Dreams of becoming a UI artist
Hey everyone,
I feel like this was the appropriate place to ask for advice, but I have been wanting to look into becoming a great UI artist. Growing up, I have always loved characters and making games and designing stuff in Photoshop. Unfortunately, my school never got into UI art - something I really want to look into doing.
My question is - where do I begin? If you are a UI artist, please tell me what I should expect and know. I want to learn, practice and study to master it. So far, I study other game's UI elements and try to remake them, or throw in my own style. Just to get the hang of it.
I'm pretty sure I had more to say, but that's it for now. xD
I feel like this was the appropriate place to ask for advice, but I have been wanting to look into becoming a great UI artist. Growing up, I have always loved characters and making games and designing stuff in Photoshop. Unfortunately, my school never got into UI art - something I really want to look into doing.
My question is - where do I begin? If you are a UI artist, please tell me what I should expect and know. I want to learn, practice and study to master it. So far, I study other game's UI elements and try to remake them, or throw in my own style. Just to get the hang of it.
I'm pretty sure I had more to say, but that's it for now. xD
Replies
One of the places I found is http://push-conference.com/ and their vimeo channel with some talks, for example this one:
https://vimeo.com/111574737
http://www.hudsandguis.com/
There is also the stuff on the wiki:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/User_Interface
http://www.theskinsfactory.com/
If you like, send me a message or mail me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to help.
Liam
If you want to go to school for it, look for "Interactive Design" or "New Media Design". Most people get their start in web since it's the most common form of interactive design, but game UI's tend to be more art heavy. If you want to show off your skills, it's really easy to "art" the hell out of a javascript widget. Make a portfolio out of widgets that look like they belong in games and that will get you started. If you can find some people developing an app, that's even better.
I'd suggest learning 2d animation techniques while refining and polishing your art skills. What visuals provide good input response to a user? How do you make clicking a button rewarding, or getting some piece of mundane loot special? Make After Effects animations, Flash animations, etc of user interactions. Study the market. Blizzard has one of the strongest user experience/UI groups in the business imo, their work always feels right. From button clicks, layouts, to animations on elements - as a gamer I feel special and excited to see things happen in the UI. Many games employ subtle animation to draw your eye, and make the player give emotional value to numbers or boxes - study how this is done via animation, color, etc!
Good luck! Master it and perfect it! Good UI artists are unicorns
I've seen a few people get hired by smaller studios as a result of UI redesigns they've done on games. I remember seeing one for Hawken awhile ago that was pretty good. Maybe you could pick a game you've invested a lot of time into with a so-so UI and focus on a re-design backed by some solid Typography / GD backgrounds?
That does not sound so much like UI to me, are you sure we are talking about the same thing ?
There are kind of UI Artists and UI Designers and some that do it all. The UI artists focus on the art execution and the designers on the layout function and usability (and likely often also implementation), but this is often blurred in companies and a position often will include all parts. Thing is you might have a programmer working with you, but you might also be expected to implement stuff yourself, so often programming experience is asked. But its different with every job.
Mobile and more real world detached companies might also employ UX designers, but UX should be a very core skill of every UI & game designer either way imo. I also know some companies that let the game designers do the UI design and have an UX team look over that while UI artists do the art after the template of the designers.
Typography is important, graphic design, layouting and proportions, color theory, user experience and basic psychology also helps, but also audivisual feedback and how to make your interfaces feel great to use. I do a lot of UI, its very fun but can also be very hard getting a good design down that you are finally happy with in both visuals and function.
Also as JOE previously said, its really underappreciated, reviewers will never mention the UI even if it looks and feels amazing, gamers will hardly appreciate it, but your colleagues may do however.
Lol, yes! I just meant that I was always usually focused more on character design than UI. And I'd like to start a focus on UI design since getting a job in graphic design but having a passion for games.