ArtDirection/Art Bibles/StyleGuides/

snakendidldoe

Hey There,

I am a student, planning my masters thesis. I think about writing about "art bibles" in videogames.
I am still at the very beginning of the work, looking for resources of information and thinking of a research questions, to get a more narrow direction (e.g what art direction techniques are used by by big productions that can be adopted by smaller indies and vice versa?)
I am very interested what comes to your mind with this topic and what direction it could go. Also i would be thankfull about resource of information suggestions.

have a good day

Kwramm

could be tough, time wise, to tackle that topic. Art direction is an ongoing process - a case study approach could work. But even if you focus on pre-production you will look at a few months to cover, and you might not have enough time for that in a masters thesis. Alternatively you could do a quantitative study exploring how artists and/or art directors feel about the art bibles, about the need for direction, about rigidity vs. flexibility of such guides, how they change during the project, how they apply them, e.g. for marketing, working with outsourcers, etc. You could then summarize the findings, contrast them to literature and even how other industries use briefs and project specs, and then draw conclusions and come up with recommendations.

If you prefer the case study approach, pre-production would be the best time to cover; it's shorter and everything happens in a more compressed time-frame. You will also see major iterations on the art bible in this stage, being able to study how it evolves.

Good luck

Eric Chadwick

Have you seen our wiki?
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Art_Bible