What is the name of this specialty in game dev and how to become one?

Question

Game development

There are game developers involved in the mechanics (geometry) of the game, that is, the physics of the gameplay. They tend to be good at math and programming. There are developers involved in the creation of sounds and on their shoulders everything that we can hear in the game. There are those who lead the process. And now the question. What are the names of the people (specialty) who are responsible for exactly how the game actually looks: the look of the map along with textures and lighting, the animation of characters and objects, etc.? In other words, who is responsible for how, say, Quake 3 looks?
And the question after: what do these people know? How is a specialist in this field formed? what disciplines (subjects) do they study in order to eventually become, probably, a game designer?

Answer 1

Several roles are responsible for the appearance of the game. If you single out one person, then, probably, this is the art director. He, of course, does not decide everything himself, the style is developed jointly with game designers, producers, artists, programmers and everyone else involved. It all depends on the organization, if the team is very large, then the art director can act as a manager who distributes tasks and references to subordinate artists, and they already draw concepts and models. Or the art director can be the main artist, who does all the main things himself, and the rest adapt to him. It happens that there are no visionary artists in the team, then the overall vision can be stored in the head of the game designer, and he takes on a bit of the role of art director. In any case, all issues are resolved jointly by the team,
Of the necessary knowledge, you need to at least be able to draw or model, no one immediately goes to art directors, and they won’t let you in. Composition, light / shadow, color theory - all this standard art base. Well, it is desirable to have a good imagination and be able to quickly make sketches. When the general process of developing the artistic part becomes clear, you can move a little towards game design: study UX, level design, analyze other people's work. I can also advise you to watch the reports on the GDC channel , there are a lot of presentations on this topic.

Answer 2

It happens that one person is a generalist ..
but from yours
there is a separate Level Designer (you can say a subspecies of a game designer)
Animators are also very often separate people.
FX Effect developer / effects master - effects and lighting, also often done by a separately trained person)
usually it's just an additional specialization, in addition to the ability to do a bunch of other things) just not so high quality.
and the general concept and style - in practice, the AGREED DOCUMENT is responsible for this)
whoever calls the "Design Document" "dizdok" ..
it usually prescribes the style, concept, a little game design is mixed in ..
and it is written in a good way with the participation of EVERYONE. and developers and art department and managers

Answer 3

Perhaps it means technical artist. True, they can be very different: from interface layout designers to shader programmers and other things. In general, the position implies knowledge of both programming and art.

Answer 4

The game designer is responsible for the quality of the game .
As for the purely appearance, that is, UI, UX is a separate area, for which it is desirable to have a separate specialist on an average and higher project. There is also an art director (art lead) who can be in charge of style. But in general, they all interact with the game designer early.
Suddenly, from the required skills, a game designer has only arithmetic and Excel skills. That is, in theory, any student will do. But, depending on the specific game, certain related professional skills may be important. For example, if the game is about racing, then it would be useful for a game designer to be a driver with 10 years of experience, who understands different brands of cars, including racing ones. He will decide how the game will look like, focusing on his mind and clear metrics.