Art in games is the first thing that people see about your game. Often the art is the largest contributing factor and sometimes the only factor to whether they will purchase your game.

The graphic design of your game can also help set your game's theme and mood. It can also help to make rules and mechanics easier to understand.

I have a small list of principles I believe we should always keep in mind when creating the art for our games. With that said, lets get straight to principle one shall we?

I would say this principle is the one you should always keep in the back of your mind, as people use the art to decipher the mechanics, enemies and rules of the game.

Your art should always be as clear and concise, removing unnecessary aspects as to not make it confusing for the player. Just imagine playing an FPS (First Person Shooter) and every time you hit, shoot or kill an enemy the blood splatters all over the place. In the heat of the game where there are often 3 or more people fighting each other at once, all that blood would end up as visual noise that would confuse the player on where the enemy is.

This sounds self-explanatory at first glance, and it really is. You want your game to have a consistent style so that your player will have a sense of familiarity and recognisability throughout your game.

I like it when the design and style of your game tie itself to the themes and messages. This would constantly remind the subconscious of your player about the central message.

While keeping the style consistent in most games is a beneficial thing, there are games which also switch styles constantly. When they do that, they often keep one central thing consistent to hold everything together as well as make sure there is a narrative reason for why the styles are changing. There is No Game: Wrong Dimension is an extremely good example of constantly changing the style while still having the same feel to it.

Visual hierarchy explains the order of importance of the assets in your game. It is used to distinguish between two different things when they interact. For instance your player character and the enemy.

It is similar to a shot in a movie or image where you have the foreground, midground and background.

Things like size and shape are used to help distinguish between assets. Colour can also help to establish the visual hierarchy.

Whenever you are playing a game, it will always be pulling your attention towards something to guide you in the right direction.

Here are the methods that I notice all the time.

Shapes are a good way to pull the attention of your players. For instance, you want the player to pay more attention to the chest and face of the NPC (Non Playable Character) and you achieve that by increasing the size of his chest.

Or you want to show that this spot is the weak spot of a magma enemy, to achieve this we can make it so that everywhere else has hard rock whereas that spot is soft or only has lava.

Colour is another way to pull the attention of the player. It is often the most effective way to draw your players to what you want them to see

This is done by using contrasting colours to further differentiate the differences between assets. Colour also has different emotions attached to it. For instance, the colour red is often considered an emotional colour, It can be rage, passion or love depending on the situation and blue is often considered calm, level-headed and smart. These connotations with colour can be used to distinguish your allies, villains, puzzles and key items.

You may be wondering how the presence or absence of something pulls the attention of the player.

Just like how puffing up the chest of a character can force the eyes up. Removing certain aspects of a scene can push the eyes to certain places. This is called negative space.

Spacing is often used to help with UI designs (User interface), as you must balance how many necessary things to include in your UI, too much and it will feel too cluttered.

What do I mean by this? This is an offshoot of simplifying your designs. Simply adding and removing things for visual appeal is effective in most cases, I prefer it when aspects of the design have a reason to be there. I think that this makes more sense as it is the natural evolution process that removes unnecessary traits, be it with creatures, tools, weapons or armour.

Think of a dragon, instead of adding random horns and spikes all over, try and find a reason for the need of spikes. Maybe the dragon needs spikes for the spots that it cannot easily defend with its mouth and arms, Places like the back, the tail, or head.

With that said, you can also think about why such places as the thigh, arms and wings shouldn’t have spikes. Having spikes in the arms and legs can cause injury and you lose a lot of range of motion. Adding spikes to the wings can add unnecessary weight.

Just like that, you now have a narrative reason as to why your dragon has spikes. This can also be used to emphasise the weak spots of your dragon, which can be implemented into your gameplay.

Good UI can be an extremely difficult thing to do. What makes it hard is that good UI should help to assist the player with useful information, while being seamless and out of the way. This very reason makes it so that good UI design often goes unnoticed and unappreciated, while bad UI become alarmingly jarring.

So, how do we make UI useful while being seamless?

The first thing I believe to be the key to all good UI is to only include the necessary features. Things like the health bar, stamina bar, skills, ammo count and mini maps. The things that could be detrimental if someone loses track of how much of said thing they still have.

Another thing I notice is that Effective UI only every uses icons and numbers to display information. Words take longer for the mind to process and in the heat of battle, all the different words will end up melding as one and the player will not be able to tell what is what.

Finally, ensure your font is clear, concise and easy to read. It sounds obvious, but when you are hours into making your game, sometimes the most basic things can fly over your head.

Graphic design is a crucial part of game development as it is the first thing most of your players are attracted by. You will have to decide your art style by yourself, but it is important to keep it similar to your theme or message.

With that said, like any other aspect of games, graphic design is very much an art form, while certain rules and principles help improve the game's art, it is always good to try and experiment with new ideas and styles.

I hope that today’s blog has helped you in any small or large capacity! I cannot wait to try some of your own games as well! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions on game design, art or storytelling. I will do my best to reply!