Think about the last movie you watched or the last game you played. Chances are you’re thinking about a polished, well-made masterpiece that all your friends and peers are buzzing about. However, most don’t realize that the entire finished product actually stemmed from pieces of concept art.
Take, for example, Avatar: The Last Airbender.
It is undeniably one of the most popular animated series of all time. It is highly praised for its storytelling, worldbuilding, and immersive viewing experience, and it all came from a single sketch.
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So what is Concept Art?
Let’s clear up a common misconception; Concept art and illustration are different!
Illustrations are made to communicate a certain narrative or story, while concept art is made to convey an idea. Concept arts are made by concept artists.
A concept artist is a designer who visualizes & creates art for characters, creatures, vehicles, environments, and other creative assets. Concept art is used to visualize ideas so that modelers, animators, and VFX teams can make these ideas ready for production.
The artist must bring these ideas to life through their artwork.
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What types of Concept Art are there?
There are 5 types:
Environment Design
Environment Concept Art primarily focuses on structuring and designing landscapes. It is used for setting and defining the place of the action and estimating the time of the action sequence.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/PmaANB
Character Design
Character concept art emphasizes the overall creation of convincing characters for the project. The artist needs to know about basic anatomy and understand how the characters would move.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/RByzD
Weapon Design
Weapon Design focuses on the creation of weaponry that is meant to be used by the characters in the sequence and the other beings in the plot who are supposed to populate the world that the project will be depicting for its audience.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4RQ0q
Vehicle Design
Similar to designing weapons and assets, Vehicle Design focuses on creating layouts for vehicles as a vital part of producing industrial designs.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/31dx2
Prop Design
Prop Design focuses on designing any object while being able to set a specific mood to a sequence of events.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v8AaY
As you can see, Concept art branches out into a range of different categories. All looking to convey an idea for the team working on the project.
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So What Now?
In our upcoming 3 part series on Concept Art, We will be focusing on Weapon, Character and Environment Design! (In that Order).
Stay tuned for later today, when we post our Weapon Design Tutorial! Follow @amphibistudio and @projectj2k for updates.
