Photoshop for Game Artists
Use Photoshop to create 2D art for game characters and environments
Game artists rely on Adobe Photoshop for concept art, textures, and lots more. Learn how to maximize your Photoshop skills to create quality game art pieces.
In this 6-lesson hands-on course, you'll learn tricks of the trade for coloring concept art, creating tiling textures, painting environments, working with texture maps, and even texturing characters. A wide range of Photoshop tools and techniques will be explored, such as vector shapes, custom brushes, time-saving actions, and layer masks. You'll also learn how to apply fundamentals of art, color, and composition to your work. As you work, you'll test your Photoshop art in Maya, an industry-standard 3D modeling program (prior Maya experience not required).
Professional game artist Todd Gantzler will guide you through the essentials of game art and introduce you to characters, weapons, and environments that you can manipulate using Photoshop. This course is for anyone interested in a career in game art and extending their Photoshop knowledge.
Tuition: $600 US
Course Instructor(s):
Requirements:
- Computer with Internet connection (broadband recommended).
- Adobe Photoshop CS4 or CS5 and basic experience in Photoshop.
- Autodesk Maya (free personal learning edition available).
- Computer that meets the Autodesk Maya system requirements.
Prerequisites:
Course Objectives:
- Develop an understanding of Photoshop's role in creating game art and texture maps.
- Analyze composition, color, perspective, and other art elements in video game images.
- Learn to digitize and color line art and develop an understanding of the role of line art and concept art in the game development process.
- Use Photoshop brushes to paint concept art and textures.
- Maximize the game art workflow using Photoshop actions.
- Create basic tiling textures for terrain and buildings using reference imagery and brushes.
- Develop an understanding of the role of custom textures applied to 3D models.
- Create custom textures for a game art environment and create 3D texture effects.
- Develop an understanding of UV textures and how they map 2D textures to 3D objects.
- Use a UV template to add Photoshop art to a 3D weapon model.
- Paint a detailed character texture including clothing, skin, and facial features.
Course Outline
LESSON 1 Fundamentals of Photoshop and Gaming
Lesson One kicks off the course with a look at Photoshop's role in the game development workflow. Concept art and textures are explored, and you'll study essential elements of game art including composition, color, and perspective. In the exercise, you'll use Photoshop to analyze video game character and scene art. You'll also create your first Photoshop action of the course to increase your productivity.
LESSON 2 Working with Line Art
Every great game starts with a concept, and in this lesson you'll learn how to work with concept art in detail. Line art and sketches are explored, from initial scanning to painting with a range of Photoshop Pen tool, brush, and edge techniques. After two hands-on workouts in the lesson, you'll work in the exercise to color concept art for a character and for an environment.
LESSON 3 Tiling Textures
Ground and environment textures that repeat, or tile, are essential to the efficiency of any game. In Lesson Three, you'll explore how to create tiling textures from reference images and brushes, and how to make them repeat seamlessly over a 3D model. In the exercise, you'll create your own seamless tiling textures for a 3D environment.
LESSON 4 Painting Textures for an Environment
Lesson Four focuses on custom textures that make up a game environment's non-interactive scenery. You'll learn how 2D custom textures are applied to 3D environments and how to work with reference images. You'll try your hand at painting a detailed storefront in the lesson, then in the exercise, you'll continue on to create your own custom building design.
LESSON 5 Painting a UV Template
A UV map determines how a 2D image wraps around a complex 3D model. In this lesson, you'll learn how to work with a UV map template step by step, painting all of the art needed to texture a game weapon. You'll also test out the texture on its corresponding 3D model. You'll complete your own UV map painting in the exercise.
LESSON 6 Painting a Texture Map for a Character
Characters can be the most complex and essential parts of a game, and in Lesson Six the focus is on creating detailed character textures. You'll learn how to create the face, body, and skin of a character on a UV map, working from reference images and using a variety of Photoshop features. In the exercise, a character is all yours to texture, and you'll take a final look at Photoshop actions for optimizing game art tasks.
Game concept art by Fabio Pagetti painted in Photoshop by student Catherine O'Connor
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