Elements of Game Design Part 2- Art direction for games

After researching on the internet, I found the job description for an art director from http://my.safaribooksonline.com/159200430X/ch11lev1sec2?portal=oreilly. "In professional game art departments, the art director is the captain of the ship. Art directors are generally responsible for setting the visual tone, quality, and style for the game. They are at least indirectly responsible for every object, texture, level, character, and effect that appears in a game."
They have to consider what every element in the game will look like from all points of view and that everything seen in the game keeps the overall ambience alive. Overall this means that they are pretty much in charge of the whole scenary in the game and how it looks to the player.

Art directors are pretty much responsible to all of the game artists. This includes people making the characters, scenary, lighting and sounds. They have to make sure that everything works well together as different people are making different things, everything could end up not looking good together.

Of course an Art Director is a creative role! Well firstly, it has the word "art" in the title (only joking). An art
director needs to know a lot about art itself and not just about games/films. They more than likely do a lot of drawing an painting to get an idea down onto paper out of their head about what they want a scene to look like. As they are in charge of what the while game is going to look like, they have to be very creative especially if they need to figure out why something doesn't quite look right.

Art direction in films and games can be similar or different. A similarity for example is that everything still needs to be taken into account (characters, scenary, lighting etc...) however a difference would be that in most games, everything can be seen from all angles so everything has to work well no matter which way you look at it. In films however, the person watching it can only see the scene from the way that the creator wants them to see it from.

I think I would need to develop a lot of qualities to be an art director. Knowing about composition, perspective, lighting, colour theory are just a few examples of what I would need to master. I do have a basic knowledge of these at the moment but not enough to be an art director. I think that these skills will come naturally as I continue this course and carrying on doing tons of drawings and paintings.