ABSTRACT
A computer game must look good and run well. This is the mantra for the game artist. Until you have tried to accomplish this goal, you have no idea how at odds each of these objectives is with the other. Although the primary focus of this book is the generation of art assets for computer game environments, we can’t escape the fact that creating art for a game is more than just making a pretty picture. When you create art for a game you need to create art that will accomplish several goals, the least of which is that your art must work technically in the game environment and work as effi- ciently as possible in that environment. This requires planning and creating your art to very specific guidelines. Those guidelines may change depending on many variables (we will examine these later), but they are all essentially the same variables. In any case, you need to be very well aware of what those variables are and build accordingly.
