Concept Art
Concept art is a term for illustrators who create initial
designs and ideas for films, video games, comic books and animation. The
illustrators design anything and everything from characters to the environments
for the characters, vehicle design and props. The concept art illustrators
design every little detail in these mediums with incredible scrutiny. It can
also be attributed to automotive designers who create concept cars.
Concept art is usually, but not exclusively, applied to
science fiction or fantasy based films or games. It is the job of a concept
artist to visually create worlds and environments that do not exist and make
these places seem believable. Their creativity and ideas is what singles these
artists out, if you aren’t visually creative then concept art is not for you.
They are visual scriptwriters for other members of the artistic team to have
something to work from. Artists generally use technological programs and
software for digital paintings and most importantly a tablet like Wacom
tablets.
Every project, be it film or games etc.,
starts off in pre-production and artists are hired to create the initial
designs for the project. You can trace concept artists all the way back to when
Disney started producing films with artists such as Gustaf Tenggren, who worked on the original adaptations
of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinochio”. Tenggren designed the
backgrounds for these movies and the initial characeter desings. [1] Ever since then
concept art has been behind every artistic medium that involves screen time. A
Swiss surrealist painter, H. R. Giger has been bery inspirational to the world
of concept art with his original designs for the movie franchise “Alien”. Giger uses the human body as a main influence
and fuses it with mechanical devices. Since then the world of conceptual art
has blown up with more and more artists becoming apart of that world. Artists
like Wayne Barlowe, Anthony Sieben, and Sergi Brosa are at the
forefront of revolutionising the medium. Scott Patten is a character and
creature designer for such films as “Avatar”, “Cowboys and Aliens”, “Thor” and
“Alice in Wonderland”. Patten started out working as a make-up effects artist
then made the move to digital painting when he realised the industry was moving
in that direction and he needed to stay relevant. [2] Ryan Church is
another artist who worked on the movie Avatar but designed a lot more of the
environments and vehicles as opposed to Patten’s characters. Church has worked
on many movies since, such as “Transformers”, “Star Trek Into Darkness” and
“Godzilla”. But as a conceptual artist he doesn’t want to be constricted to
only the medium of film and wants to move into video game design. “In video
games the door’s wide open… It’s almost indistinguishable from film work now.
They are both creating a virtual world that looks cool and helps the story.”[3] And that’s what all
visual artists want to create, a sense of the story.
Warren
Manser is another artist who has a huge back catalogue of films that he has
worked on including “Jurassic Park: The Lost World”, “The Matrix” and most
recently “Man of Steel”. He doesn’t have a full time employer because he prefers
to work as a freelance artist, that way he can collaborate with other studios
and companies. He enjoys working in the
industry and has this to say, “It was important to me that I develop
my abilities to envelope a wide range of drawing and painting skills.
Thankfully, I've worked on a variety of projects that never stop challenging me
artistically and creatively.” [4]
When asked what the difference is between concept art and
comic books, Manser said, “It is extremely rare that a concept art piece is
actually seen by the audience, whereas other forms of illustration display a
faithful reproduction of the art piece itself.” [5] Concept art is the
foundations for the project at hand whereas general illustration and comic
books act as the final piece themselves, a visual film in printed form.
The thing these artists have in
common is they all use modern software to produce their work but they don’t use
them exclusively. Pencil and paper is still a valuable tool in their box.
Manser says “solid art foundation makes for original digital art that is not
propped up by software alone.” [6]
To become a valuable concept artist you need to be able to
draw, and to draw well. It isn’t enough to just be able to visualise your
ideas, but in order to become a successful conceptual artist you need
extraordinary drawing skills.
Assassins Creed is a video game
developed by Ubisoft set in the real world during the 1500’s in Italy. This
game has many concept artists such as Raphael Lacoste, Gilles Beloeil and
Donglu Yu. Yu was born in China and she has made a career from concept art
working on nearly all of the Assassins Creed games. She uses tools such as
Photoshop, Painter and Alchemy. [7]
Her images are created digitally but she manages to give
them an old fashioned renaissance feel to them, which is fitting giving her
subject matter. She uses special brushed on the software to create these images,
which makes it look like they were painted by hand.
Concept art is a broad medium that
affects many of popular cultural forms of storytelling. It’s a very popular
artistic outlet, one that is rising and rising all the time with many new and
very talented artists looking for work in this medium. The artists who already
work in this industry have worked extremely hard to be where they are and
continue to do so. Without concept art all our films, video games and animation
that we love would be very different today.
2.
http://arttalk.ru/articles/content/interview-with-concept-artist-avatar-scott-patton-eng
-Interview conducted by Alexey Riddick Kashpersky
with answers by Scott Patton
published 2013
3.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2008/01/interview-with-ryan-church-part-2/
-Inter view by The Gnomon Workshop
answers by Ryan Church published 2004
4.
http://www.warrenmanser.com/www.warrenmanser.com/RESUME.html
Warren Manser’s own Biography 2014
5.
http://io9.com/5564275/whats-the-difference-between-being-a-concept-artist-and-drawing-comics
- Interview with various artists, segment
taken from Warren Manser’s answer
6.
http://io9.com/5567512/tips-from-professional-artists-on-the-5-things-you-need-in-your-digital-art-toolbox
- Interview with various artists, segment
taken from Warren Manser’s answer
7.
http://www.itsartmag.com/features/dongluyu/dongluyu-p2.php
interview by “It’s Art” answers by Donglu
Yu published 2009
