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[Mawy_Golomb]

Hello, everyone. I'm new to TIGsource.com's forums, and I have yet to start going to college. But my plan is to go into Game Design, and my dream has been to get a degree in it, along with an MBA for Entrepreneurship, in order to possibly work on my games by myself.

Before, one of my advisors at DeVry told me that everything in Game Design is offered at the Addison Campus, but just yesterday, after signing up to register for Session B, which starts on August 31st, I found out that everything but the art aspects of it are offered there. If I ever want to be an indie game developer, and work on low-budget or no-budget games alone, I also would need to understand the art side of gaming as well. I still feel that I will end up taking roles as a game designer, producer, and programmer in the future, though.

Could anyone please give me any advice as to what I should do?

[Problem Machine]

Enroll in a figure drawing and a basic design class at a community/jr college. Only a few classes are necessary to orient yourself art-wise, other than that it's all practice.

[Mawy_Golomb]

Well, the problem with that is the fact that I've already registered for classes at DeVry. I probably would have to go to a community college after I get my bachelor's degree in Game Design and an MBA degree in Entrepreneurship to have a chance at being able to understand the role of an artist in a video game. But thank you for making that kind of a suggestion.

Is there anything else that you feel I could do to help myself know the art of video games?

Edit: Then again, I likely will move to a different state and enroll at a different DeVry university within my second year of learning about Game Design, so maybe I will be able to find a place that also offers the art portion of gaming. After all, Illinois is not a very good place for video games, but some place like Boston, California, or Washington certainly will have something better to offer.

[JaJitsu]

I'm going to the art center in the fall to major in illustration.
Idk how much that would help my game making skills, but i'm keeping my options open in the art field.

[Xion]

You could try teaching yourself art, yeah? With dedication and practice, there are tons of sources of information online about pretty much every aspect of art. Around here (in the SF/bay area) there are sometimes "Model Marathons", that aren't classes, but days on which an assload (heh) of models get together and pose all day. You can pay to get in and then just draw to your hearts content (from my understanding -- I've never been to one but my figure drawing teacher told me about 'em). There might be things like this in other places around the country too, ones near you that you could find with a bit of research. Maybe. There's libraries, too, and forums for peer critique and stuff (which is pretty much how I learned).

[Problem Machine]

Yeah what Xion's talking about was basically what I was suggesting except for I'm saying it's good to also lay a foundation of education before teaching yourself because otherwise it's easy to learn bad habits. It's not difficult to take a junior college art class in addition to a fall class-load at a lot of schools, but I dunno how hard DeVry pushes you. As far as the video-game specific aspects of art... I'm not sure how many of those there are. Seems like something you could pick up yourself once you understand video games and art.

[ben2theedge]

The art of a game doesn't really have any rules except what is imposed on it by the design and programming. If you aren't going to be making art yourself and just want to be able to communicate well with artists on your team, I would recommend picking up a book on graphic design and studying the basics, or even taking an introductory course in graphic design if you're a student. You won't really need to understand illustration techniques for your purposes (lighting, shading, volumes, etc) but you will want a good understanding of composition, positioning, color theory, visual priority, and things like that. If you understand these concepts it will go a long way in communicating effectively with your art team.