Week 19

Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can't both be right can they?

Uh well yeah they can - games by there very nature seem to tie together both the technical aspects of creating an engine, tool set etc as well as the artistic side of story lines, conceptual art, modelling etc because games are getting more and more complex with ever increasing specialist jobs i can see these two divides one of institulationised - arghhh spelling, I'm an artist not an writer etc artistic skills and the other a more free form creative individual.

Can you teach creativity? No of course you can't and it should be more of a requirement to gain further education rather than a incentive to produce apparently 'creative' pieces of work which ultimately in most people's eyes look like pretentious drivel poop. Higher education courses and even internal development studio courses should be teaching how to learn a new tool or equipment, much the same way your taught how to use a new medium such as watercolour learning and mastering something like a modelling app inevitably leads to bouts of creative expression and i don't know flair or something i guess, something which ultimately cannot be taught.

Essentially you cannot tell an artist exactly what to draw/model whatever and seriously expect it to come back exactly as you states he's gonna slip in his own creative processes whether you like it or not.