Game and art come together at Laguna College of Art + Design exhibit

In his work in the video game industry, Daniel Cuatt gets the chance to bring lifelike qualities to the players’ experience.

As an environment artist, he creates 3D models of buildings, cars and other props that form a game’s setting, whether indoors or outdoors. These are the visuals that game players will encounter on the screen.

It’s that mixture of traditional art forms — painting, sculpture, storytelling and cinematography — that Cuatt honed as a game-art student at Laguna College of Art + Design, where he graduated in 2014.

And now he has a chance, along with other alumni, to mentor and show current students what post-classroom success can look like.

Cuatt, who works at the Irvine-based video game developer Obsidian Entertainment, will join more than 20 LCAD game-art graduates during “The Reunion Tour,” an exhibition of works by game-art alumni that will run until April 30 at LCAD Gallery in Laguna Beach.

The alumni featured are currently working at independent game studios and with game developers and publishers, including Blizzard Entertainment, Disney Interactive and ZQGame Inc.

“It’s a really nice environment here, and I do want to give back and share what I have learned with others,” said Cuatt, who works on the online game Armored Warfare.

Cuatt will lead a workshop on shaders, a computer graphic program that produces levels of color within an image or special effects.

“It’s important to learn, because anything you’re working on in game design, you have to fine-tune it,” Cuatt said. “It will give you variation.”

The exhibition, which was to have opened Thursday, will run concurrently with a number of workshops and opportunities for mentoring. For instance, Gameboree, a networking event, will be open to the public Saturday at the Laguna Beach venue [seven-degrees].

“The Reunion Tour” is a biannual event that will mark its fourth installation this year.

Sandy Appleoff, chair of LCAD’s bachelor of fine arts program in game art, said the exhibition was created to keep alumni connected and share new projects with the art and gaming communities.

Since the game-art department’s founding in 2007, attendance has grown, from five students in the first class listing to the 34 students who are part of the 2017 graduating class.

The collaborative programs, she said, give students a foundation in classical art training followed by creating work on gaming-industry software.

Computer and video games have come a long way since the days of Pac-Man and Frogger, she said.

In the 44 years since the introduction of Pong, one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity, the field has attracted artistic talent and become increasingly prevalent in society.

According to a 2010 video game industry study conducted by Entertainment Software Rating Board, an organization that assigns age, content ratings and privacy principles for computer and video games, 67% of U.S. households play video games, with the average gamer spending eight hours a week on the activity.

And data compiled by global market research company NPD Group revealed that the computer and video game industry sold 273 million units in 2009, leading to $10.5 billion in revenue.

At the digital onset, designs were made to look realistic, Appleoff said, but as video games evolved, their look transitioned into something more stylistic and artful with interaction, animation and physics.

Appleoff said the exhibition is meaningful to currently enrolled students because they can see what the alumni have accomplished.

“You begin to see that look of, “If they did it, I can do it, too,’ ” Appleoff said. “I always look forward to seeing alumni again after they got their footing into the industry after all those hard years in school. It’s a joy to have them in our midst again and inspire our young artists.”

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IF YOU GO

What: “The Reunion Tour: An Exhibition of Works by BFA Game Art Alumni”

When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays until April 30

Where: LCAD Gallery, 374 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach

Cost: Gallery admission is free; Gameboree tickets are $20.

Information: (949) 376-6000 or visit lcad.edu