Unit 72 Drawing Concept Art for Computer Games

What Is he Purpose Of Concept Art

What is concept art ?

Definition of concept: An abstract Idea.

Concept art is a type of illustration to show multiple ideas and designs for places, objects, characters, creatures and anything else that needs to be developed for a film, video game, animation or comic book.

Once the concept art is finished, the best idea is then chosen to be further developed into the video game (or what ever the concept art was made for) and then final art work, 3D models or animations of the idea gets created to then be added into the game.

The overall purpose of concept art is to find as many ideas, designs and solutions to how a certain thing would look and as quickly as possible, so that the best idea can then be then further developed in the project. It also helps other team members on the project to know more about what they are working on.

For example: a concept artist has just created 10 different ideas for a enemy robot in video game, the team then decides which idea they like most and then the artist works on further developing this one idea by drawing the robot in different poses and at different angles and then these drawings/paintings gets passed on to the artists that are working on 3D models and animations, these artists now have a much better idea on how to model and animate the robot then if they were just told to create an enemy robot for the game.

Concept artists don't just create/reimagine new objects, characters, creatures...etc they also do a lot of terrain and world art were they create an environment this helps to give an idea of the mood of the video game, film, comic book...etc.

Concept artists mainly just use graphics tablets and a painting/sketching program like Photoshop to create their artwork, mainly because it's faster to use since there is no need to use paint, paper, pencils and other finite materials that you have to buy. But if you are using a program on a computer then you have no need for any other materials because most materials needed to create artwork can be used on these programs.

Here is an example of a 3D model that was made using concept art.

Looking at concept artists

Some Concept art by Megan Tupper for a survival video game called Rust made by Facepunch studios. Main materials used would be a graphics tablet and computer software. Artist's art found HERE

different designs of small shacks. these shacks are made of poor materials (wood and leaves mainly) this shows that it is hard to live in the world of rust.

Some clothing designs for the characters of the game. these designs show clearly that the world the characters lives in is dangerous since the clothing looks very protective.

Camp fire designs so that the main character can cook food. I really like these designs because they look very experimental and they all fit the survival aspect of the game.

Yap Kun Rong is a freelance concept designer and illustrator working in the game and film industry. His list of projects include video game titles such as Metal Gear Rising, The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2. Main materials used would be a graphics tablet and computer software. find more of the artist's work HERE

The 3 examples of his work are environment concept art for different fictional words. This kind of art really gives a mood and a settings to how life goes around in these worlds.

Kan Muftic is a freelance concept artist and illustrator currently based in London, United Kingdom. His list of projects include films such as Godzilla, Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy, Exodus: Gods and Kings and the upcoming Cinderellamovie. Main materials used would be a graphics tablet and computer software.

Find more of the artist's work HERE

The 3 examples of the artists work are concepts and ideas of scenes that would happen in a film or cutscene of a game.

Xue Xiaobing is a concept artist based in Beijing, China currently working in the video game industry. Xue studied art and design at Changsha University of Science and Technology. Main materials used would be a graphics tablet and computer software. Find more of the artist's work here

The 3 examples of his work are structures/buildings concept art where he creates multiple designs of the same building or structure.

Domenico Piola was a Genoese painter of the Baroque period. He was an Italian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and designer. (1627 – 8 April 1703). He's work is visible in The Communion of Clare of Montefalco (London, British Museum). He would paint a lot of religious paintings showing what he thought heaven was like. he was creating concept art of what heaven looks like.

Giovanni Battista Paggi was an Italian painter of the Late-Renaissance and early-Baroque. 

(27 February 1554 – 10 March 1627)

His art shows People and angels together and some of his work is very rough. It shows ideas on what heaven and angels are like amongst humans.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes ( 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker who would draw a lot of weird creatures from giant birds to giant bat like creatures. His art shows ideas of what bird like monsters would look like.

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Drawing the human form and practising proportions.

In this lesson we had a look at drawing human proportions, figures and structure.

we had some students pose so that the other students could sketch them out.

we had a look at Jamie Hewlett and Leonardo Da Vinci to see how they would sketch out their humans they both have completely different styles and it's not surprising because they are from different eras 

In this sketch i used a paintbrush and some water to create values on the drawing.

I don't think it looks all that great the right leg is a bit out of place.

In this sketch i used a paintbrush and some water to create values on the drawing.

I think i did all right in this drawing I think that the proportions look accurate.

Here I did continuous line drawing with a high liner pen I was going to use water for the values but the paper wasn't good enough for that. I think it looks ok but I could of made it a bit less sketchy looking.

In this sketch i was facing the back of the models so it wasn't all that interesting to draw and I'm not too happy with the drawing on the right but I think that I captured the pose of the left drawing pretty well.

Here are some basic figure drawing where I drew multiple sketches without adding much detail i would just draw the figure and body mass.

Extra figure drawing each drawing was done in 90 seconds or less

Drawing heads from the bust

We practised drawing heads and faces from bust statues and we had a look at the way Tintoretto (Italian painter) draws faces he basically first starts with the basic shape of the subject, in the example I saw, he starts with a rectangle and guidelines then adds in more lines to shape out the form of the head after that he adds in rough facial features and then adds more detail/shading.

Drawing Architecture in and around the College.

Drawing stuff in an Isometric view

House plan for the isometric house below

Going to the Bristol museum to sketch/draw animals and objects.

 Some extra random drawing/practising

On the left is a random drawing and on the right is the skull of a sabre tooth tiger.

On the left is eye practice and on the right is a drawing of a dinosaur.

Practicing the human skull and making abstract shapes and objects.

Practicing human anatomy male/female

Arms, hands, legs and feet practise from observing photos online.

practising the mouth and human head.

practicing the human form with figure drawing.

Female anatomy and body proportions.

Male torso and shoulders/arms.

Male body practise with muscles.

random sketches

random sketches

Practising shadows and some more abstract shapes.

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Making concept art for a game based on a story.

My story choices are Shadow over Innsmouth, burning chrome, Unlondon and he time machine.

I'm going to be doing concept art for the shadow over Innsmouth as i really enjoy drawing monsters and creatures.

The shadow over Innsmouth tells the story of a student on a sightseeing tour of New England who visits Innsmouth. He get's interested in the horror stories that he haas heard of the place and goes to see the town drunk who likes to tell the stories of the town, after he is done with the drunk man he finds out he can't leave the town till the next day as the bus he was going to take is broken, so he goes to sleep at a hotel. In the night he escapes the hotel through his room window as there are intruders trying to enter his room. As he tries to escape from the town and the people of Innsmouth he sees the monsters that were told to him by the town drunk, frog/fish like human hybrids. He escapes the town and later discovers that his family is related to the people of Innsmouth and that he himself is going to become a fish like human hybrid as he grows older.

I thought that this story was very interesting and i really like the way it ended so this is the story i will be making concept art for.

I found a set of images to show how Innsmouth was shown in the book.

It basically looked old and run down with houses that looked abandoned and boarded up.

  

But i might not be making my concept art of the town look like this as I am free to change the setting of the story and re-imagine it in my own way so I might be setting the story in a more exotic place like Caribbean islands, it could make the story seem more interesting.

I like the idea of having the Innsmouth people be villagers of a small island in the Caribbean and that they live in small huts above water. This new setting will make the story seem a bit more interesting as I'm going to be drawing the sea creatures to look a bit more exotic and colourful.

Quick small sketches of the houses the Insmouth people live in.

They are built above the sea water or on the island.

A quick sketch of a Insmouth fisherman on a small boat.

Body structure and proportions of the evolution of an Insmouth person becoming a Fish creature.

I made a theme board of tropical  fish and fish monsters using Adobe Illustrator.
I made this to help get some kind of an idea on how to design the anthropomorphic fish species.

Design and development of the Fish Hybrids.

My favorite design would be the one on the right as it fits well with the description of the fish men, and i also really like the way it looks. 

Designing the look of an Insmouth person.
Description of "the Innsmouth look", "queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes".
I think that this design fits well with the description but i might change the design a bit so that it fits the caribbean theme more

One of the fish hybrids in it's own habitat underwater.

A quick sketch of the island where the Insmouth people live.

The Isle of Insmouth

Designs for the golden tiara that is mentioned in the book, i designed them to look alien and weird.

I prefer the bottom left design the most.

Insmouth clothing designs

This design is for the priests that worship the fish monsters and that take place in the sacrificial offerings to the fish monsters.

This clothing design is for the fishermen if the village, they go out fishing on boats under the sun and to keep their skin protected from sunlight they wear these big straw hats.

The average clothing of a normal innsmouth villager.

they have old looking cloths.

This is the kind of carvings that are found on ancient underwater buildings and ancient jewelry like the tiaras. The Insmouth people believe that it is the writing of an ancient civilisation or the fish hybrids.

Digital work

Beginning practice in doing digital drawing/paintings

Quick painting of some trees in a bad weather, this was a very experimental painting.

Practising shading and 3d shapes.

General face sketching and painting

Working on making my sketches into digital art

A quick paint of a fish hybrid i think it turned out ok but it still would need improvement and maybe a darker blue colour as it is too vibrant.

The golden tiara that was mentioned in the book.
I made different concepts on what it could look like.
I feel that these  golden tiara concepts came out really well and i think i did quite well on representing the golden aspect of jewellery and crystal stones such as sapphires and emeralds. my favourite 2 designs would be the 2 on the right.

The types of cloths they wore.
I'm really happy with the way these 2 information sheets turned out as they looked like they were painted and sketched by somebody who has just discovered the island and the people living on it.

I'm really happy with the way this portrait painting turned out especially  the front facing one.

small extract of the book that talks about what a villager looked like.

He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man. His age was perhaps thirty-five, but the odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck made him seem older when one did not study his dull, expressionless face. He had a narrow head, bulging, watery-blue eyes that seemed never to wink, a flat nose, a receding forehead and chin, and singularly undeveloped ears.

The island of Insmouth
These 2 paintings of the island were very experimental as i was testing different brushes and painting techniques, overall i'm happier with this first painting then the second one.

Colouring the Fish hybrid in it's natural habitat sketch

I'm not all that happy with this piece because i didn't quite turn out how i wanted it to but i don't think it's all that bad it's ok.

Overall i think i did good within this unit and that i have progressed very well from the start to the end, i also enjoyed the unit most of the time so that's just a nice bonus.

But i still do think i could of improved on a few things such as a few more final paintings that show  the Insmouth people interacting with the Fishmen hybrids, like a sacrifice or an exchange of gold for humans.

Final Evaluation

For this Unit we were asked to research what concept art is, why it's important and how it's used within different industries. I felt that the research i did helped me to understand the use of concept art a lot more and i think that i did a good job at explaining it's use. We also needed to research some recent concept artists and some old classical artists that could have something to do with concept art.

After the research we continued some basic drawing practice where we practised the human form by doing figure drawing and then we practised the head from the bust of some statues. We then did some general environment practise where we would go around the college drawing different scenes. We then practised some isometric views but this study was very short. And then we went to the Bristol museum to Practice General objects but i didn't really end up drawing objects i mainly drew the different animals that were on display as i found them more exciting and fun to draw, Going to the museum to draw was a very fun activity.

After that in my blog I show off a lot of general/random personal studies and drawings that I had done during this unit. I do a lot of personal studies as i strive to improve in my artistic skills and that's why i fill up an entire sketch book a month as it helps me to improve in my artistic abilities.

And then the final part of the unit was to create are own pieces of concept art for a book, we had the choice between 3 books: Shadow over Innsmouth, burning chrome, Unlondon and he time machine.

We needed to make concept art of characters, objects and places.

I chose to do concept art for the Shadow Over Insmouth as i found the story to be a lot more interesting then the other ones and i also really liked the idea of drawing sea creatures/monsters as my favourite things to draw are monsters. When making the concept are we were allowed to change the story a bit if we wanted to and so i did instead of having the story set in England i had it set on a tropical island making the story that more interesting. I listened to an audio book of the story and then i started to make some basic sketches of what i thought the sea creatures, Insmouth people and place would look like.

And once i had done enough sketches i went on to doing digital art by scanning i the images and going over them with paint tools, the software i used was Photoshop. When i first started my final pieces i did struggle a bit as there is a learning curve to painting digitally but after a while i did get the hang of it and i feel a lot more comfortable now with painting digitally which is GREAT!

I personally think that my final digital pieces came out well and that i did a good job but i do feel that i could have done more but seeing that i was also working on 3 other projects i kind of just ran out of time.

In general i think i did quite well in this unit and i think that i captured the idea of concept are nicely, I also feel that i have learnt a lot while doing so.