In the video game world the term asset is used to define anything digital that is used for a larger production. It can be a tree, a bush, a rock, a box, a dumpster, whatever. A shit ton of assets make up a game, all sprinkled around an area to provide the illusion of a vibrant world.
The term "Art" usually goes in front of the term asset, but that phrase is transient. Nowadays assets can be photographic, 3D rendered, bitmapped, animated, motion capped. The toy box is full of toys to play with these days. Most artists are designers, most designers artists, but they are all Americans, unless they are not. Actually, a large number are not. I don't know why I just wrote that.
I was never an art guy, the closest I came to the art life was back when I would do these horrible drawings of X-men characters in my elementary school notebooks, and then an unfortunate extended graffitio phase. Not exactly exit through the gift shop stuff. Although I can and will say that one piece I did where I had the Tasmanian devil spinning under my name in neon green and purple wildstyle was... it was a different time.
The art guys say the hardest thing about fixing asset bugs is that the assets are used over and over, everywhere. so if you have a rock formation that's broken in one place, you most definitely have that same problem somewhere else. And if you fix the rock formation in that one place, you probably broke it next to a thousand more lakes rivers and streams all over the world.
That must be nerve wracking, every fix is a choice you know will change a bunch of unknown DPO's all over the world. All the game artists I know drink a lot. Now that I get to thinking about it, all artists I know drink a lot. I don't get it.
The Protoculture Mixtape v.120 Issue : Games : Placement
