Talking a Video Game into Existence: The Importance of Verbal Communication in Art Direction
Jan-Bart van Beek will present his Masterclass about the value of non-visual communication in Art Direction. He’ll explain the process he uses. The Double Diamond Design methodology; Explore, Define, Develop, Deliver. This is a model that has diverging and converging ideation and design processes at the core of its method.
The class will look at the role of an Art Director through the various stages of the Double Diamond and the most important tool in his arsenal, which is not his artistic or creative skills and abilities, but his ability to communicate verbally.
It will show how the exploration phase highlights communication skills such as listening and guiding through suggestion, as the process focusses on the creative and constructive and attempts to explore all possible ideas.
How the Definition Phase highlight reasoning, arguing and resolving conflict, as the process shifts from being a creative one, to a curative and reductive one.
We will then explore the role of the AD in the later phases, where the role shifts guidance to guardianship. In this phase, the key skills become about evangelization, explanation and law keeping.
We explain the primary deliverable of the Art Directional process, the artistic vision, and its manifests such as style guides, key art, and pillar statement. Moreover, while many of these are purely visual manifestation, how important words are to ensure the imagery is understood and interpreted in the right way.
Along the way, key art and style guides from Horizon Zero Dawn will be shown to explain the role of “Key words” that have guided the artistic visual development of that project.
