Spicy Art

From the smallest handheld to the largest AAA blockbuster, achieving a cohesive look and style in a game is a challenge. It takes a persistent vision and vigilance to ensure the development team stays on the same path.

This duty falls to the Art Director of a production. Ken Wong recently filled that role at Spicy Horse for Alice: Madness Returns. Ken is currently working as a freelance illustrator while working on his own self-produced iOS game.


Why is the Art Director important for the success of the game?

I guess this is more interesting if you're talking about when I was an Art Director at Spicy Horse (I left last year). The role of an Art Director is to lead the art department and sell the gameplay and fun through the visuals of the game. The art of a game works on several levels: to provide atmosphere, to tell a story, to convey emotion, to give feedback to the player, and to provide information about what is dangerous or breakable or valuable to the player. In a good game everything from the choice of typeface to the color of the sunlight through a window to the highlight on a gemstone is tuned or handmade for one or more of these purposes. The Art Director coordinates the art team and navigates them toward achieving these goals.


What is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome, either with a personal or professional project?

Managing the relatively young and inexperienced Alice: Madness Returns art team (myself included) was probably the biggest challenge. The project came with very high expectations which I really wanted to meet. Sometimes it was hard getting the team to all design together in the same universe.

One of the advantages of the Wonderland world is that anything is possible, but to achieve cohesiveness you need to stick with one particular brand of 'anything.' We'd have fierce arguments about whether certain ideas or looks were right for 'our Alice.'

How did you ultimately decide what your brand of Alice would look like? Was the overall look defined as a collective effort or did you and American have the definitive say on everything?

There are two aspects to the 'look' - the rendering and the design. For the rendering we strove to emulate hand-crafted art as much as possible to try and get a 'tactile' sense. I think we succeeded in this in some places and not in others, usually where we didn't have enough time or experience to tweak it just right.

The design of the objects, characters, and environments was a mix. The art team was given a lot of freedom and in some cases the art drove the design and story, rather than the other way around. I tended to give the concept artists starting points, either from the design or from the themes for a particular area, and then challenged them to riff and explore.


What work are you most proud of? Why?

I'm very proud of the art book we released for the game [Alice] through Dark Horse Books. Much of the art in the book wasn't eventually used in the actual game but it documents three years of blood, sweat, and tears, hundreds of great ideas, and some really fantastic images by some superbly talented artists.


How do you see your profession evolving over the next few years?

I think my most interesting answer might be if you meant 'game developer.' In the 1990s and early 2000s, games had nowhere to go but bigger and prettier. The way games were controlled stayed the same, games cost the same, and most games were played sitting in front of a display or with a portable game machine. Today, you can control a game with a plastic guitar, with motion, with touch, with a keyboard and mouse, or with a classic controller. You can play games for free, or freemium, by subscription or for $0.99. You can now play on Facebook, your smartphone, XBLA, or online.

I actually think the big evolution has already happened after years of stagnation. I think in the next few years the newer models will continue to expand and the 'traditional' market will shrink but not disappear. Smaller agile teams who are able to take bigger risks will come back and perhaps even become the dominant game studio format. This is good because it's encouraging and supporting people to start their own band and find their own sound instead of using American Idol to keep the same, manufactured, status quo.

Very interesting! For the role of Art Director specifically, how do you see it evolving, either with their responsibilities, or the sort of tools they might be using to better do their jobs?

I don't think I really see much evolution for Art Directors except that the small 2 to 10 person teams don't necessarily need one. One trend in the past couple of years is that games for everybody are increasing in popularity and profit compared to games aimed at the 16 to 35-year-old male audience. This somewhat enlarges the palette of art styles we can play with. Of course, there have always been amazing, innovative art styles, but I think in the future more studios will be more open to it.


Are there any techniques/methodologies/best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well?

I think every decision we made art-wise at Spicy Horse had its drawbacks as well as advantages. I think the smart thing is to pick the strategy that best suits your team and current project.

Could you provide any specific examples to help illustrate that point?

At Spicy Horse we work very organically, which is to say sometimes we need to arrive at solutions through exploration, experimentation, and trial and error. For the Level Designers, they like to have a bunch of building block art assets to play with in the editor. The first assets we made were very early in the game development before the story or gameplay had been established. The art team and level design team could try out lots of wacky stuff while waiting for the design to mature. It also allowed us to start the art outsourcing process, like figuring out information needed to be in the spec and which outsource partners matched our project best.

Almost all our 3D assets were outsourced to other companies. To avoid misunderstandings we wanted the specs to be as detailed as possible. Therefore, our team was very concept artist heavy - up to 8 artists at peak time. My background is in concept art so our studio tended to place a lot of emphasis on 2D visualization.


What is the title on which you are currently working?

I'm working on my own iOS game. I don't want to spill the beans too early, but it involves cruelty to cute animals.


Is there anything about your current or most recent title you are particularly excited about in which you are (were) directly involved?

I'm excited about trying to make a game almost entirely by myself (I'm doing the art, animation and coding; I'll outsource the sound and music). It's a long hard road and I might not end up recouping my costs but I'll be able to say “I did that.”


Tell me about your background.

I've always drawn and played games but when I was young I didn't seriously think I could do both as a career. My major at university was multimedia but most of what I know I learned from books and DVD extra features. I spent the past seven years working as an Art Director, first in Hong Kong, then in Shanghai at Spicy Horse. I'm now working as a freelance artist and solo game developer.


What are your inspirations?

Everything around me. If you know how to look you can find a story or an interesting composition or a starting idea anywhere.


Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out?

Study mainstream art more. I tend to focus a lot on weird and eccentric art. I'm not so good at just making a really appealing illustration that will work for a broad audience. The ideal situation for a commercial illustrator is to do both at the same time: to create something unique and fresh that lots of people can get.


What is your current title, and if you were to describe what you do with your own self-title, what would it be?

Not-Quite-Starving-Creative. I'm getting enough freelance illustration jobs that I'm not starving. I just moved to the Philippines for a while. I'm not a pure artist, as I do a little writing and I'm doing both art and programming on a little iOS game.


What motivated you to work in the game industry?

The opportunity to get paid for fantasy art. The comic book, card game, magazine/book industries are a lot tougher for an artist to start out in. Plus I didn't really seek games out, the industry kind of found me.

How did the industry find you?

In 2001, when I was still studying at university, I did some fan art of American McGee's Alice. American saw my work on the web and asked if I'd like to do some work on his next game (the cancelled American McGee's Oz). I had never done professional work, but I gave it my best shot. After I graduated he helped me get my first job as Art Director at Enlight Software on Hong Kong.




What are your favorite games and why?

Super Metroid because it's simply a masterpiece. It achieves so much atmosphere and adventure with almost no text. Street Fighter because its mechanics are so sublime. I think the reason Ryu still plays like Ryu 20 years later is because they really nailed a great feeling. Finally Sword & Sworcery because it's an utterly amazing piece of work and goes against everything conventional wisdom says you should be doing in games right now.

What are you playing right now?

Right now I do all my gaming on an iPad. I've been playing Super Crate Box, Spell Tower and Sword & Sworcery.

Thank you for your time Ken!

If you'd like to see more of Ken's work please be sure to visit his site.