What makes a good video game graphic designer

Video games had only a small share of the global entertainment market a few decades ago. Today, it is a giant industry with multi-billion turnover and investments, the Covid-19 pandemic also made its impact on the gaming world and led to the increased demand on in-game purchases .

Cool developers are the core of the gaming segment, around whom a powerful ecosystem formed a long time ago. The developed games become a real piece of art. Just because high-class specialists work on them. And they earn big salaries from their companies and many of them even take honorable places on the Forbes list . The quality of the final product depends on their work. These are the true artists who draw a game.

If you have creative skills and a desire to paint, you should try yourself as a video game graphic designer. Such a specialist is necessary for many developers. They are ready to pay good money for the quality design. So you should not think that an artist in the modern world can only paint similar sceneries and sell them through online markets and sales.

What skills should be improved by a game designer?

The first and foremost skill a game designer should have is appropriate English writing and speaking. Knowing the language is advisable because the specialist will have to use English while making the graphics. The other skills, which will help in making the quality graphic content, are:

1. The good use of PowerPoint, Canva, Apple Keynote, Libre Office, and other software, which allows you to make presentations. It is required to bring the project’s main idea to the management in a structured fashion and learn how to express thoughts step-by-step.

2. Understanding of popular programming languages – Go, JavaScript, C#, Python, C++, and others. It is necessary for easier and faster interaction with developers. Also, it will allow you to understand for sure whether they can realize your graphic idea or not, using a particular programming language.

3. The good use of popular graphics editors – Photoshop, GIMP, Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, and others. This is one of the main skills the game designer should have.

4. Knowledge of the principles of such engines as Unreal Engine, Source, ID Tech, Frostbite, or Unity. This knowledge will help you to understand the mechanics/dynamics of the gaming process and, considering it, you will be able to create graphic elements.

5. The professional background removal. There are lots of free services on the Internet, which offer to remove background from image online . But the quality they provide is not enough or they don’t do it the way the game designer needs. So you have to learn how to remove the unnecessary background, using suitable graphics editors.

6. The good use of automatic tools, which allows you to create a game without knowing programming languages. These are Game Maker Studio, Stencyl, Track Mania, RPG Maker.

7. The use of popular plugins – Variables (creates various effects), Figmage, Copy&Rotate, and others.

Besides, a good game designer has to know professional lingo and use it at work in an appropriate way. It will allow colleagues and other specialists, working on the game development, to understand the artist better.

These are the professional skills, which a future professional has to have. On the other way, they are called hard skills. Besides them, there are the others – soft skills.

It means that in addition to the good use of the above-mentioned software, a game designer, at least, has to know probability theory and math on the basic level. It will help him to cooperate better with the programmers of the project. Also, you have to understand the psychology of a player. To know it, you have to play the existing games accurately and a lot, analyzing their graphics and gameplay.

The necessary personal qualities for a game designer include interpersonal skills, a love for games and art, knowing how to