liamnich88

liamnicholson.bigcartel: liamnicholson.bigcartel.com/

not much in it for now but feel free to get in touch to ask for any particulars, or request new pieces maybe.

billynicholson.blogspot.com/

I've created a blogger to write about my current and future art and design projects.

Mostly my own personal project REGULUS, and an ongoing project with a couple of friends working as an artist and designer for an online game we're creating together. I'll update what I can for that, I can't really show work in progress, but I'll talk about our progress and try to gain some interest in the game.

So if anyone is interested, please go along and have a read, and get involved, I want my blog to be open for discussion and I want feedback on general ideas I may have

Also, my tumblr is a more casual blog I keep, mostly rants: liamnicholson.tumblr.com/

Liam.

(Main Blog: visit liamnicholson.tumblr.com/)


A thought I often find myself musing over is just how many aspects of Art & Design a computer/video game designer must be familiar with, and to some extents masters of.

The process of creating a game is probably one of the most complex challenges in the world of art and design, especially when a small team is set the task. In a large design studio of course, tasks are easily delegated between groups of specialists. In a small team, designers must take on so many jobs and are often underestimated in their range of talents.

For example, let's take a common Action & Adventure Game. Here is a list of things any single designer in a small production could be given responsibility for:

Concept Art
Characters
Cultural Motifs
Costumes
Weapons and Items
Vehicles
Architecture
Environments and 'sets'
3D modelling
Direction
Animation
Cameras
Lighting
Graphic Design > Typography, Menus, Interfaces, Marketing and Promotion
Web Design
Writing (scripts, dialogue, backstory)
Researcher and historian (accurate referencing if necessary, especially if characters and environments are based on historical events)
I'm sure there are plenty more jobs a games designer can take on during a production, but these are many of the tasks often taken for granted. If we change the production from games to a movie, you'll notice most of these fields would require specialists in each of them, many of which a person could study for a degree; art, graphic design, history, anthropology, transport design, architecture, fashion, film production and photography, product design.

Clearly a games designer is in most cases a master of almost none of these, yet being familiar with so many things is a talent worth recognising. So many of these tasks are definitely taken for granted when a designer is asked for a piece of work.

Designing a single character for instance, is not simply drawing a nice figure (male, female, animal…), you must take into account their cultural background; where do they come from? This would explain the clothing they wear, why they wear it, the colour schemes, any accessories. Then if they carry a weapon, item or tool, how does it work. Is it functional? why is it designed the way it is (function over form). Where is this character going, what is he/she doing? why are they a part of the story. How do they travel? if by foot, what footwear would be most suitable to their journey, would it be dirty? Or perhaps they travel by vehicle, in which case such a vehicle must be imagined even if it is never seen…if it is then there's another job which would probably be even more in-depth.

This is all for one character, in action games there are a hell of a lot more.



I by no means intend to imply anyone who soley studies or practices any of the above fields is limited, I just still see a lack of respect in the art community for games designers. So what if they let kids shoot each other in virtual worlds. Tell governments to stop starting wars and games designers wont have as much material to work from. (I don't want to get into that too deeply, but its clearly a problem for a lot of people). I think my major problem is that games artists and designers never get any official recognition from anywhere, no one has ever heard of a famous games designer. Sure there are famous people within the industry, but there are so many multitalented artists working on games who deserve their pedestal for a while for creating interactive, generation defining works.



and by the way, as far as I'm concerned programmers rock too!



Written by Liam Nicholson: 30th June, 2010.

hey everyone (all 3 of you who read this)

I've entered a design into Threadless tees in hope to get it printed, I'd love if you could take a look at it for me and rate it on their website

www.threadless.com/submission/…

thanks for anyone who reads this and votes


Liam.

I really like how on here I'm sort of anonymous (apart from the recent photo of myself I uploaded).
What I mean is, there's less than a handful of people I'm friends with on here that I actually know in the real world, and I like that in some ways.

A huge portion of my friends aren't artistic (some pretend to be, but aren't at all) and I enjoy having this part of my life separate from them. I don't know why necessarily. I guess it's kind of like a different world on here.

However, I sometimes wish I it was easier to communicate with fellow 'deviants'. I think the site could do with some added feature which makes talking to each other much easier. I wouldn't want it to turn into some horrible MySpace clone, where people begin to use it for the wrong reasons, I'd want it to be a way of building friendships with like minded people.

Sometimes it feels like there's a barrier stopping people from really discussing ideas or just getting to know each other more than the odd comment on a piece of work. It almost feels pointless to have a 'friends' system in place, other than to be updated by each others uploads. But that doesn't really ever mean anything even close to friendship.

I'm pretty sure there are hundreds, or thousands of people on here that I'd love to know better but there just isn't an easy way to go about getting to know them properly yet. I also think that getting to know people from such a large community, (especially artists who are a tad more intelligent than most and much more open minded)  it helps to break down a lot of ignorance.


So, even though I only have a few watchers, please feel free to add me on msn or just send me an email. I want to get to know people again, I miss getting to know new friends, who are interesting and like minded.
My contact details are on my page, so find them there, and if you do decide to add me in some way, let me know its you



Liam.