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Basic Information

The CGA exists to form a community of computer game artists that interact with (share, learn, teach, influence) each other and their industry.

Benefits of CGA membership

bullet New artist friends. Call it hanging out, call it networking, call it having a party, but we computer game artists need each other. In an industry as volatile as computer entertainment, it's easy to be isolated in our endless-deadline careers.
bullet Learn and teach each other cool tricks
bullet Swap war stories
bullet Find a job (or some hired help)
bullet Meet famous game artists
bullet Show off the fruits of your labor
Come on, where else can you whine about impossible deadlines to sympathetic peers? Come get creative and silly with people who will not only tolerate game artists, but appreciate them.
bullet Hot new technologies. Computer games drive cutting edge technology. The CGA will help us stay in touch with news, sometimes straight from the innovators themselves.
bullet How will new graphics engines make our art better?
bullet New ideas and mediums ("How do I model with voxels?")
The CGA facilitates peer reviews and opinions of 3D modeling tools, 2D image editors, handy graphics utilities, and even cool resources for source art.
bullet Skill development: Since we don't always find time to maintain and improve our skills, the CGA will make this a lot easier by holding useful practice seminars, roundtables, and lectures, demos, and hands on experiments that offer opportunities to practice (and learn new) skills that we really need in our job. We'll cover areas like:
bullet Traditional Art: Communicating realism, motion, emotion, via classical and modern understandings of drawing and painting, animation, lighting, sculpture, camera skills, etc.
bullet Computer Art: Actual field-tested knowledge motion capture, 3D animation, real-time 3D modeling, palette optimization, and more...
bullet Related Skills: visual story-telling tricks from film-makers, game design/level layout theory, communication with the rest of the game development team, and much more.
bullet Fix our tools: Together, we'll review problems, praise, and generally talk to tool-makers (especially big ones like Kinetix, Adobe, SGI, and Microsoft) to make art tools that do what artists need them to. Are you sick of clicking "OK" for Save-as? Here's your chance to change it. bullet Influence standards in our industry. As a unified group we can stand up and be heard. We can define terms, establish industry-standard file formats, and generally affect the environment we work in. bullet High-level discussions: What are ways artists interact with game development teams? What does it mean to be a "computer game artist"? In an ideal world, where do we want to go from here? What would we like to see next on this industrial horizon? What makes a good game, what makes a good game artist? How do video games change the world? bullet FUN! We are professionals, but we're also people who like to hang out and have fun together.

What the CGA isn't:

bullet Not a union: Though we do want to influence our industry, the CGA doesn't come between artists and their employers. It's more like a user's group, but not devoted to any particular product.
bullet Not a puppet group: We're independent as possible - no sponsors holding the reins, no parent organizations.
bullet Not uptight: We're friendly, casual, open, and totally professional, all at the same time.
bullet Not a waste of time: We'll prevent massive spamming on the mailing list, make our meetings effective and moderate roundtables well. We aren't LAPD about it, but we'll set up good environments for meandering discussions. You can go to only the parts you need.

How the CGA works

There are two ways we'll meet, learn, teach, and share:

Meetings. These in-the-flesh gatherings have some events for perfecting our art skills in a fun way, and others primarily for to meet friends, hear news, and generally hang out. We have small monthly gatherings as well as several larger events every year. For the best info on meeting details, you'll need to be a member and watch the mailing list. We'll also post meeting info on the site.

Ethereal Events: The Internet-based side of the CGA is the day-to-day way we form our community:
bullet Discussion List: The mailing list is how we talk. We share little tricks we find, ask peers for help when we're stuck, buy or sell art tools, mention interesting events, and generally talk to other artists in a friendly, professional way. Unlike many free-for-all lists, it's not a waste of time.
bullet Web site: This web site offers basic CGA info, the mail-list FAQ, It will also offer searchable mailing list digests, leads for finding artist-stuff (source art, 3D models, tools, etc) on the Internet, and a gallery - a place where we can tell all the other artists about our cool project.
bullet And more: We may have IRC 'meetings', where we all connect at the same time and type to each other, and other fancy things like this.

Who the CGA is for

The CGA is designed to serve full-time professional artists who have years of experience in the game industry. We're not exclusive, though. Wannabe's, curious programmers, managers, tool-makers, press, and others are also welcome to come see what happens when we artists get together!

Right now, our membership policy is open, but our content is focused on benefiting the typical professional game artist.

All kinds of computer game artists. There are a lot of different types of artists in the game industry: 2D and 3D, animation and modeling, technical and cartoony, etc. The CGA cross-pollenates these complimentary skill sets (e.g. helping techies learn more drawing and computer-phobes learn more computers).

Money

The CGA is non-profit and handles money very simply - cash donations from attendees cover basic expenses.

Structure

The CGA is a benevolent dictatorship. That means that one person - the benevolent dictator - makes final decisions for the CGA. The CGA has no board of directors, no mandatory voting on issues. Of course, the dictator is very interested in keeping members happy, and will call for member votes if there is an issue that really needs it.

Why this non-democratic structure? In a word, time. CGA members don't have time to mess with legistics of legislation and they prefer to have a single person make decisions rather than be bothered to vote on endless issues.