edited by: Zubaida Nazzal
Concept art is the art of transferring written descriptions from games/ movies directors or designers, author or anyone else to illustrations to be used by 3D artists, technical artists, character artists and many other of artists within the studio. Concept art is mostly used in games, movies, series and shows.
They are first artists to transfer writings into drawings, thus, the importance of their job. They mostly work in the background; their work is not very visible. On the other hand, illustrators, whose work is in the work interface, are more visible. Their work will be the cover art, the marketing and the final product.
Concept artists are usually famous and known among the hardcore fans, their work in presented and published in the “The Art of” books, in which the production stages of the game, movie or show are displayed.
What is required from concept artists?
There are ranks for Concept artists, the younger artists –mostly in the junior rank, are usually required to draw everything. Their range of knowledge should include drawing characters, backgrounds, creatures, props and everything in general. They are also required to adapt to different genres. Designing will mostly include designing a house, its exterior, interior and furniture, and even weapons, so it is really unlimited.
Creating creatures for example requires a solid reality mixed with imagination. Thus, we take the animals that we already have, and change them in accordance to the world we are creating.
In the industry, there are a lot of contrasts, there are very realistic worlds and some that are very stylized, they are very different worlds.
Then the urging question is what shall I specialize in?
And that is up to the artist and his preference. Artists who choose the realistic styles take a different path from those who choose the very stylized path, but of course there is the middle path. Same goes to artists who prefer the fantasy genre and those who prefer the historical accurate genre.
There is a very wide range of specializations and genres of course, and artists are not required to know all of them. However, it is more preferable to have a good beginner knowledge in the various specializations and genres, as it will be helpful in the concept artists journey towards the industry.
Is concept art limited to games and movies?
Of course not, concept art is unlimited, it is used for example in designing watches and cars, it is also used for engineering and fashion design, it is the basically designing. in Japan for example it is called designing art. In this article however, I only talked about the entertainment industry rather than the industrial industry.
Tesla, Porsche, Peugeot and Hyundai Concepts by Art Center Grad Edward Tseng
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