks of its release.
Shinji Mikami
Shinji Mikami is a Japanese game artist who also works as a director, producer and video game designer. He started his career at Capcom in 1990 and he went on to direct many of the company’s biggest titles. If everyone has a mastermind for a specific thing, Shinji Mikami has the mastermind for survival horror games with his phenomenal Resident Evil Series. This franchise essentially founded the genre and is still cited today as an influence for game designers trying their hand at horror. He is also largely responsible for classics like the Hack and Slash, Devil May Cry series.
He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both being survival horror games. Then he returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat’em up action game. The game artist also worked at PlatinumGames to direct the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. He also founded his own studio Tango Gameworks in 2010 but now it has been acquired by ZeniMax Media. Under his studio, he directed the third-person horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games.
Sid Meier
Sid Meier is a game artist who made a name for himself by creating the most addictive and rewarding strategy games of all time. There are many famous games under the name of him like Sid Meier’s Pirates, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Sid Meier’s Railroads. If you are very keen in strategy games, you would have certainly known his name. His games combined simulation and strategy in a way that give players ultimate power and who does not occasionally want a little bit of that.
He is a Canadian-American game artist who is also famous as programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, especially the Civilization series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. Because of his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
Among his famous games, the Civilization series are the most famous. It is a series of turn-based strategy video games firstly released in 1991. Sid Meier is the original game artist who developed the first game in the series and had creative input for the most of the rest, and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier’s Civilization. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series.