Concept Art:
Nicole Jefferies
- What is concept art? – It’s an illustration where the main goal is a visual representation of a design, idea and mood, which is used in films, video games, animation and comic books. This is before it is used in the final product.
- Where did it originate? –The very first concept art was for Alice Comedies from Walt Disney in the early 1930’s, which is now known as Alice in Wonderland. This is how Walt Disney first started out by sending the unfinished work to a New York distributer. Same as Pixar, who teamed up with Disney Animation to start their own art of 2D designs, this lead to their first successful animation movie, Toy Story.
- What are the genres of concept art? – Concept art is not really a genre, more of an illustration. To be ‘realistic’ they think of concept art to be more 2D – 3D to make it more lifelike. These days, even Pokémon is classed as realistic. ‘Abstract’ would be the form, line and colour of designing a new world or place, Western Art was used more in abstract to make it more realistic. ‘Fantasy’ concept art is digital, print, drawn or model artwork which is created by the artist for the developer. ‘Science fiction’ and ‘Fantasy’ are more of the same, ‘science fiction’ uses digital, oil, watercolour and software’s to make the reality of a ‘fantasy’ world. ‘Traditional’ concept art would be sketch work, self-portraits, portfolio and many used in cartoon work. ‘Futuristic’ is more into its digital and sketch work, to make the final design look more realistic but impossible at the same time, but creating a believable world all the same. ‘Steampunk’ likes to use sketch and watercolour to make their designs more different and defiant, creating a highly different world. ‘Cyberpunk’ is used more in Comics, it’s a lot like ‘Steampunk’ and ‘Fantasy’ only it uses’s more of a darker colour. ‘Utopian’ is more graphic novels and animated movies, where ‘Fantasy’ is used a bit, creating an imaginary world and places, also morphing images together, such as a cat and a bus, (Which is known from the animated anime film by Studio Ghibli, Totoro). ‘Dystopian’ concept art is a mixture of genres, which introduced ‘Cyberpunk’ into the world, it uses a lot of other methods from the other genres too. ‘Urban’ is used in ‘Futuristic’ to create worlds, more like city’s, of the urban type to make a more realistic feel. ‘Textured’ concept art is more of 3D modelling, 3D environment art, texture paintings, lighting, animation and effects. ‘Illustrative’ goes into everything regarding the design, such as modelling, drawing, characters and story. ‘2D or 3D’ is used in all genres once again, 2D creates the basics for the design, that’s your sketching, colouring ect, 3D gives the design it’s realistic look, this involves the next step from 2D which is modelling, texture paintings, effects and the animation.
- Examples of stylistic approaches to Concept Art Sub Genres – Steampunk always have amazing designs! Even though they use low key colours, they use great lighting skills and 2D – 3D art to make it look and feel like a realistic fantasy clockwork world. Steampunk uses unusual and bizarre objects to make their approach seem more quirky but realistic. Mostly fantasy based which makes it more of a graphic novel type, giving it a feel of the unnatural becoming the natural. Cyberpunk is another great way to show. Many great novels are known as a graphic novel, such as Scott Pilgram and Batman, creating a great dark comic based story. Fantasy/Science Fiction is also used as the same concept of Cyberpunk and Steampunk.
Artist takes on the great effect of sketching and watercolours, taking on great designs of portfolios and characters, bringing them to life even with the simplest designs. Creating worlds that bring you right into that world, giving off great realistic effects.
Thumbnail Sketches – Is reduced sized images to help recognise and organise them to show that those images belong in the same group of subject.
Golden Section – Is where one long line is sectioned to a smaller line, this is used in art for vehicles, bodies, buildings ect.
Graphic Tablet – Is a device that is used attached to the computer, where you are able to draw images and graphic like you would normally with paper and pen, but onto the computer instead.
Digital Rendering – Is where you take an image into a computer and make it lifelike. Giving the image colour, light, texture, even make it 2D or 3D.
Matte Painting – This is more helpful to film makers, this is where a painting of a set, location or landscape is done to help them create through computer if it’s too expensive to build or visit.
John Wu did many concept art for the Ratchet and Clank games, the genre is Platform. What I like about it is that, like every concept art, it's not the original - So it's fun to see what they came up before hand, just shows how wacky they are! What I find disappointing sometimes is that their designs sometimes do not change, where they would just grab an image and just enhance it and claim it to be a new character altogether.
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Kazuyuki Hoshino is the artist of the Sonic Team, these designs are from Sonic Underground and Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2 & 3. What I love about these designs is that they never loose the classic look for a Sonic game, odd robots are more fun to look at than your usual average robot! What I don't like, not much, only that the artwork hardly returns to any Sonic game these day's.
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I do enjoy looking at Concept Art from the Prince of Persia. It has this dark and intriguing look to it, drawn with watercolours and computer programs makes a great combination! Kevin Guillemette makes a great Concept Artist for these games, he brings out the real darkness within the story with art, he also brings beauty into by how amazing these images are! This is what I like about this work. I don't have any complains with this work, only that there is not that much work shown to the world! It's even hard to unlock the artwork from the games themselves other than finding them on the computer.
I find the Concept Art for Alice: Madness Returns too. The artwork is done by a few employees at America McGee, as they joined together to create this work of gothic and dark surrounds, by getting the main information from the novel Alice in Wonderland. By making the whole of Wonderland the opposite to what it is. What I love is that they have completely changed the concept art to make the story from the novel more dark and horror like. What disappoints me is that there was not that much great work to show off, only a few pieces of work was passable to show off. 
John Wu did many concept art for the Ratchet and Clank games, the genre is Platform. What I like about it is that, like every concept art, it's not the original - So it's fun to see what they came up before hand, just shows how wacky they are! What I find disappointing sometimes is that their designs sometimes do not change, where they would just grab an image and just enhance it and claim it to be a new character altogether. 
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I do enjoy looking at Concept Art from the Prince of Persia. It has this dark and intriguing look to it, drawn with watercolours and computer programs makes a great combination! Kevin Guillemette makes a great Concept Artist for these games, he brings out the real darkness within the story with art, he also brings beauty into by how amazing these images are! This is what I like about this work. I don't have any complains with this work, only that there is not that much work shown to the world! It's even hard to unlock the artwork from the games themselves other than finding them on the computer. 
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I find the Concept Art for Alice: Madness Returns too. The artwork is done by a few employees at America McGee, as they joined together to create this work of gothic and dark surrounds, by getting the main information from the novel Alice in Wonderland. By making the whole of Wonderland the opposite to what it is. What I love is that they have completely changed the concept art to make the story from the novel more dark and horror like. What disappoints me is that there was not that much great work to show off, only a few pieces of work was passable to show off. 
