Concept Art Report
Concept art is where a whole project starts off. Its done
along with the story plot for example to help get inspiration for the project.
It helps get everyone together on one idea to then start making for the next
year for example.
Concept art is important in many ways. One of the ways is
that it helps people get an understanding of what theme a game is going
for. It’s a lot easier for people to
understand what you’re talking about with visual aids in addition to a
description. There can either be a team of artists or just individuals. In
teams, each person works on their own idea of what they think and after a
couple of days for example they will all put their work on a wall and either
the lead designer will decide which one they like the most or they will do a
group vote. They let each person go on their own so their not influenced and do
what they like fitting in with the brief. Concept art is important for other
people in the company making the game because they need that to help them. For
example the story could revolve around the type of characters drawn, what the
level looks like in aesthetics, weapons and items need to be suitable for a
character in the concept art and etc. The main reason I think concept art is
important is for reference. When making the later stages of the game where
modelling comes in, concept art is needed for reference to what a model is
supposed to look like and for reference when making new models to make them
look like their supposed to be together.
Borderlands 2 Character Concept Art
This is concept art for the game Borderlands 2. It is the
art for one of the main characters in the game, which the customer can play
as. In this picture it shows initial
ideas next to the final product. As you can see, the concept art is completely
different than the final version. I mean they share some similarities but
overall looks like a totally new character. Even though these idea’s weren’t
used for the main character, they could be used for enemies. Also they couldn’t
get this final idea without doing the concept art to see what they liked and
what would fit in with the theme. The modellers would use this to recreate it
in game to make sure it looks right.
Halo 4 Concept Art Of Armour
This is another triple A title Halo 4. This game has loads
of concept art like the last one, which is needed in a high production game
with lots of people working of different parts of the complete game. This picture shows examples of amour types,
specifically for the multiplayer character following the Spartan
character. This specific armour is
important as it was an armour in the previous game which was hard to unlock and
people wanted to see it in the next one. Another reason concept art in this
case was important for spoilers/leak of what will be in the game. The armour
for this shows a front, back and side view so modellers can easily recreate it.
There is no version, which shows the textured version because the player
depending what colour they want which makes it harder on the texture artists
since they need to do it in each colour. The people making the models and
texturing will use this as a guide for what it looks like since this has been
looked at and edited to make sure it fits the theme.
Key words, which describe what concept art does is,
visualisation, communication, style, mood and atmosphere. They way it
visualises is that when people see it, they understand the theme more.
Sometimes its hard to understand it from words so the concept art helps people
visualise it. It starts communication of idea’s since concept art is seen by
most people in a company so it gets them talking about it and gets them
excited. Doing this will make people give their idea’s which in turn improves
the game by making changes which an artist might not have thought of. The style
mood and atmosphere is important since it’s the base of a game. The concept art
tries to capture this and put it in a picture and because of this makes it so
multiple ideas are produced with different variations of these initial themes.
Ralph McQuarrie is a concept artist which has worked on
various films, most known is Star Wars. Here is an example of some of his
concept art he did.
Ralph McQuarrel's Concept Art
This art shows an early representation of two Jedi’s fighting
one of whom being Darth Vader. This piece of art would have been drawn before
the original film was released. This would have been used to help produce the
costume for the actor to wear inside the film. This would have got a lot of the
producers of the movie talking about what they liked and didn’t like. It would
have probably got a lot of interest since its one of the main characters. In
the picture it portrays quite an evil presence from the bad character. Its
easily disguisable which character is good and bad which is needed for people
to understand if they don’t know the story for example.
Figure 1 Concept Art
By Ralph McQuarrel
This is another piece of concept art by Ralph this time
showing a scene from the movie. In this one you can see the character Darth
Vader is shown but looks different than the last one which shows that when he
drew this he got feedback about what people thought and changed it according to
that. This is an example of communication from concept art.
