Sketching: A part of game dev planning

Had a little bit of free time last weekend so I got to spend an hour or so deleting old and unwanted files from the hard drive. I noticed a folder named “Scanned Sketches” while I was skimming through the files and checked it out. As it turned out, it was obviously sketch works (duh). Most of them are for my clients and personal projects and a few are just for practice.

So why do I spend a lot of time sketching anyway? Since I've started to learn how to draw and until now that I emerged myself into game development I love sketching. I've been with other designers and illustrators in the past and I always find it extremely interesting everytime I see them doing a lot of scribbles before diving into the final form. I think sketching is an art of its own.

When I said sketching you probably thought on paper. You are right. Before I got my own computer and wacom tablet of course I use the traditional pen and paper combo. But even so, most of the time I feel more 'creative' when holding a pencil than a tablet or mouse. Most of you artists will get it. Not to mention it still is a hell lot faster to sketch multiple ideas on paper than in the computer. So how does sketching help you?

You may call sketching some sort of visual planning or brainstorming. Basically, concepts and more concepts, until you reach the final product. Concept development becomes faster through sketching. You can generate a bunch of ideas within a short period of time and best part is, you can clearly evaluate and see which of those ideas you tossed in is worth to progress and what to eliminate. So basically, it's a timesaver!

A poorly scanned masterpiece. Yay!

A line or a shape starts from a dot. Some of the best ideas start from a sketch. Let's say you have clients and they want your opinion of a character suitable to the environment that they want. Simple. Sketch three to five character designs so you can give them your vision of what you think may be best. You can use this to communicate with other people about your design ideas.

Sketching gives you freedom to illustrate what's on your mind. It's for everybody. It is a simple weapon but brings plenty of things to the table. And hey, it's fun!