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如何有效管理一支2D图像创造团队

发布时间:2015-06-26 11:14:49 Tags:,,,,

作者:Junxue Li

我是Junxue,Novtilus的首席执行官兼总经理。我们是一家2D设计公司,许多非常优秀的手机游戏开发者会外包他们的美术作品给我们。这是一项艰难的业务,因为有太多竞争者的存在,并且这也是一项具有风险性的产业,许多客户都不能提供给我们稳定的订单。但不管怎样,在面对各种烦恼后,我们仍然成功运行着这一业务。以下便是我想要分享的有关管理一支设计团队的一些窍门。

art(from gamasutra)

art(from gamasutra)

我们也会外包我们的作品,如果你的设计团队是一家开发商的内部团队,这便没有多大的区别。

管理团队的目标:

短期目标:

在截止日期前完成特定的工作量,并且需要递交给对方高质量的作品。

你所拥有的是美术人员,装备和有限的资金。

长期目标:

创造一个对我们的客户和产业具有价值的业务,并提供给雇员工作与家。

这些目标够简单吧?事实上,为了实现这些目标,我们需要进行许多管理工作:

团队的构成:

该雇佣什么类型的美术师?这取决于你的团队所接到的工作类型。你是否拥有许多关于AAA级主机游戏的概念?或者你是否拥有创造三消游戏的美术背景?

我们需要考虑许多这样的情况:通常情况下有两种类型的美术师:类型1的美术师是愿意接受挑战的人,他们总是想要尝试一些新事物,即需要投入许多设计和精神力量的工作;类型2的美术师则更想要拥有一份稳定的工作。

今天的2D游戏的趋势是它们需要许多图像细节,你可以看到非常丰富的背景和角色。这意味着我们需要更多人力去优化图像作品。所以不可避免的你需要拥有一群美术师长达几个月甚至几年去重复做着一些乏味的工作。所以你应该仔细考虑团队的方向:你的团队是一支设计类型的团队吗,或者你的团队还需要完成许多优化工作?如果你的团队需要完成许多优化工作,你便需要雇佣更多类型2的设计师,因为类型1的设计师并不愿意长期执行这样的工作;而如果你的工作室需要创造一些原创作品的话,你便可以雇佣一些优秀的类型1的美术师。

总而言之,你需要仔细考虑两种类型的美术师的构成,这能够帮你在之后省下不少事。

动机:

作为人类的我们总是想要成为优秀的团体的一份子。当你的团队所参与的一款游戏发行时,你总是会让人去下载并尝试这款游戏,并告诉他们这款游戏在市场上非常受欢迎。每次当我将游戏发行的新闻传达给团队时,每个成员都会兴奋地开始游戏,有些人甚至能够达到好几百个关卡,因为游戏就像是他们自己的孩子一样。他们总是会与朋友分享游戏并告诉对方“我完成了一项非常出色的工作!”

如果有机会去炫耀你的作品的话,千万要把握这样的机会。

装备:

我们正致力于retina显示屏的图像制作,我们经常需要处理基于4000+像素大小以及好几百个图层的图像。所以我们需要使用PC或Mac以保证运行顺畅。缓慢的机器运转将会大大地影响效率。为了背景图像,我们在一台快速的机器上进行测试,这需要花费一名美术师4天的时间,而普通的机器则需要5天时间。你可以估算这其中的费用!并且从心理上来看,缓慢的机器运行有可能让美术师感到郁闷,从而降低他们的效率。

当然了你并没有许多预算能够用于计算机中。所以我会建议你们购买一台价值1000美元的组装PC(不包含监视器)。

主要存在两种类型的平板电脑,传统的以及你可以直接在屏幕上绘画的。找出最适合你们美术师的平板电脑。虽然每张图可能只有几个小时的区别,但是日积月累,你们也可以因此剩下许多费用了。

质量:

我们的每个项目都有明确的质量规定和参考图片。每位美术师都会默认接受这样的标准去递交作品。当完成每一件作品时,我们的AD(艺术总监)和PM(项目经理)便会反复检查该作品。如果作品不能满足标准,美术师便需要去修改它。在作品经过内部审核候,它才算真正完成,并且才能进入美术师的绩效考核中。

基于这种方式我们可以简单地控制质量,并且不需要投入更多精力去解决问题。

性能评估:

在我们的工作室中,我们会清楚地记录每个美术师每个月所做的工作。在月末,我们会对每个美术师进行总结评估。及格线是每个人17天,如果有人的工作少于这个工作量,他/她便需要接受惩罚。而超过17的人将能够因为额外的工作量获得奖励。

man day(from gamasutra)

man day(from gamasutra)

有些团队会投入更多努力去监督每张图的进程和完成度,而在我们使用这种方法的同时,美术师们也会监督自己的工作。

项目计划:

在决定工作量和特定项目的截止日期后,我们需要先做些计划。首先我们将决定每个人的整体工作量,然后分配不同阶段。之后我们需要考虑如何组织团队:需要多少美术师,谁适合这项工作。基于我们的时间线,我们还可以根据我们的性能评估政策去估算每个美术师能够获得多少奖励。

进程追踪:

尽管我们拥有计划以及让美术师能够自我监督的性能评估政策,但我们是否能让团队像机器那样独自运行并在适当的时候收获成果?这是不可能的!我们的PM仍需要不断地追踪进程发展。在短时间内,PM将检查作品的完成度,如果未能符合预期效果,他们便会想办法找出问题所在并解决它。

当某一环出错时……

如果我们的PM检测出某个美术师的进展较慢或在短时间内递交出不合格的作品,他便知道这是需要快速纠正过来的问题。他将与美术师进行交谈,询问问题所在:美术师是否身体不适,或者家里出现问题之类。我们将尝试着找出解决方法。

在管理了美术师几年后,我觉得所有的人都很诚挚,并都希望能够递交一份出色的作品。如果出现什么问题,往往都不会是因为美术师的懒惰或生病。所以你不能一味地指责对方并将公司政策粗鲁地扔在他们面前。相反地,你应该耐心且友善地面对他们。

安排合适的AD和PM

在我们的工作室中AD和PM的职责:

AD:

指导创造性工作;

教授团队成员如何创造出特定类型和高质量的作品;

审查完成的作品。

PM:

计划项目;

追踪进程;

分配工作;

传达客户的反馈并收集修正过的作品;

记录性能评估。

并非每个人都能成为优秀的AD和PM,你需要找到一个一丝不苟的A型人去担任PM的职位。不要浪费时间去培训那些不适合这些职位的人。

放松活动:

时不时组织一些让人放松的活动非常重要:进行团队聚餐,一起喝酒,开party,进行BBQ,一起旅行等等。这么做能够让团队更像是一个大家庭,并且能够鼓舞团队士气。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

How to manage a 2D art team

by Junxue Li

Hi, I’m Junxue, CEO and general manager of Novtilus. Our company is an 2D art house, many great mobile developers outsource their art production to us. It’s a tough business, too many competitors, and due to the precarious nature of the industry, many clients couldn’t give us steady order. Any way, after much headache, we still manage to run our business. Here I have some tips to share, of how to manage an art team.

We do outsourcing work, and I think if your art team is a developer’s internal team, it doesn’t make much difference.

The Goals of managing the team:

Short term goal:

To complete certain amount of work before certain deadline, and you would have to deliver them in good quality.

What you have is, artists, equipments and limited funds.

Long term goal:

To build a business which is valuable to our clients and the industry, to offer the employees a career and a home.

The goals are simple enough, huh? Indeed, to meet the goals, lots of management job needs to be done:

The make up of the team:

What type of artists to hire? That depends on what types of job your team usually take over. Do you do lots of concept art for AAA console games? Or do you do a lot of background art for Match 3 games?

And another consideration is like this: generally, there are two types of artists: Type A artists like to take challenges, they always want to take something new, something need lots of design and investment of mental power; And Type B artists more like to have a steady job.

Today the trend of 2D games is that they need lots of details for graphics, you can see the background and characters are lavishly rich. Which means we need lots of manpower to polish up the artworks. It’s inevitable that you need an army of artists to do the same tedious work over months and years. So you should consider the orientation of your team: is your team a design type team, or your team needs to do a lot of polish-up job? If your team tends to do lots of polish-up job, you would need to hire lots of Type B artists, for Type A artists wouldn’t wish to stay long for this type of job; And if your studio needs to deliver superb, original work, you need to hire some great Type A artists.

In conclusion, you need to think over the composition of two types of artists, that would save you lots of efforts afterward.

Motivation:

It’s human nature to want to be part of something great. When a game your team take part in is released, let them download it and play, and tell them how popular this game is in the market. Every time I pass the news of a game’s release to the team, everyone is excited to play, and some people even beat to hundreds of levels, -because the game is their mind child. They often share the game with their friends and tell them “I’m doing great job!”

And if there’s a chance to dramatize your work, don’t let go of it.

Equipments:

We’re handling graphics for retina displays, we often deal with pictures of 4000+ pixels size, with hundreds of layers. So it’s essential to prepare PC or Mac which can run smoothly. Slow machines are killers of efficiency. We had made a test, for a background art work, on fast machine it would take 4 days for an artist to complete, a general machine, 5 days. You can calculate how much money is in that! And psychologically, slow machines makes the artists blue, which in turn reduces efficiency.

Of course you don’t have limitless budget for computers. So my suggestion is to buy assembled PC of $1000 mark (Monitor is not included).

And for tablets, there are generally two types, traditional ones and that you can paint directly on the screen. Find out your artists would work more efficiently on which type of tablets. It would only be a few hour’s difference for a picture, but over years, wow, that is a lot of money!

Quality:

Our every project has clear quality definition, and reference pictures. By default, every artist agree to deliver work at this level. And when a work is completed, our AD and PM would double check the work. If the work can’t meet the standard, the artist would have to fix it. Only after the work is internally approved, it’s deem done, and would enter the Performance Assessment account of the artist.

It’s simple to control the quality in this way, we don’t really spend much efforts to this issue.

Performance Assessment:

In our studio, we keep a clear account of jobs each artist has done each month. And by the end of the month, we take the sum of each artist. The passing line is 17 man/days, if some one does less than 17 man/days’ work, she/he will be penalized. More that 17, there would be bonus for each additional day’s work.

Some teams would invest lots of efforts to monitor the progress and completion of each picture, while we use this method, the artists would monitor themselves.

Project Planning

After the amount of work and deadline of a certain project are decided, we first need to do some planning. First, we would see how many man/days’ work is that in total, and delivery stages. Then we need to think how to assemble a team for it: how many artists are needed, who are suitable for this work. And by our timeline, we can even calculate how much bonus each artist could expect to have, according to our Performance Assessment policy.

Progress tracking:

While we have the plan, and a Performance Assessment policy that artists would monitor themselves, that we can let the team run itself like a machine, and reap fruits at due time? By no means! Our PM still need to track the progress from time to time. Over a short interval, the PM would check if the works are progressed as expected, if not, find the problem and fix it.

When something goes wrong…

If our PM spots certain artist slow in working, or deliver bad works over a short period of time, she knows this is something need to be fixed asap. She would talk to the artists gently, ask what is the problem: Does she/he feel sick, or something at home is wrong. We would try to find solutions.

Over years of dealing with artists, I feel that all people are sincere, and wish to deliver good work. If something goes wrong, it is often not because of laziness or ill intent. So initially, you can’t think people as less men and throw company policy at their face. Instead, be kind and nice to them.

Assign able AD and PM

The responsibility of Art director and Project manager in our studio:

AD:

Guide creative work;

Teach the team member how to achieve certain style and art quality;

Finished work check up.

PM:

Project Planning;

Progress tracking;

Assign work;

Pass down clients’ feedback and gather fixed work;

Keep Performance Assessment account;

Not everyone can make a good AD and PM, for example, you need a meticulous and blood type A person for the PM position. Don’t waste time to train unfitting people for these positions.

Relaxing activities:

It’s important to have relaxing activities regularly: invite the team to dinner, drink, have a party, barbecue, go traveling. It would make the team more like a family and inspire good team spirit.(source:gamasutra)

 


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