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.

1.     http://www.gustaftenggren.com/tenggren/default.asp?inc=disneyperiod

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