Artist vs UI Designer

[Hiro_Antagonist]

For Land of Legends, I had 1 person working on primary game art, and another working on UI Design (buttons, menus, 'cards', screens, backgrounds, popups, etc.)

My question is, how common is this? (Specifically for larger indie games -- I know it's less common on smaller titles)

I'm starting work on my 2nd game now, and ideally I would have one artist I worked with that could do everything in an effort to reduce project management and coordination time. But if these are totally seperate skill sets, I'll make sure I look for 2 different people...

-Hiro_Antagonist

[BlueWaldo]

I have choosen to do this for TriGone because I was able to find a UI guy who was cheaper than the artist I found. Also, there seem to be some people who are good at UI or art but not both.

[Robert Cummings]

UI people are not as good as artists. There is no such thing as a UI designer really, only a cheaper artist.

Art is about more than having the skills to render graphics, it is also about being technically competent to know what colours clash, what colours evoke what feelings, what looks good, what is EASY to understand visually.

A UI designer? what is this? some new title? it is silly. You either have a grounding in art and design, or you don't and you call yourself a UI designer.

Also, there seem to be some people who are good at UI or art but not both.

Then these people were not as good an artist as you thought, because a good artist will be able to make a great UI easier than he will be able to draw you a great picture.

Unless you mean UI design from a purely technical viewpoint, for instance how to use a 3D modelling package. Or accessing units in Civ 10. In which case you need to work WITH an artist.

I believe I know what I'm talking about. I did my game menus and UI five years ago - long before the current crop of snooker and golf games, and long before UT2004. But take a look...

(ut2004 style menu)
http://www.puzbox.com/samples/as1.jpg

(clean easy to understand space)
http://www.puzbox.com/samples/as2.jpg

(a hub for controlling everything you need in an easy to understand way)
(bottom right: power, spin and camera)
http://www.puzbox.com/samples/as3.jpg

So I would say it's technical and artistic.

[TimS]

UI design is different from UI artist, but a good artist can do the ART for both. Typically (even on large titles) the UI artist and the UI designer are the same person, with the game design team having some input and steering the thing as it goes through different iterations.

Good UI design involves keeping the player informed, the layout intuitive and unobtrusive, etc. If you play a lot of games your first guess at this likely won't suck too horribly, but there are people who are actually GOOD at it.

For good ART in the user interface I'd suggest seeking out web-guys... especially those who do flash for a living and freelance on the side. Interface is typically ALL they are asked to do, so they've gone through hundreds of buttons and dials and digital readouts and knobby things and know how to make 'em just 'so'.

Some random deviants as example...

Dragon Fire
Red Haze (by the same guy)

and people who skin media players are also darn good at ART (not necessarily design) for UIs...

Media Player Skin o' doom

Anywho... I think you could get away with one artist... just be very picky about the skill level of who you end up with -- and if you're happy with the UI work of the cheaper guy, go ahead and pick up more artists... (so long as more artists doesn't cost more money, you might as well take on as many as you'd like).

Good luck!

[Anthony Flack]

I find doing in-game art really easy. In fact, I can't think of any occasion where I had to redo anything a second time. Characters, backgrounds, objects and the rest all look good and work together no problem.

But the UI... man, I just keep remaking it and remaking it. I find it really difficult to come up with something that looks good, and conveys all the necessary information in as clear a manner as possible. There are so many ways to do it, and I feel like I'll have to try them all before I find something I'm happy with.

Partly this is because I'm really picky. But I also think that I'm better with characters and environments than I am with menu design. So I'm refuting Robert's point, basically.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Originally Posted by Robert Cummings

A UI designer? what is this? some new title? it is silly. You either have a grounding in art and design, or you don't and you call yourself a UI designer.

There definitely are people who are UI designers, and it's not silly at all. It just may be that most of them are outside of the price range of indie game developers like us.

For LOL, I had the pleasure of working with a really good UI designer, Daniel Silveira, who normally works for very high-end corporations doing wacky stuff like designing UI's for televisions and what-not. His job title is definitely 'UI Designer'. He would normally be well outside my budget, but slummed it to get some gaming work into his portfolio.

A UI designer is typically someone who takes the interfaces (data presentation, user input needs, etc.) and arranges them into a series of 'views' (or pages/menus) with optimal usability, and then creates the production art assets needed to make them happen within the application. It's more than just art. The position also requires a deep understanding of usability, interface design, usage patterns, etc., all combined with the art skills to make the thing real.

@Robert Cummings: It's surprising to me that you find it 'silly'. You come across as pointlessly negative quite often, and in this case, you're just flaunting ignorance by doing so. I appreciate your feedback, but can't it be done with a friendlier tone and less negativity?

Anyway, when it comes down to it, I'm fairly good on the presentation/layout of data, as I do have some design training and lots of professional experience with usability and UI. So I guess what I'm most interested in is whether or not it's common to get someone to do both game art and UI art -- I can handle most of the functional design side myself.

-Hiro_Antagonist

[illume]

UI design skills, and art skills can be different. However a bunch of artists would have those skills.

A ui designer would have to be able to do the following:

- Programing the input devices interactions.
- Observing what users do in reaction to different things. For example do they keep double clicking on a ui element expecting it to do something?

Artists can learn these skills making websites, with flash, and with games. So some do know it. However some don't, or don't know what works well for games.

Each input device is quite different. So programming mouse, keyboard, joypad, dance mats etc require different experiences.

Then there are other skills that a ui designer needs to make, that require design/layout skills. These design/layout skills are necessarily 'art' skills.

So an artist who may know how to make a nice looking 3d model could be shockingly poor at laying out visual elements on a screen, or making things react how the game designer wants them to react.

With pgu(a library for pygame) you can use html form code to help make the game user interfaces. http://www.imitationpickles.org/pgu/ Other games make use of flash, or swf files so that they can leverage skills from flash, and html designers.


If you were going to look for an artist/designer check out both sets of things. If they have no game ui experience look at their flash, and html design skills. If they know how to do good layout, and client interaction in flash/html they can use those skills for games.

I have seen a good web designer quickly make 12 really good flash games without knowing anything about game design. This person also had a heavy visual arts background. Which I think helps a lot with design.

[svero]

I think there's a significant difference between being able to make an attractive picture and designing a good player interface. The two are almost completely unrelated skills. To say that most artists can do both very well is IMHO a lie. I've not seen any evidence of that. Some artist do both well but they're rare individuals who probably have some serious training or a lot of industry experience. Interface/UI design is crucial, and it's something I almost always get wrong because it is deceptively difficult. It has to be simple and attractive and clear. I believe UI is more of a design issue than an art issue. It fits in more with things like page layout or ergonomics than pretty pictures.

Nowdays I'm inclined to leave the UI art towards the end of the project first getting the buttons and flow right. Once I have a good idea of what all the required features are and what I need to let the player do, then I can make it look pretty. One problem that typically comes up is that I forget features and then later try to cram them in. That happened with beetle bomp. There are things needed in the interface that are missing because we didnt leave any room for them. When we tried to add them to various spots they didnt quite fit and confused people.

So I think my approach would be... Hire someone who's a good UI designer and let them handle that end either only functionally or both functionally and for final art, and then have someone else do the in game art, OR, if you're comfortable that you can come up with a good interface yourself, work out in full detail with placeholder images what you believe the best interface for your game is and once you're certain what the functionality (ie which dialogs appear, and what buttons are needed on which screen etc...) is and you've played the game some and your comfortable that it's easy to use, then ask your in game artist to make it look pretty. And that can either take the form of simply telling them.. the title screen requires the following text and 7 buttons, or you can deliver something more precise like a sample of where the buttons should be and how big etc.. using generic placeholder images.

[mahlzeit]

Good UI design is two things:

1) Figuring out what interface elements you need and where to put them. I never met an artist who was good at this. Nor many programmers. But it's a skill you can learn. (I think game designers have it easier here, because they are already dealing with the user.)

2) Designing the look and feel of your interface. Just as necessary as 1, because buttons that don't look or act like buttons still make a bad UI. Just being an artist isn't good enough here; you need to know a thing or two about how people interact with things (i.e. have some "industrial design" experience).