Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Pixels and vectors
As we said in the
The game artist
section in
Chapter 2
,
The Mobile Indie Team
, a
game artist's duties involve the creation of graphic assets with both 2D and 3D tech-
niques. The decision whether to use 2D or 3D graphics is made at a game design
level.
Generally speaking, most mobile blockbusters are 2D games. There are several
reasons for that: 2D games tend to be easier to play and rely on simple mechanics,
which is a plus when targeting occasional players. Playing mobile games is usually
a time-limited diversion, something you do while you are waiting for something else
(a person, a bus, your turn in a line, and so on). Simple gameplay mechanics better
fit such occasions and that's why mobile games, such as Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja,
or Angry Birds are so popular.
2D games also require less computational power and they can run smoothly on low-
end devices. Even though developing a high-end-device-only game with excellent
photorealistic graphics is a good way to show the potential of a new technology and
the ability of a team of developers, when going to market, the higher the potential
number of people who can play your game, the better the chances that you can get
a profit from it. Not all the people out there possess the latest and most powerful
devices available.
When drawing 2D assets, an artist has two options to consider. 2D graphics can in
fact be created using two different techniques: pixel art (or bitmap art) and vector
graphics.
Pixels
The pixel art refers to a technique used since the early stages of videogame making,
and consists of drawing characters, game objects, and backgrounds by drawing on
every single pixel of the final bitmap.
Since the computational power to manage graphics was reduced and the drawing
tools were not very sophisticated at that time, this was an optimal choice to produce
nice graphics in small sized files. The main drawback with this technique is that bit-
map images cannot be scaled without losing the details and quality, due to a phe-
