Art Style Guides
polycounter lvl 2
I am looking for some art style guides so that I can work towards certain art styles that are stylistically correct for World of Warcraft and Call of Duty Black Ops 3. I'm looking for something similar to Valve's DOTA 2 style guides that say what maps they use and how the are imported into the Source Engine. I was going to e-mail either Blizzard of Treyarch but I 1- couldn't find an e-mail for general inquiry and 2- didn't want to be that guy who ask random questions and what not.
The google search and Polycount search bring up some similar questions asked but I haven't found anything yet. Are there some alternative such as ripping models and textures from the game to see how they work? Is that even legal? Thanks ahead of time and hopefully something turns up or a better solution come across.
The google search and Polycount search bring up some similar questions asked but I haven't found anything yet. Are there some alternative such as ripping models and textures from the game to see how they work? Is that even legal? Thanks ahead of time and hopefully something turns up or a better solution come across.
Replies
Even at a professional level. My studios had received quite a lot of out-source works for various stylized games (not Blizzard) and all they tell us, is that our art "needs to match their style" there's no explanation or anything, only examples of their works or what they want. And the only way to find out if we'd got it right, is by doing review with the client. Same apply to toys commercial, too.
So far, the art directors I've work with all had really good eyes and they could almost always nail the style within a couple revisions.
Steam workshop may provide a bit more comprehensive guide, but that's not an area I've familiar with.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Art_Bible
Panupat is right, this is how it usually works for external art teams. Sometimes you'll get an art guide from the Art Director, but usually it's just a list of specs to match, plus some screenshots, maybe an example model.
Ripping models is generally OK, as long as you don't share what you find. When you start posting online or torrenting content, you become a target for company legal departments. Ripping is an age-old learning technique, I think lots of developers do this though few admit it, for obvious reasons.