The Anatomy of an Art Bible
It is, unfortunately, all too easy to let the priority of creating an Art Style Guide (aka Art Bible) slide early in a project when there are so many things that need to be done to get a new project off the ground. As creative leader for your project, you should fight for the time you need to get at least the core of an art bible in place early. Here are some reasons why:
The art bible is an essential part of the core creative ideation of the product and, when done early and well, helps shape the overall design of the game.
It ensures alignment with the overall creative direction and can also shine a light on tech that may be needed to achieve the visual direction.
As you add artists to the team, whether they be internal hires or outsource, the art bible is crucial to successful onboarding.
Over the years, I have had a lot of opportunities to create art bibles. My earliest art bible works were each created several years apart as I was working on MMO projects with very long dev cycles. However, when I transitioned into indie development in 2020, long project cycles gave way to a series of quick turnaround game pitches, each pitch needing its own art bible. This accelerated cadence led me to developing a rapid, repeatable formula that I use as a framework for every art bible I do now. What I cover in this article is not the only way to do it, of course, but I wanted to share my own process and format for anyone out there who might be looking down the barrel of the very intimidating blank slate of creating an art bible for a new game production.
The blog/article format is not great for posting inline images, so here is a link to the art bible I created for my most recent game, DREGS, so you can follow along.
It is an example of what I call a “core” art bible – the initial minimum visual direction that you should aim to get in place as early as possible. I wish I could share some of my other expanded art bibles, but they are sadly behind NDAs.
THE CORE ART BIBLE
When creating an art bible, my format starts with several sections that I have found apply to every visual direction that I have created. You should be able to create these “core” high-level ideas immediately when starting a project as they should not be dependent on spinning up your whole concept art pipeline. You are just trying to get your ideas for the project fully thought through and recorded for sharing with the rest of the team.
Each section breaks down into 3-4 sub-headings with a short description and a few images to illustrate the idea. When it comes to images, keep in mind this is an internal document, so do whatever you need to get images to show what you are thinking. Whether it is imagery you grabbed from the internet, movie stills, or AI-generated art, you can always replace it later as your project builds up its own concept art archive.
Visual Goals – Your visual goals are the highest order of thinking for what the art for the game needs to achieve. These are likely to align closely with the overall pillars of creative direction for the game. If you are working with an existing IP, some of these may be inherited from that world. Examples – Tone, Fidelity, Target Demographic, Storytelling, Player Customization.
Principles of Art – The line can be blurry for what belongs in this section versus the previous section, but I try to think of these as things that will speak more directly to how artists approach their work and make art decisions along the way for the project. Examples – Readability, Use of Color Palettes, Stylization Inspirational Sources, Visual Themes.
Elements of Visual Style – This section is for calling out specific visual details and/or techniques that artists should incorporate into their work to develop consistency across the art for the project and to strengthen the look into cohesive visual IP. Examples – Shape Language, Feel of Fictional Tech, Color Grading, Brushwork, Character Proportions.
Art Strategies (optional) – You have gotten a lot of ideas in place at this point, and it is likely that you have some that will receive “How are you going to pull that off?” feedback. This section is your opportunity to show that you have given some thought to how you plan to tackle these challenges and/or mitigate risk. Examples – Tech callouts (procedural creation, special rendering, etc.), Identify asset creation efficiencies, Asset scalability for performance, Animation re-use plans.
EXPANDING THE ART BIBLE
An art bible should always be treated as a living document to be updated and added to as the project grows. When the art bible is effectively maintained, you can leverage it by frequently going back to it as a point of reference to keep both you and your team on track with the vision. All the high-level ideas have been covered in the “core,” but as you expand an art bible, you need to start diving into the details. It should also be expanded to become a repository for visual examples, pipeline processes, naming conventions, etc. Here are some examples of sections I have added to the expanded art bibles I have worked on:
Art Style Targets – Create sub-sections for each of your art disciplines and provide descriptions and images to illustrate what good likes like. You may also want to add some additional visual goals for each discipline. For production, this section is going to be the one that your art team will reference the most. Your breakdown may look like this:
Materials and Surfaces – Shapes and Forms, Use of Color, Detail Density, Brushwork or Grain, Rim Lighting
Characters – Proportions, Stylization Notes, Customization
Creatures – Similar to characters, but sometimes this needs its own sub-section
Environments and Props – Stylization Notes, Color Usage
Animation –Expressiveness, Facial Animation, Inspirational Sources
UI – Diegetic-ness, Themes, Shape/Color Language
Fiction-Supporting Aesthetics – Most games sit atop a deep lore that defines the world. The art bible should have a place that captures the visual aesthetics which define all of the maps/biomes, cultural factions, major NPC characters, etc. Sub-sections can be created for each of these.
Appendices – I really like having an appendix section at the end of the art bible. It helps to separate the parts of the art bible that are pure visual direction from the parts that are aimed at down-in-the-weeds technical information that you might want to remove if you need to share the art bible with someone who does not need that kind of detail. Appendices are the perfect place for discipline-based asset creation details like pipeline/tool instructions, naming conventions, etc. Appendices can also be a great place for deeper dive topics such as a style analysis versus other games, discipline exploration docs, and deprecated sections and ideas. It can be very useful to keep these old ideas around as a record of how you got to where you end up later in the project.
If you take nothing else away from this article, I want to have at least convinced you of the importance of getting a core of an art bible in place as early as possible for your project. It will make your job for the rest of the project’s duration a heck of a lot easier in a multitude of ways. It does not have to be perfect or complete, but it is a step in the right direction towards ensuring that you are thinking through how the art you and your team will make will lead to your game’s success.
