Knowing 3D Game Art
Hello and welcome to 3D Game-art week! As you all know I have been featuring different kinds of 3D game development work all month long on every odd day (if i have enough to fill it) and to go along with a series of articles giving the community a little more insight on the sub section of the category.
So let's get started shall we 
Got some awesome artists who help contributed to this and lots of insight. So definitely give it a read!
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What is 3D Game art and how is it different from other 3D work?
3D Game art is specifically 3D art that will be used within an original game, game idea, game portfolio or 3D Game art you did at the studio/team you worked at/with and have permission to post. Even one you hope to make some day, as long as that is specified.
"It's getting much harder these days to tell the difference between 3D models used for games, cinema, or other media, though there are a few traits that each have that makes recognizing these much easier.
Depending on a games specs, models usually require a limited polycount or the total amount of polygons used in a 3D model. Because of this, it's easy to spot geometric edges on areas you'd usually expect to be curved. If a model is textured or contains maps, you might also be able to tell if it's for games depending on the quality of details or resolution of maps used. Most game models have limited resolution for the maps they use and therefore look fuzzy or pixelated up-close.
Cinematic models or models generally used for commercial and film are designed to be viewed only, not interacted with like game models. There are no real limits to polycount, map size, or any other additional techniques used to make them look the way they want to. Depending on the size of the project, some require a lot more rendering power than an an average PC can handle (such as Pixar and their animations) though the higher the polycount and size of the render, the longer and more processing power it will take to render a model." - Maddy T. 
3D Character Artist at Riot Games
vs.
Not all 3D Art can be Game art, and if it's classified to go into a game/etc not all 3D game art can fit into regular 3D Art. Knowing the differences between the two, and what to ask for/check for in the artist's comments of an art piece is the first step to tracking down great Game art work, even if it's miss categorized/labeled!
3D Game art tends to have more "restrictions" then any other form of 3D art. You can create a model, scene, particle effect in any number of polygons and have it classified as 3D art. 3D Game art is a branch of that, often having more limited poly's in its final presentation or some form of restriction to distinguish the two.
Detail.
Animated TV and movies can afford to pre-render all of their visuals, so they go nuts with high polycounts, big huge texture maps, complex shaders, and post processing effects. Game art needs to be rendered in real-time, often on slower devices such as phones and tablets (like in the case of Krog). This results in lower poly meshes, smaller texture maps, and less complex shaders.
That being said, the gap is closing, and the next generation of games are getting closer and closer to what we expect out of film and television. - Ryan M. creator of Krog(an iOS/Android game, learn more here ->) - www.krogthegame.com
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(These two art pieces, there's not much difference between them visually. So we need to dig deeper)
3D art is made up of polygons or triangles, forming the 3D work in 3D space. For video games on different consoles/handhelds/computers there are restrictions of these polygons of what the game can hold called "poly/tri restrictions". They often have a number they can go to "example: 1000 polys limit" and all 3D work within that game has to fall within that restriction. This is why you will see some 3D artists who make what is called a high polygon model, and a low polygon model of the same model. The reason for this is, by recreating the high polygon model of countless polygons, you can formulate/create any detail you'd like your model to have. By transferring those details in what is called a normal map and apply it onto the lower polygon model, it gives the illusion that the lower polygon has all that detail but does not have the polygon count the higher polygon model has thus fitting within the game's restrictions. Other restrictions may include texture map sizes, vertex count, level of detail, etc. The only aspect of 3d game art that tends to fall out of these restrictions is cut scenes (the cut scenes that almost look like cinematic movies like Blizzard does with World of Warcraft as an example.)
This is only one way to distinguish if it's a 3D art piece or a game 3D art piece, other methods include asking the artist, checking the artist comments, seeing if it's in fact from the studio, and many other methods. If I listed them all and explained them all we'd have a 30 page article. When in doubt, ask
How else could you describe 3D game art to someone who may not know much about it?
" I only can say that 3d game art is the art of create from scratch characters, assets and environments for videogames, giving them life and a history to make them believable in a deep context. From the high poly and sculpt creation, through the low game mesh and textures, until the rig and animation, is a whole process of figuring out how to give emotions and a past to characters or environments. So you can immerse the player in play a picture than others medias can't." - Carles G. 
- www.cgselworks.com
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Why choose 3D?
Out of every aspect of game development art you could've possibly chosen, why choose to specialize in 3D?
"I love the creativity it ensues, I get to see my work build from just a simple shape. I can get meticulous and spend hours sculpting the smallest details and be in complete awe. I like being able to see my work from all angles...almost feel as though I can hold my work in my hands. " - Joey M. Jr. Modeler at Ubisoft
"I've always loved games and I've been playing games since I was 5. I only came to realize that 3D art could be my future when I realized it wasn't as technical as I initially thought. There's something amazing when you create a character and have the ability to bring it to life with animation, sound effects, voice over, or even awesome particles. Not to mention, 3D printers can make some awesome figurines!" - Maddy T. 3D Character Artist at Riot Games
It's not just the artists who love to create game-art and choose to specialize in this field, developers/former artists who are creating games seem to be branching out more and more to develop their titles in 3D.
"Krog is based off a line of custom-made toys, and I wanted to get the in-game characters as close as possible to the toys. Which meant going 3d. 3d also suited the visuals I had in mind, and is generally faster to build than many styles of 2d art." - Ryan M. creator of Krog(an iOS/Android game, learn more here ->) - http://www.krogthegame.com
3D art is a wonderful medium, and 3D game-art is not exception to this. 3D game-art is all around you, and all over Deviant Art. A key factor to determine if it's game-art and not fan-art, is to just ask the artist or yourself this question "Does the artist hold copyright of this character/scene/3d art, or work for the studio and help produce it?" if yes, game-art, if no, fan-art! 
The gap is closing in, and soon 3d game-art may be on the exact same level in almost every way as 3D art, but until then the above information might help you distinguish between the two and get to know the reasons why people branch off into this form of art.
I hope this article helps with a little bit of insight on what some key differences between 3D game-art is, and regular 3D works and why people choose to go down this path. Thank you very much to Carles, Maddy, Joey and Ryan who answered some questions related to the topic to help bring it a little closer to understanding from industry to non industry (or even other industry) people. We'll have another article in the beginning April some time, helping with a few other insights to 3D game art, as well as a DD wide feature explaining the choices this month, and the contest winner for the mini 3D art suggestion contest I hosted.
