Glossary of Terms
The Glossary of Terms is a curated collection of definitions from the worlds of film, games, art, and design. Whether you're a student, artist, creative director or technical developer, this glossary is made to streamline your workflow and sharpen your understanding. All terms are written with clarity in mind, so you can move from confusion to creation faster.
The glossary includes industry-specific language used in animation, storytelling, production, visual effects, interactive media, conceptual art, and design systems. It’s structured for creative professionals, by creative professionals.Browse through categories like visual language, camera techniques, character design, game mechanics, UI principles, rendering technology, and more.
What is the Glossary of Terms?
The Glossary is a living index of essential concepts across entertainment and creative industries. It helps define and demystify production terms, art direction language, cinematic devices, and technical terminology — all in one place. You can use this glossary to learn the language of the industry, write clearer documentation, improve production notes, or enhance your storytelling vocabulary.
Why use a Glossary?
Many terms in the entertainment industry are often used inconsistently or misunderstood. The Glossary gives you clean, consistent definitions across mediums — helping teams stay aligned, students learn faster, and artists speak the same language. It also supports better communication between departments, whether you're working in pre-production, post, or interactive pipelines.
Description
A small-scale model of a larger work of art, often used by sculptors and architects to visualize and test their designs before creating the full-scale version.
Description
A maquette is a physical or digital reference model used by animators to guide the creation of characters or objects. Traditionally used for 2D animation, maquettes are now also applied in 3D modeling and VFX for character development.
Description
The margin is the empty space around the edges of a page or document, ensuring that the content sits comfortably and doesn’t touch the edges.
Description
Mari is a 3D painting and texturing application developed by Foundry. It allows artists to paint directly on 3D models with high resolution, making it a vital tool for creating detailed textures for complex assets.
Description
Marmoset Toolbag is a real-time rendering, texturing, and texture baking suite used by artists for look development. It supports the creation of high-quality renders and is widely used for character and environment design.
Description
The act of blocking or covering part of the camera frame with darkness or opaqueness, often used when portraying a character looking through binoculars.
Description
The process of manufacturing large quantities of standardized products using machines and assembly lines, often referenced in art as a critique of mass consumerism.
Description
A long take or continuous shot showing the setting or main action of a scene, often followed by smaller, tighter angles.
Description
A masthead is the title or nameplate of a publication, often seen at the top of magazines, or the title at the top of a webpage.
Description
A transitional technique linking two unrelated shots through physical, aural, visual, or metaphorical parallelism.
Description
The process of pairing players with others of similar skill levels or specific criteria to participate in multiplayer sessions or matches.
Description
The process of tracking and matching live-action footage with computer-generated elements to integrate them seamlessly in post-production.
Description
Matte painting is a technique used in VFX to alter or create environments. Artists paint or digitally composite landscapes, buildings, or skies to enhance or transform the background of a shot, often used in fantasy or historical films.
Description
The process of combining separate shots into one print through optical compositing, achieved by double exposure with masking.
Description
An art technique where thick, textured paint is applied to the canvas, often with added materials like sand or shells, to create a tactile, dimensional surface.
Description
Maya is a comprehensive 3D creation tool from Autodesk used in animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering. It’s widely used in film, TV, and video game production for creating complex 3D environments, characters, and effects.
Term
Media and performance art
Description
Art forms that incorporate elements like video, sound, and live performance, often aiming to challenge traditional art boundaries and engage with social issues.
Description
Refers to both the type of art (painting, sculpture, printmaking) as well as the materials used in its creation (oil paints, clay, etc.).
Description
A camera shot from a medium-length distance, typically capturing the actor from the waist up, abbreviated as “m.s.”
Description
A camera that records images on film or digitally in a frame size larger than 35mm but smaller than 4 × 5 inches, often used by photojournalists for its balance between detail and portability.
Description
A film genre characterized by expressive plots and intensely strong emotions, often containing elements of hardship, illness, and pathos.
Description
A genre of dramatic art marked by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and intense interpersonal conflicts, often involving a heightened sense of drama.
Description
Artworks designed to remind viewers of their mortality, symbolizing the fragility and transience of human life, often through symbols like skulls or decaying objects.
Description
A term coined by Dadaist Kurt Schwitters to describe his collage and assemblage works made from discarded, often unrelated materials, challenging the boundaries of traditional art.
Description
A mesh is a collection of vertices, edges, and faces that defines the shape of a 3D object. It serves as the structural foundation for most 3D models, with the details of an object represented in 3D space using X, Y, and Z coordinates.
Term
Metabolist architecture
Description
A movement in Japanese architecture of the 1960s, promoting designs based on organic and biological principles, envisioning cities that could grow and evolve naturally over time.
Description
A solid, hard material often used by sculptors for creating statues and other sculptures, valued for its durability and ability to capture intricate detail.
Description
A figure of speech where a word or phrase denoting one object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
Description
An early 20th-century Italian art movement known for dream-like depictions of eerie, empty spaces with unexpected juxtapositions of everyday objects, evoking mystery and metaphysical themes.
Description
A virtual, interconnected digital world where users can interact, create, and trade items, often supported by blockchain technology, providing new possibilities for art and creativity.
Description
An acting style where actors draw on personal emotions and experiences to create more realistic performances, designed by Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Description
A political and social art movement in Mexico beginning in the 1920s, where public murals depicted the nation’s history and promoted ideals of social justice, led by artists like Diego Rivera.
Description
A printmaking technique that creates smooth gradients of tone using a roughened metal plate, producing soft, velvety textures and rich contrasts in the image.
Term
Migration and movement
Description
The act of people relocating due to various causes such as war, disaster, or seeking better opportunities, influencing art that explores themes of identity, culture, and displacement.
Description
The strategy of optimizing a player character’s stats or abilities to achieve maximum efficiency, often used to gain the best possible results in the game.
Description
A small-scale model photographed to appear larger, creating the illusion of size in specific shots.
Description
An art movement of the 1960s characterized by simple geometric forms and industrial materials, rejecting complexity in favor of pure, objective aesthetics.
Description
A South Korean socio-political art movement that emerged post-Gwangju Massacre (1980) and sought to express the struggles of the oppressed through art.
Description
A French term for “putting into the scene,” referring to the arrangement of all elements within the frame to create the visual composition and artistic feel of a shot.
Description
Art that combines various materials and media (paint, photography, found objects, etc.) to create a unified piece, allowing artists to express complex ideas through diverse methods.
Description
The process of combining different sounds, music, dialogue, and sound effects into a movie’s master soundtrack during post-production.
Description
A type of sculpture with suspended, balanced parts that move, often in response to air currents, creating dynamic, shifting artworks.
Description
Groups of non-player characters (NPCs), typically enemies, that pose a threat to the player and may appear as part of a game’s combat or encounter system.
Description
Motion Capture (Mocap) is a technique for recording an actor's movements and translating them onto a digital character. This technology is commonly used in video games and animated films to achieve lifelike character animation.
Description
A mock-up is a realistic model or prototype of a design used to demonstrate how it will appear in the real world, commonly in 3D for products or campaigns.
Description
A fictional movie styled as a documentary but with irreverent humor aimed at mocking its subject.
Description
1. A three-dimensional representation of an object or structure, often used in architecture and design; 2. A person who poses for artists to create portraits or studies.
Description
A genre of art, pioneered by William Hogarth, that critiques and satirizes the morals and manners of society, often through narrative paintings or engravings.
Description
Realistic art created in the modern era, especially after the development of abstract art, maintaining representation of subjects in a more realistic, but often socially critical, manner.
Description
Art produced from the late 19th century onward, marked by a break from traditional styles and focusing on personal expression, abstraction, and new forms reflecting societal changes.
Description
A global cultural and societal movement from the early 20th century that sought to align art with the experiences and values of modern, industrial life through new imagery, materials, and techniques.
Description
In the context of minimalism, modular refers to art made from parts that can be separated, rearranged, or recombined to create new compositions or variations.
Description
A climactic moment or image in a movie that gives the audience their money’s worth, even if it cost more money to create.
Description
A Japanese avant-garde movement from the 1960s that focused on exploring the properties of materials, emphasizing the simplicity and meaning of everyday objects, rather than representational art.
Description
A work of art that uses only one color or shade throughout, emphasizing subtle variations in tone or texture.
Description
Monochrome refers to a colour palette made up of different shades and tones of a single colour, not necessarily limited to greyscale.
Description
A type of printmaking where the image can only be made once, creating a unique, non-reproducible print, in contrast to techniques that allow for multiple copies of the same image.
Description
A monospaced typeface is one where each character takes up the same amount of horizontal space, unlike proportional fonts.
Description
A printmaking technique where paint or ink is applied to a flat surface and transferred to paper, creating a unique, often painterly image, with various methods to manipulate the medium.
Description
A film technique for assembling a series of short shots to create a composite picture that conveys information or develops a theme, often used for storytelling or time passage.
Description
A technique in which various images or scenes are assembled together, often creating new meanings by juxtaposing them, used to communicate a theme or narrative.
Description
A moodboard is a collection of visual references and inspirations used by designers to define the aesthetic of a project, often created in the early stages of design.
Description
Morphing is a special effect where one image or shape transforms smoothly into another. This effect is often used in films for character transformations, such as a person turning into a monster.
Description
Morphing is a special effect where one image or shape transforms smoothly into another. This effect is often used in films for character transformations, such as a person turning into a monster.
Description
A form of art created by assembling small pieces of material (such as glass, stone, or ceramic) to form patterns or images, often used for decorative floors and walls.
Description
A recurring thematic element in a movie, such as a symbol, word, object, or line, adding significance to the overall narrative.
Description
Motion blur refers to the streaking effect seen in moving objects in video footage. It occurs when there’s relative movement between the object and camera during exposure and is often used in VFX to simulate fast-moving action.
Description
A series of still images projected in rapid succession to create the illusion of movement, forming the basis of cinema.
Description
Motion tracking is the process of analyzing and tracking the movement of objects within a shot. It enables VFX artists to match digital effects with moving elements in a scene, ensuring proper integration with live-action footage.
Description
A rideable creature or vehicle that allows a player to traverse the game world more quickly or access areas that would otherwise be difficult to reach on foot.
Description
Multi-pass rendering is a process in VFX where different layers of an image are rendered separately, allowing artists to adjust each layer independently in post-production, offering more control over the final result.
Description
A small-scale artwork produced in multiple identical copies, usually by the artist or authorized publisher, such as sculptures or prints, often sold in limited editions.
Description
An independent film movement characterized by naturalistic acting and improvised dialogue, often focusing on young adults dealing with relationships and jobs.
Description
A color system developed by Albert H. Munsell that describes color based on three dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (saturation), offering precise color identification.
Description
A large-scale artwork applied directly to a wall or ceiling, often in public spaces, and used to convey historical, cultural, or social messages.
Description
A gameplay mode where a player can restart the game from the beginning while retaining certain progress or items, often with increased difficulty or additional content.
Description
Short for "non-player character," an NPC is any character in the game that is controlled by the game’s AI rather than by a player. These characters often provide quests or background lore.
Description
A group of post-impressionist French painters (1888–1900) who emphasized bold, flat color and simplified forms, often drawing on symbolism and decorative art.
Description
A shorthand for grenades, typically referring to throwable explosive devices in games. It is commonly used in the context of multiplayer combat.
Description
The telling of a story through supplemental information provided to the audience by a voice offscreen, which can be delivered by a character or an omniscient presence.
Description
Art that tells a story, either through symbolic representation or literal depiction of events, often used to convey complex messages and themes through visual storytelling.
Description
A film term signifying a hyper form of realism, depicting life in an unbiased, stoic manner without embellishment.
Description
A group of German artists founded in 1809 who sought to revive early Renaissance painting techniques, emphasizing religious and moral subjects in their works.
Description
Art created by untrained or self-taught artists, characterized by a simple, direct style that lacks formal sophistication, often evoking a sense of innocence or folk traditions.
Description
The total cost of producing a film, excluding any revenue earned from distribution or sales.
Description
The process of physically cutting the original film negatives to assemble the final version of the movie.
Description
An art movement led by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, focused on painting with small dots or strokes of pure color, which blend optically to form an image.
Description
An art philosophy developed by Piet Mondrian, emphasizing geometric abstraction with straight lines, rectangular planes, and primary colors, aiming for universal visual harmony.
Description
A film movement originating in Italy in the late 1940s and '50s, characterized by movies shot on real locations, often featuring non-professional actors and a lack of scripted dialogue.
Description
A splinter movement from the Brazilian concrete art movement in the 1950s, which emphasized the emotional, poetic, and sensory experience of geometric abstraction.
Description
A 1950s and 1960s American art movement influenced by the earlier Dada movement, rejecting conventional aesthetics and embracing experimental, often absurd and irreverent, artistic expressions.
Description
A resurgence of expressionist painting in the 1980s, characterized by raw, emotional subject matter and bold, distorted imagery, often reflecting societal conflicts and individual emotion.
Description
A resurgence of expressionist painting in the 1980s, characterized by raw, emotional subject matter and bold, distorted imagery, often reflecting societal conflicts and individual emotion.
Description
An art movement from the 1980s that critiques the mechanization and commercialization of the modern world, using geometric abstraction and conceptual elements in a postmodern context.
Description
An early to mid-20th century revival of romanticism, applied to landscape painting and characterized by imaginative, often abstract representations of nature and human emotion.
Description
A late 18th-century art movement that sought to return to the classical ideals of Ancient Greece and Rome, emphasizing harmony, balance, and idealized forms.
Description
A bright, luminous lighting form used in signage and art, made by filling glass tubes with neon gas, which emits vibrant light when electrified.
Description
The act of reducing the effectiveness of an item, character, or ability in a game, often in response to it being considered too strong or unbalanced.
Term
Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKV)
Description
A German avant-garde art group founded in 1909 in Munich, known for promoting abstract art and rejecting traditional forms and perspectives.
Description
A German movement of the 1920s, focusing on realistic depictions of contemporary life, often with a satirical edge, rejecting the idealized forms of Expressionism.
