Effective content creation on a tiny team
This post is going to be about maximizing your effectiveness as a content creator on a small team. RareSloth is a team of two, making this a critical subject if we are to succeed in the game industry. It is all too tempting to create in really high fidelity. Good graphics sell games right? True, but this is a major pitfall. Assets for your game have to be produced at a speed that is fast enough to stay afloat in today’s saturated market. Every team is different, you might have a huge runway that allows you to produce content at a much higher quality — only you decide what’s good for your company.
A function of fidelity vs. output.
Would you rather create 20 low fidelity assets, or 1 high fidelity asset? Often the answer will depend on what kind of game you’re creating.
If your fidelity is low your game might look less attractive but you’ll be able to produce a lot more content. If your fidelity is too high you risk never releasing, and if you do release you run the risk that your game is short and unsatisfying. No one wants to cut corners on their game, but when each asset takes 20 hours to create — its inevitable. Notice that “Fidelity” is not “quality”, your assets can be of high quality while low in fidelity.
For Furdemption we sought out a middle ground. Our quality threshold was a simplistic art style that is pleasant to look at and can be produced rapidly and consistently. Its all very much hand-crafted, but doesn’t take nearly as long as hand-painted art would take.
Working within your skillset.
I’m not an illustrator, so I had to choose a style that I felt I was capable of. Going beyond my skill-set would just create frustration and would result in an inconsistent quality. I took inspiration from the art style of ridiculous fishing and created my own design constraints to follow. When you have strict guidelines to follow it allows you to be more creative.
Short-term efficiency vs. long-term effectiveness
Efficiency is critical as a small startup. Being lean is a great strength but also a great weakness. Every hour counts. Its a constant balance between short-term efficiency and long-term effectiveness. Here’s our example:
When I’m creating assets I’m savagely reckless with my documents. Huge layers, chunks of assets all over the place, a ridiculous but efficient process. [See cover photo]
However, if I continue this pattern I’ll eventually get bogged down. Illustrator will start getting slower, there will be too many layers to handle, and I might confuse myself. On a weekly basis I go through my documents and archive the old work and clean up the final product. These cleaner end-products are then placed in the adobe library. When assets coming out the library are nice and clean you’re more effective in the long term. As a company that produces IP you’re scaffolding. Enjoy building your tiny digital empire on a strong foundation. ☺
