Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
A game artist uses colored light to create images. Most other forms of art are
reflected light. For example, when a person looks at an oil painting, he sees colors
that are reflected from light in the room. On the other hand, when a person looks
at the same painting displayed on a color monitor or TV he is looking at direct
light, not reflected light.
Reflected light is not as bright and vibrant as direct light; however, we live in a
world of reflected light. When you are creating game art, it is important to remem-
ber that the art will look unrealistic or cartoon-like if you don't take care to reduce
the intensity of the color to match how the object looks in real life.
The first computer art goes back to even before the pixel was developed. Back
when computers were in their infancy, the pioneers in the industry used printouts
or a device called an
oscilloscope
rather than computer monitors. Some of the ear-
liest computer games were TeleType games in which the players would send updates
to each other as printouts.
As display technology advanced, digital graphics creation moved from the printer to
the computer monitor. Early monitors were monochromatic and designed for text,
not for graphics. Regardless, artists found ways to create art even if it was only in one
color.
Most people mark 1963 as the origination of computer art, when Ivan Sutherland
invented Sketchpad. Sketchpad allowed artists to use a light-pen device to work on
vector images on a vector graphics display monitor. Vector graphics are lines and
curves derived from mathematical formulas.
Later in that same decade, the raster image was invented and pixels came into
being. A
raster
is the pattern of dots that form an image. Raster images are made
up of horizontal lines of pixels, and the number of horizontal lines and the num-
ber of pixels in each line determine the resolution of the computer monitor.
The first raster images were very blocky because those early computers were not
powerful enough to project very many pixels. You can see clearly the progress of
raster images in the evolution of characters in games. Figure 1.2 shows a very early
game character. The image is in one color and the pixels are very large. This char-
acter is only five pixels wide and five pixels high.
