Thread by @delaneykingrox

Today's #gamedev tips is about the subject of #conceptArt, what is (actually) is, how to use it and busting a few myths.

This is a wholistic multidisciplinary look- so all devs may find something here.

So first, let's start with a definition. Concept art is anything used in the preproduction of a final product.

It usually isn't the final polished art work you may be used to seeing.

It can be stick figures, a top down scribble of the level layout or a photograph with some ballpoint pen drawings on it.

Here is a piece of concept art for something famous. Do you recognise it?

That lump of clay was Christopher Nolan communicating the idea he had for The Batmobile.

The beloved Tumbler.

The concept art communicates a complex idea so that the artist can get it into their head.

I worked as a story board artist on TV commercials for a while, and most of them fell into two categories- highly polished boards to pitch to clients (pitch boards) and rough as guts stuff like this:

I would sit with the director with some scrap paper and talk through his ideas. I would try stuff, fast as possible and help them nail down the angles, composition and ultimately shot list.

Here is a Pitch Board I made for a TV commercial for the launch of a cider called 4seeds. The director was Michael Spicca, and he was extremely good at picturing the end result and wanted me to capture what was in his minds eye.

Here is the final TV shot.

The job of a pitch board is to get money. It's an impressive artwork for boardroom meetings.

Polished works can also be used in marketing material. This is concept art- but it is more marketing material.

Here is a character I redesigned for a cancelled game Brutal.

Concept art can be used to explore ideas- concepts. Here is a bunch of quick sketches playing with potential ideas for a client to make decisions as to the direction they want. Its brainstorming on a page.

Concept art has two main functions- and this is a big lesson for all disciplines to grasp-

1) Exploring ideas.
2) Communicating ideas.

This model explores ideas in quick and easily iterated way, and then communicates that idea to others.

If I took the time to paint every image on this sheet all the way up to the standard of rendering on the right, it would take me a few weeks. And ultimately, none of it may be usable.

Likewise, this speed paint pushes up the rendering on a sketch so ideas can be pictured closer to the final form. It's messy, but enough for an animator to say "the neck can't turn without those spikes bending" or the designer to say "I want you to sympathise" with it.

This kind of concept art avoids expensive mistakes down the track, and so saves the production money, time and headaches downstream. Had I taken the model to say, here... and those problems arise, well, that is expensive.

Here is my fanart redesign of the Doom 1 Pinky. From loose idea, to figuring out the limb mechanics to detailing to mood shot.

At each stage I can make changes fast and try out ideas. And so I am working a concept from loose ideas through to something modellers, riggers, animators and designers can get behind and make reality as smoothly as possible.

Here is a concept I painted from a cancelled MMOG game Citizen Zero. We hired @FengZhuDesign to create pages and pages of thumbnails. He had was booked on Star Wars, so he didn't have time to refine the concepts for our modelling team, so this is me translating his thoughts...

...to something the team could build and animate with confidence.

The black parts were painted over the thumbnails and I just churned out different translations of parts until everyone went "yes! That one".

He made a LOT of cool thumbnails. Maybe he has those on file.

This technique allowed us to have a bunch of concept artists throw ideas around, try some designs and then work over each others stuff until we had, LITERALLY an entire wall of robot monsters to discuss and pick from.

We could then figure out polygon and bone budgets...

...based on the X box (original) limitations and how many the game designers wanted to get in a small space.

From there, I think it took three days to make the monster and it was just perfect- staying unchanged with no notes for the entire project.

THAT is the power of concept-

-art.

If you get an illustrator to draw one pretty picture for something... that isn't the concept art done. And honestly, you are setting yourself up for a fall.

You need to explore the ideas and nail down the design based on your needs and limitations.

Concept art can give you a huge range in directions that still fit the brief. I wonder what these things are?

This, folks, is still concept art.

This is also concept art. The purpose of this is a style test turning the 2D illustration refernece the client liked into a quick sculpt in zbrush- that can be smooshed around to push proportions and muscularity stylisations

Here are my concept paintings for Unreal Tournament 2004, and the finished assets.

The designs had to change from the concept because, for the first time, the Skaarj held rifles and had to sit in vehicles. The straight mandible horns became curved tusks.

Likewise the proportions changed from the original model (left) to the shipped version (right) so it could fit into the vehicles and hold the guns. The shoulder pad and blade arm had to change a lot.

You can see the original proportions in the concept art. Personally I feel the shipped model loses what made the concept cool... but it is my fault, because I didn't think through holding rifles and sitting in vehicles. I should have sketched some in those positions.

So even though it was fine, perhaps the design I came up with would have been cooler in context.

I did one cool image from my clients preferences of loose sketches, and didn't work it beyond that. Lesson learned.

And now lesson taught ;)

So...

Concept art is anything used to explore and pin down an idea cheaply. Then communicate ideas to a client or team mates.

It is NOT illustration. There is a lot more behind it as the end result will be a product with needs and limitatons.

I hope this really helps your team understand the role of concept art, the level of rendering it needs to be and the financial, game design and ease of production benefits.

And remember, anyone can explore an idea and communicate it to some degree, regardless of skill.

Concepts- ideas- are malleable, merge-able, and have almost an infinite horizon.

Concept art takes you there.

X

Enjoy the lesson? Toss a coin to your pixel witch- eh? Oh silicon valley of plenty.

ko-fi.com/dellak

If you have any questions on concept art in production, please comment here. I have a few hours of relaxation, so I will do my best to answer.

Okay a DM question from Maya.

Gathering reference is a HUGE part of concept art. I use PUREREF, which lets me gather it up, organise, annotate and save images from the web and the project quickly and easily.

Buy it. Absolutely must have tool.

Ultimately when working with artists you probably will make a CONCEPT PACK- which contains not only drawings but samples of the materials, inspiration, palettes, and patterns.

Like... here is a drawing of armour, but the metal has to look like (line points to a photo)

Concept packs may include drawings, plans, model sheets, pages of expressions, bits of text, cuttings from the source books the project is based on that describe the thing and so forth.

A lot of concept art can be reference photos that are painted over. So...

You copy pasta armour pictures from a museum onto an iphone photo of your friend Doug wearing a bedsheet as a hood, then paste on some scrollwork you found in a picture of an old building and then mash it up into a painting.

This art is rarely if ever seen outside of the production offices, as you don't have the rights to the images used in the collage, but it still gets you to where the product is designed.

Always use reference. Always. Always.

Always.

AlWAYS

As a programmer or game designer, you can gather screenshots of cool things you wanna do, or create gifs from screengrab software.

For one project, I made a video to get the feel of the game across by editing together ripped shots from something like fifty or so dvds.

One sequence was just every single shot I could find of snipers assembling rifles, with that sexy snap and click. That became the basis for our weapon system and the animations and sounds used- every gun modular, every one designed to snap together as cool as shit.

Just playing a few seconds of snap, click, lock and load and everyone was AMPED about the idea.

It was a few days of work and boosted morale and got an awesome feature as part of the game demo.

The next sequence showed people yelling "I am out of ammo" clips and getting...

...clips and guns thrown at them, snapping them in place and firing. It got across how an MMOG team could toss each other resources during a fire fight.

You could hold your inventory button to hold up your hand (no hit box), and team members targeting you could...

...throw stuff. If it was the right ammo for your gun, it auto reloaded immediately. If it was a health pack and you were critical, you auto jabbed yourself.

It was FUCKING fun.

And that came from a video collage.

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