Good and Bad:

Already i am getting stuck for what to write on this subject and ive barely even touched on the surface of it.

Speaking previously about a piece of artwork for instance being technically good or bad. Thinking about it, you can still have 'good' in a piece of work even if it is technicaly wrong. Accuracy may not be spot on, however when adding colours or tonal value to a scene, if that is correct it can prevent something from become a completely dreadful piece of work.

Even if it isnt correct it would still give it some form of good aspect to the image. It can also work the other way around.

To be able to pull that one off, you need to soundly understand about colour thory, how it works, what colours work with what and how simple everyday things such as sunlight, a halogen bulb or a tunsten bulb can modify a scene.

For us in the games industry, it becomes an issue when it is applied incorrectly. For instance in some games, the setting will be autumn, but the sky which they have added is more of a summer sky, or they would have modelled a tree which isnt evergreen.

Attention to detail can make the most dramatic of differences however small they seem.

But little mistakes like those can make it seem like 'bad game design'.

Its not necessarily the fact that its bad game design, more that the colour theory has been mis understood and things have been overlooked, which makes the scene look incorrect thus making the game look wrong.

Not many people notice small things like this, but when you begin to understand colour theory and you know how games are made, you tend to look a little deeper than whats on the surface and you can then see the mistakes that have been made.

Recognising good and bad is within the opinions and likes of the person asked. For instance even if you dont like something because well you just dont, you can still have the ability to recognise that it can be a good thing.

Like country music, i'm not a fan of it, but i could still recognise a good piece of country music when i hear one, simply because you can just know what does and doesnt fit together.

Personal identity and preference can also have an effect on this good vs. bad business when considering artwork.

Heres a scenario:

you have ten people, each given the same product or scene to draw. Each person having thier own different style of working, But can all draw with great accuracy and understand the meanings and concepts of colour theory.

At the end of the day, you get te piece of work handed to you, each done by a different artist in thier own method of creating this piece of work. Each artist would have made the same picture, but with a little bit of thier own personal preference, identity or style.

Some of the pieces of work you get will be fantastic, however.....

A few of the pieces you get will have too much personal preference and identity in them, it ruins the scene they were creating. It could be something like thier own personal colour matching preferences, or the mehtod that they used to create the piece of work or something like that. These small things can have as much of an effect on work as others.

Its sometimes the little things which can make a big difference.

Occasionally, without there being any technical limitations there arent strictly any right or wrong, good or bad boundaries. Its a hard thing to discuss because as i say, a lot of it can still lay within the opinions of the person and thier personal identity.