Introduction
If you read my article "How to get a Job as a Game Artist," you saw a section where I talked about the different types of game artists and what they do. It was sort of a brief rundown of what skills are required, and a little about how the different types of artists contribute to a game.
Over the years, I've done a little of everything, from modeling to texture work, animation, special FX, UI and whatever came my way. But my specialty for many years now has been Lighting, and I thought it might be helpful to those that may be interested in pursuing Lighting as a career, to give a much more detailed account of what a Lighting Artist is, what they do, and what's required, if it's something you'd like to pursue. Hopefully it will also be of some interest to those that may not be interested in pursuing it themselves, but are curious as to what goes on.
Don't You Just Place Lights? How is That a Job?
When you first hear the term "Lighting Artist", you may wonder what that entails exactly. How long can it take to move some lights around? Is that really a job? One of the things I'd like to show in this article is that while light placement is definitely a part of the process, there are actually a whole lot of other things going on as well.
This Didn't Used To Be A Thing
In the earliest days of computer games, Lighting Artists didn't really exist. Yet.
In fact, Game Artists didn't exist either, because the artwork was created by the Programmers, in the form of ASCII art or colored blocks. Game technology improved, and at some point, someone said "I bet this would look better if we hired an artist", and the rest is history.
Over time, there's been more and more specialization in game development, to the point where there are several different types of Game Artists, including Lighting Artists. In the early days, any lighting required was just handled by the Environment Artist (and still is in smaller companies) but that same guy showed up again and said "I bet that lighting would look better if you hired a Lighting Artist", and there you go.
Disclaimer:
This is based on my experience only. If you ask 10 Lighting Artists how they might do something, you would probably get 10 different answers.
All of the info in this article is based solely on my experience at the different studios I've worked at over the years.
