Have a Career as a CG Texture Artist

The texture artist's work does the heavy lifting when it comes to suspending the game player's disbelief. The quality of the textures determines the game's look and feel, making all the difference to that elusive beast 'game play'. A good texture can hide the shortcomings of a low-poly model or make the ground worth walking on. Bricks, grass, leaves, fabric: prepare to stare at the everyday world and to take 1000s of reference photos to help you in your quest to become a texture artist.
In addition to the art side of the equation, the texture artist has to have a finely nuanced understanding of the technical limitations of the systems for which the games are being designed. Textures have to work within the memory and processing limitations of the machines being used - be it phone, Wii or PC. Experienced texture designers use various techniques, such as normal mapping, occlusion maps and multiple texture sheets, to give the illusion of intricate textures without using up the valuable memory cache needed for other parts of the game.