When looking at game art production, it’s crucial to outline your workflow and team structure as early as possible: who will be doing what work, and how? 

For the health of your internal art team, in addition to communicating openly with them throughout the production process and establishing a normalized, non-destructive cycle of iteration, it’s important to have clear expectations on how you'll use art outsourcing teams versus what you'll take care of in-house.  

In this article we draw on the insights of our Global Art Director for PTW and 1518 Studios, Arturo Pulecio, and his recent talk given at IGDC 2023 in part two of our "Anatomy of a Game Production" series (see part one here). Below we delve into the two fundamental types of art that are created during game development, and the differing perspectives on whether to do them in-house or externally, to empower you to make the best choices in defining the visual identity of your game. 

A fork in the road 

For peace of mind throughout the production process, it’s important to distinguish the short-term utility of playable content from the long-term aesthetics of it.  

One of the key ways to approach this is to think about it like a fork in the road: you need to allocate a set of artists to work on the short-term utility, while another set of artists supports the longer-term aesthetics. Often, this coincides with directors and producers deciding what work gets insourced and what work gets outsourced. Either type of work can be delegated to a game art outsourcing team, but developers need to discern among themselves what feels best for their game.  

Defining short-term utility vs. long-term aesthetics  

In essence, the “short-term utility” work refers to art that is meant to be temporary. These assets are characterized by their high iterability, involving experiments for tech art and performance that aren’t deemed worthy of extensive polish. They are designed to be placeholders, to be replaced with final assets at a later stage. 

On the other hand, “long-term aesthetics” refers to the work that’s meant to stay. Such art is difficult to iterate upon without being destructive, since it forms the heart and soul of a game's look and feel. These are the final assets that are typically reconstructed based on the insights gained from the earlier short-term utility work.

When designing characters and thinking about elements such as, “Is this character going to defined by its whiskers? By its chiseled jaw? By its green color?” – these are the long-term aesthetics. While these defining traits could be related to the lore of the game, they have absolutely nothing to do with, for example, the gameplay mechanics or the position of the game’s camera. The long-term aesthetics are also immune to all the changes that can happen in the background of game development, such as changes due internal politics or technical gameplay constraints, since they are created towards the end of the development cycle.  

Especially if your game has a deep need for visual differentiation, the role of the long-term aesthetics cannot be understated, where its unique look might make it stand out in a crowded game marketplace. At the same time, you must be careful you don’t turn a short-term utility into a long-term aesthetic if it doesn’t need to be – for instance, if it’s too early in the development process where there’s still a high risk of further iteration. 

The “elevator” example 

Arturo shares an example to help discern whether a team is allocating their resources effectively: 

Imagine an art team that has spent 3 weeks polishing an elevator in a game, when it could just be a functional “grey box” elevator in the game right now. This begs the question, why are we spending so much time on this asset when we have an entire lab, or an entire spaceship left to build?  

The art director needs to be able to talk to the other directors and do a scope analysis. Is making this elevator look 5% better worth all the things that the team is not going to do because they’re spending all time and resources on maturing this one thing? And, could an outsourcer possibly take care of this?  

So what should you outsource? 

Game developers must ask themselves:  

• Do we insource the short-term utility work so that the engineers can do their job properly, and the designers can play the game? Or do we outsource it because that’s not the final art?  
• Do we insource the long-term aesthetics, because that’s the look of the game? Or do we outsource it because we need support figuring out what the game is going to be like?  

Regardless of which work gets allocated where, it’s crucial to consider the feelings of your internal teams, being sure to validate the importance of their work. 

Arturo shares an anecdote from working on art direction for a game featuring a big IP. He recalls how internal artists were disappointed when the really “cool-looking” characters were sent to be completed by outsourcers, and the internal art team was “stuck” making the lower-tiers of the character progression (which were the characters in their less “cool-looking” state). But this work for the internal art team was still very important, because these lower-tiers of character were what 80% of players were going to encounter in-game, for hours and hours of gameplay – it had to be solid and it had to look great.   

In any case, it’s important to not overtask a singular art team with both the short-term utility work and the long-term aesthetic work, because that’s what can lead to overwork and crunch. The team should designate early on what they’re willing to have outsourced, and what they feel should remain insourced: this is part of mapping out the soul of the game.   

And from the perspective of outsourcers ourselves, it’s our job to work through our partners’ pain points with them, without exerting any critique of their game development choices. The soul of the game will always reside with the developer.  

Summary 

Whether to insource or outsource the short-term utility vs. long-term aesthetic work of a game is ultimately a choice for individual developers – but it’s one that should be considered carefully, as early as possible, to ensure everyone on the team is well aligned on their contributions to the final project.  

When choosing an outsourced team for your art needs, look for an external development partner with a team specializing not only in 2D and 3D models, but also in tech art, in-engine worldbuilding, look dev, and more specialized skills with a deep understanding of the development process, especially if outsourcing the short-term utility work. Ultimately, an experienced partner may be able to help you in more ways than you thought, contributing to the heart and soul of your game alongside you and forming a true extension of your team. 

This article is part two of a series. Find part one here. 

1518 Studios, part of the PTW family of brands, is a leading art services provider supporting game developers at every stage of their production pipeline. Contact us to learn how we can help bring your story to the world.