Visual Development for Web and Mobile Games

This book is geared towards both students as well as professionals who are looking to enter the mobile (tablet/smartphone) and PC (personal computer) industry as concept artists (for both 2D and 3D production pipelines) or 2D production artists (game-ready assets). This book is not specifically focused on game design or game development and is also not a 3D modeling or animation guide.

However, certain aspects of game design, game development, and 3D modeling and animation will impact the visual development and art creation process. So, at points throughout we will explore topics such as game engine performance and game mechanics, though at a very high-level, bird's-eye, vantage point and only as they pertain to the visual development of the various assignments throughout this book.

Through the completion of the exercises and assignments contained within Visual Development for Web & Mobile Games readers will be guided through the visual development process and execution of a variety of concepts and assets (final game art). This includes categories such as characters, props, and backgrounds, within an isometric design template. The categories themselves will relate more to their function within a very simple game design template than their completed visual representation (e.g., the "big build-able" category could be anything from a town square to a fire breathing dragon as long as it fits within the bare bones parameters of the asset types functionality). The concept, theme, and style of these assets, as well as the world they inhabit, will be completely up to the individual artist.

Chris Carman began his career in games as a storyboard and concept artist at Electronic Arts where he worked on "Spoore" for the Maxis Division. From there he moved to the web games sector working at the startup Multiverse on a "Second Life"-type MMO as well as web game demos for various licensed properties such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Avatar". He then transitioned to the (at the time) nascent social gaming industry with Zynga where he spent five years doing concept art, production art, marketing art, and eventually art directing their largest and most successful products in the Farmville franchise. During this time he was able to work with Adobe to build a reference physics game ("Whack!") with the goal of helping ActionScript developers take advantage of hardware acceleration in traditional 2D games by leveraging Stage3D APIs. Throughout my time in this sector I had noticed a passive indifference (and the occasional outright hostility) towards the social games industry from the traditional visual development artists mainly due to misinformed stereotypes such as "they are all spam games". This book will work to expose and prepare more traditional visual development students (and professionals) to this exciting growth sector of the entertainment industry.