HA2 Task 1 - The Purpose of Concept Art

HA4 Task 1 - The Purpose of Concept Art

What is Concept Art?

Concept Art is a form of Illustration that is used in the creation of most forms of media production such as movies (in their CGI departments), Graphic Novels, Comics and in the case I will be exploring, Video games. The people who work in the industry use concept art in a multitude of different ways to plan out what assets and characters will be in their game and what will not make it in. This is done in a three part process which eliminates all of the bad ideas and all good ideas are then polished and released to the public. The three stages are the exploration stage, the approval stage and the promotional stage.

Exploration

The exploration stage is where ideas and sketches are explored to separate the wheat from the chaff and find the best idea out of a multitude of options. Ideas are usually put forth from sketches which the devs can use to easily express their ideas to other people without having to put too much effort or detail into their design so that if it is a poor design or loses out to a superior design then it can be scrapped without hours of work going to waste. Once the devs have an idea of what they want a large group of artists make multiple designs of a similar character and (through a process of elimination) the design the devs want for their asset is discovered.  The assets include NPC's, pieces of apparel, environmental characteristics, building's or vehicle's.

Concept Art for the creation of the Dragons in Skyrim

Concept Art for the creation of  the Super Mutants from Fallout 3

Approval

The approval stage is where a piece of art is chosen by the developers, creators or publishers out of the large selection of options and is considered the perfect design for that particular asset. Once the final idea was decided more detail, colour and shading is then put into the design to make the asset appear as though they would be taken straight out of the game. If the idea is considered to be good then the idea is modeled to see how it would look in the actual game.

Concept Art for a biome in Uncharted 4

Concept Art for a building in Fallout New Vegas

Concept Art for am NCR Ranger in Fallout New Vegas

Promotion

The promotional stage happens near the end of a games creation cycle once all designs have been finalized and most of the game itself has been built. The stand out assets of the game are then presented to the general public to generate hype for the games release The assets then become not only a staple for the game but will help the game sell as depend on what the asset does it could interest a large amount of people to play the game. 

Promotional Concept Art for a Dungeon Loading Screen in  Guild Wars 2

Promotional Concept Art for The Last of US Environments

Bibliography

(In order of appearance)

http://kotaku.com/the-life-and-creativity-of-a-great-bethesda-artist-1740993491 

http://magazine.artstation.com/2016/05/uncharted-4-art-blast/

http://img.neoseeker.com/v_concept_art.php?caid=24963

http://img.neoseeker.com/v_concept_art.php?caid=24959

http://pcwallart.com/guild-wars-logo-wallpaper-1.html

http://bigbadworldofconceptart.com/original/