Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer at EA, was gracious in hosting the students for lunch. We spent a little over an hour with him talking about the student projects and getting his insight into what makes games great.

Bob Nicoll – Senior Director @ EA Redwood Shores

On Thursday, January 25, 2008, ETC-SV family delivered the first seminar. The seminar was delivered by Bob Nicoll; Senior Director of EA Redwood Shores. During the presentation, Bob made an important point about the art of design. Basically, artists should be able to indirectly control the audience perception. “To get them (the audience) look where you want them to look and to make them feel what you want them to feel” That’s how Bob put it.

Bob discussed the considerations we should pay attention to make a good picture. These include realizing that our screen is a flat 2D screen and understanding the various visual components. Understanding why a 2D picture looks 3D can be helpful to artists when they are creating their piece of art. On the other hand, studying visual components is also crucial since visual components communicate moods, emotions, ideas, and most importantly give visual structure to a picture. Subsequently, Bob went through the various visual components; the concept of space, line, shape, tone, color, movement and rhythm.

Bob also talked about the importance of contrast in a picture. The greater the contrast, the more intense feeling you will get. Furthermore, contrast progression can be used to tell a story. Bob showed us various screen captures of a game and compared and contrasted good and bad pictures.

The presentation that Bob gave was indeed very inspiring and useful. The concept of contrast, tone and visual components can be used to enhance the visual quality of the game or video that we are making.