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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 6</font></b></font></p>
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              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"> 
          DRAW, Pardner!</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Chris &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:cwb@aqueous.net">shaithis</a>&quot; 
          Buecheler</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8" size="+1"><b>Team</b></font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>"I classify 
          [an] art team as everyone working on <b>Duke Nukem Forever</b>. I try 
          to exchange ideas and opinions with everyone, not just the art team."<br>
          -Ruben Cabrera, 3DRealms</i></font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Methods of team 
          communication are possibly the most highly varied aspect covered by 
          my survey. Some of the artists polled spend most of their time by themselves, 
          others are in constant contact with the entire development team, and 
          still others work predominantly with one or two members. Some work from 
          home often, others not at all. It's interesting in that all of these 
          artists have the same basic job description, yet their methods of getting 
          the job done can differ severely.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mike Miller, 
          concept artist for <a href="http://www.ionstorm.com">Ion Storm</a>, 
          feels that working from home is very productive, and wishes he had the 
          chance to do it more often. Other artists in the field tend to feel 
          that working at home is more "different" than "better". Mike Hadwin 
          of Ritual thinks that working at home allows him to focus a bit more 
          on creativity, and a bit less on deadlines. However, this also sometimes 
          leads to the development of new techniques, which is often a time consuming 
          process. Personally, I've found that working at an office helps me stay 
          on top of things, keep track of the project, and not get sidetracked. 
          </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Often it's not 
          possible for this to happen (as a contract worker, much of the art I 
          do is done at home, and then sent via the net to the people I'm doing 
          work for) so I've managed to develop some methods which help me stay 
          focused. One of these methods is constant contact with other members 
          of the team. This is agreed upon by most of the artists I interviewed, 
          though some don't spend all that much time working directly with their 
          teammates. Kevin Kilstrom, the sole artist working on world-textures 
          for <a href="http://www.lith.com">Monolith's</a> <b>Blood 2</b>, works 
          primarily with the level designers, far more than with the other members 
          of the art team. Rich Fleider (Rogue), on the other hand, spends much 
          of his time working with the other members of his art team (especially 
          on the character/monster models), as well as the Rogue level designers. 
          Jeff Wand, works "for several minutes to a half hour a day [with other 
          members of the art team]. Just enough to have an idea of what others 
          are working on and to compare notes."</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It appears that 
          in most game situations, 2D artists spend a good deal of their time 
          communicating within their team and with the level designers. I've found 
          that many 2D artists have only a basic understanding of coding (myself 
          included), which may explain why more direct work is not done with the 
          programmers. Chalk it up to the age-old conflict between math and art, 
          I suppose. This is where all of those fractal-mathematics art fans fire 
          up their mailers and send me hate mail ;) </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1" color="#0022A8"><b>Techniques</b></font></p>
        <p align="CENTER"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i>"The method 
          of creation depends on what kind of look I'm striving for. If I'm going 
          for a comic book feel, I'll go it alone and hand generate the texture 
          using reference only as a visual aid. If I'm going for a photo realistic 
          look, I'll use anything, and I mean anything. I usually have to sanitize 
          the scanner after I'm done..." <br>
          -Jeff Wand, Ion Storm </i></font></p>


        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So how do they 
          go about creating their textures? We now know a bit more about the tools 
          and communication methods that 2D artists in the gaming industry use, 
          but how about their techniques? Well, for starters, 100% of the artists 
          I surveyed have a background in non-digital, freehand art. That is, 
          they can all pick up a pencil and draw something more basic than a square...and 
          most can also pick up charcoal, paint, clay, and an airbrush and wield 
          them all relatively effectively. I as well, have a background in freehand 
          work. It's worth noting that every company I've worked for, or even 
          contacted about work, has looked to make sure that I did indeed have 
          freehand work on display in my portfolio. </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Out of the 
          artists surveyed, 66% had a bachelor's degree in art (of one kind or 
          another), and the other 33% had taken at least some college level art 
          classes. This is a <i>far greater</i> percentage than you typically 
          see in other industry jobs, such as programming or level designing. 
          My personal theory on why this is: I think both level designing and, 
          to a slightly lesser degree, coding are both professions that some people 
          are "just good at", without a lot of professional training. While there 
          are <i>many</i> artists out there who have a lot of raw talent, it's 
          very difficult to refine that talent without professional instruction. 
          This doesn't necessarily make it any "better" or "worse" of a talent 
          than the other two, just one that's often realized differently.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">What type of 
          training is good training? Any, really. Most computer artists will tell 
          you that they have a wide background in traditional art types. I personally 
          have experience with charcoal, pastel, acrylic paints, oil paints, collage, 
          mixed media, pencil, ink, pottery, sculpting, layout concepts, and a 
          bit of screen printing. My actual computer art knowledge, however, is 
          almost entirely self-taught. It's definitely a benefit to be diverse, 
          however. Monolith's Kevin Kilstrom has a background in "drawing, painting, 
          sculpture, ceramics, screen printing, etc." Knowing the basics is important, 
          too. A good background in figure drawing will help any art professional, 
          simply via the discipline and understanding of shape that it imparts. 
          Similarly, work in collage and mixed media often helps today's texture 
          artists understand better how to make their 2D images more closely resemble 
          the texture they're mimicking.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Choice in school 
          varies wildly between artists, and it appears that there's no specific 
          school good for teaching "game industry art". Several cutting edge art 
          schools are offering "interactive multimedia" and "computer graphics" 
          courses, however, so it's only a matter of time before we start seeing 
          classes like "Textures 101: Building the basic wood" or somesuch. I'm 
          familiar with several New York City area Art Schools. <a href="http://www.pratt.edu">Pratt</a>, 
          <a href="http://www.sva.edu">School of Visual Arts</a>, and <a href="http://www.parsons.edu">Parsons</a> 
          all offer various types of computer-oriented art majors, with SVA having 
          perhaps the strongest department. Pratt's strength lies in its foundation 
          years, where it forces incoming students to learn not just their particular 
          art preference, but to spend time working in a wide variety of mediums 
          and styles. Parsons, too, offers a wide variety of majors, many of which 
          involve the student in several types of art. The art departments at 
          many "normal" colleges are often excellent, as well, many rivaling the 
          quality of any dedicated art school.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">As for individual 
          classes, diversity is the key. Most of the artists I surveyed, however, 
          mentioned basic figure drawing, painting, illustration, sculpture, and 
          screen printing as being a part of their education. Drawing from life 
          is also stressed. It never hurts to go outside, sit down with some charcoal 
          or pastels, and draw the side of a building, or the leaves of a tree. 
          Many "general drawing" courses offer this type of work, and I would 
          definitely recommend that anyone interested in the 2D side of the gaming 
          industry take at least one or two of them. It's much easier to texture 
          if you already have some familiarity of how a texture "applies itself" 
          to an object, and there's no better way to do this than going out and 
          looking for yourself.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Texturing is, 
          of course, one of the main jobs of the 2D artist. In the past, "texturing" 
          meant taking a small palette of colors, and trying to make something 
          vaguely recognizable out of them. It meant two-tone trees and bushes, 
          three-color faces, or even in some lucky cases, 256 *gasp* colors to 
          use on one sprite. In fact, it wasn't really even called texturing, 
          just tiling or "drawing". The concept of texturing as it's seen now, 
          didn't really come along to the PC gaming scene until the weirdos at 
          id (and a couple of other places) got this crazy idea into their heads 
          that maybe building games out of polygons might be a cool idea.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Photo realism 
          is the name of the game these days, making your polygons look as realistic 
          as is currently possible. There are many different ways that people 
          create their textures, due to the huge variety of texture types and 
          styles that need to be made. Many artists have taken to using scanned, 
          photographed, or otherwise pre-made textures as a base for their work. 
          They also spend a lot of time just looking at reference material in 
          order to get an idea of the look they're shooting for. Says Kevin Kilstrom: 
          "I prefer to work from reference materials. It's a lot faster and looks 
          better." He's not alone in this opinion. Mike Hadwin agrees, "If a detailed 
          texture needs to look exactly like the structure of an offshore oilrig, 
          then nothing beats true to life reference materials."</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Most 2D artists 
          these days appear to adapt their methods based on what they need. Jeff 
          Wand says that, for him, it always comes down to the same thing in the 
          end: "By the end of the texture creation process, I'm always down to 
          working on a pixel-by-pixel basis." Rich Flieder agrees, citing <b>Dpaint 
          </b>as still his most-used tool. Kevin Kilstrom on the other hand states, 
          "I almost never work pixel by pixel anymore. I did on <b>Blood </b>but 
          that was a different engine." Mike Miller finds a mixture. "In the smaller 
          details, I have to go pixel by pixel. Lower res stuff kind of deems 
          it necessary. Other than that, I let the tools do the work," He writes.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Artists more 
          and more are beginning to work with a scanned image as a base. Both 
          Jeff Wand and Ruben Cabrera state this as a common method of working. 
          Says Cabrera, "I start with a photographic base and work on top of that, 
          but sometimes it's impossible or not realistic to go and take a picture 
          of something, so there are techniques that I use that create realistic 
          effects like broken glass, dirty materials, etc.". I have done some 
          work with scanned images as well, and have found that sometimes it's 
          extremely useful. I needed to make an oriental rug texture awhile ago, 
          and the time I saved by tweaking a scanned image was significant. In 
          the end however, a scanned image almost always needs a decent amount 
          of hands-on reworking. Seamlessly tiling the image, changing the shading, 
          perhaps adding some depth, and many more small tweaks are often necessary. 
          With the advent of 16-bit and higher color palettes, however, 2D artists 
          are finding that scanned images are an excellent way to help avoid the 
          "cartoony" feel that totally hand-pixeled images often have. </font></p>
        <p align="LEFT">&nbsp;</p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Illustration &copy; 1998 Chris Buecheler. DRAW Pardner! is &copy; 1998 Chris 
      Buecheler. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
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