Pre-Production-Concept-Art

My Opinion About Concept art
Today i started this new project with learning and creating a presentation about Concept art. I did some research and came up with a few reasons why Concept art is important in the gaming industry and from my research i have come up with my conclusion  that Concept artists should be more credited in the gaming industry as their work are as vital as the other teams. I strongly believe this because without Concept art and Concept artists every single company working with different teams would have absolutely no idea what is going on and what the directors vision for the game is. Concept art allows the teams designing the game to tell a story and to be on the same page, this means that without the concept side of the game everyone in the team would have many different stories and visions for the game leading to many different ideas for a game wasting time and money which would lead to a catastrophe of a game. Many games today  still go through this today  making it so that the many of the games that developers and other teams work hard for end up not being released to the public because they are either not completed because the company has no budget left or the game did not meet the deadline making all their hard work to get cancelled. Some of these games are Transformers Universe and World OF Darkness.

Concept artists should have more blue sky over games as their job are as important as the game designers and the directors, without concept artists there would be no story to tell and games would have weak plot twist and weak stories making them very unsuccessful. 



SOURCE 1
               
Who is my favourite Concept artist?
Kode A also know as Bosslogic is a concept artist from Australia, his concepts are inspired from different medias but mostly movies and he uses Photoshop to create all his concepts.
What is he known for?
Kode is know for using all ranges of colours to make his dominant forms and subdominant forms stand out in the process of making his dominant for he uses his own style to make the atmosphere match the character and the story he is trying to tell. Mr Bosslogic  creates some of the most best visual pleasing  character concept portraits that i have ever, and his concept always tend to have some sort of miscellaneous objects in the environment to make visual language, he's focal point is usually in the middle of the page where he's characters are.
Meaning behind his concepts?
The meaning behind Kode's art is to tell a story for example in the art above Kode might be trying to say that  the character known as Spider-Man is going rogue and has either fought a great strong enemy or he turned his back on his friends, these are all ideas gathered by the miscellaneous shield and armour left on the ground. His glowing eyes seem to be the focal point as they are bright vivid colours used by Kode to make us see the anger or remorse in his eyes. The dull colours used in this concept imply that something bad really went down as the atmosphere is very dark and mysterious.
What other people think about Kode's Source 1 Concept?
The first thing that they noticed from this particular concept was how angry or sad Spider-Man looks suggesting that Kode does really want to show and visualise some sort of emotion that we the audience do not understand making the concept mysterious indeed.

My peers have also suggested that Spider-Man is the focal point as he looks very mysterious due to the dark background and the shield on the ground. The spider legs and sharp blades on the legs suggest that he is in some sort of defensive mode and is ready to attack. They also said that the unusual eye shape made them feel like he is dark and that's the first thing they noticed and the shield on the ground. The shield makes them think about a fallen ally or a lost battle.

Does this Concept match the rule of thirds grid?
All the four cross hairs are on Spider-man suggesting that he is the main focal point for this concept especially his big sharp eyes. The action must be taking place outside the cross hairs as the shield and the armour are both on the ground around Spidey. The biggest thing in the image is Spidey connoting that he is the most important thing an the artist wants us to look in the middle.The blades on his hand and the fallen shield implies that he is dangerous or ready to attack.

Sketches
In todays session I have learnt about how to use of the rule of third successfully, and from what i have learnt i decided to draw three sketches of random environments. I have understood that when using the rule of thirds grid you need to make sure that the action is talking place mostly on the right hand side or on the cross hairs where the vertical and horizontal lines meet. I have also learnt about how monochromatic colour these are shades of the same colours lightest to darkest which are paired with the rule of thirds to make the viewer look where the artists wants you to look. 

In this sketch i have made sure that the plant on the right hand side is on the cross hairs to indicate danger as it has fallen down out of his pot making it dangerous to the surrounding animals in the environment.

In this sketch the trees are getting deforested and ready for home use and the what i wanted to make the focal point was the axe and i made sure that the axe is on the left bottom cross hair sitting on the left over wood from a tree.

In this sketch i made it based on a populated city where there are a lot of tall buildings and what i did was put a man on the edge of the roof of the right hand side building making him the focal point for this sketch.

In sketch i wanted to add an alien spaceship on the right hand side to implement the idea of danger and mystery.

SOURCE 2

I have then learnt about the Golden Spiral which was found by the great mathematician Fibonacci and what the spiral is used for is to drive the viewer to the most important part of a piece this is found  where the spiral is the tightest meaning that what ever is in the tightest part of the spiral it is the most important and that's where the artist wants you to look. In source 2  i believe that the character in black and white known as Mr Negative in the upcoming Spider-Man Ps4 is the focal point as the artist used monochrome colours on him. Additionally he is also the dominant form and Spider-Man is the sub dominant form.

Another example of how the artist used the focal point is Spider-Man's hand and what the artist did was use the black symbiote as leading lines to Spider-Man and what I did was use the golden spiral and it lead me to his hand suggesting that his hand is the focal point another way the artist has made this obvious is by making his hand a lighter red so that it stands out.

The focal point for this concept art is the bridge or the middle as both characters from this art are looking at the bridge and the golden spiral is the tightest under the bridge.This Concept has many things going on from the destroyed cars to the light on the top left suggesting that the focal point could be any where, however the vertical and horizontal lines clearly lead to the bridge.

In this specific concept for the game Call of Duty Infinte Warefare  the artist used contrast again to make the planet the focal point suggesting that the planet is the most important thing in this piece. One way you can tell this is by looking at how bright the star is making it stand out from the rest of the colours, this is a great example of using contrast to manipulate the viewer into looking at the planet, another way to tell that the planet is the focal point is by looking at the direction of the large spaceships and by using them as leading lines. Another way  you can  see the focal point is the bright star is by using the rule of thirds and the golden spiral and what this shows is that the star is on the right hand side of the rule of thirds grid and the spiral is very tight on the star suggesting that the planet is indeed the action of this concept art and the focal point. Also the perspective from this piece is leading to the planet as you can see from the large spaceship close to the focal point and the planet is the biggest suggesting that the visual weight implies that the planet is also the dominant form and the ships are the subdominant forms.

 This is a sketch of a cactus in the shape of a golden spiral.

This is a river in the shape of a golden spiral surrounded by forest.

This is meant to be  a sketch of a tree from a forest in the shape of the golden spiral.
All these three sketches are some meant to give me and idea of how i could potentially use the golden spiral technique to create some real life environments.

I have learnt about how artists use visual weight to make their art feel more interesting and visually pleasing and one way they do this is by making the objects in their art bigger in smaller and from this example taken from the game Spider-Man Web of Shadows the red highlighted object is the dominant form meaning that, that will be where someone will look at first when looking at this concept for the first part the next thing people will usually look at is sub dominant forms and artist can have more than one but in this specific example the sub dominant form is Spider-Man as he is the smallest thing in this concept art and he is highlighted in mustard yellow to show this.

In this example Spider-Man is again the sub dominant form as he is the smallest object in this concept art and the massive robotic scorpion is the dominant form as he is the biggest thing in this concept, to show this I colour coded Spider-Man as being yellow for sub dominant and red for being dominant.

I then decided to make my own Concept of an environment using the rule of thirds and golden spiral. What i first did was think about the composition and the colours i am going to use so i started with a light sketch of where i am going to add what. i then decided to think about my visual weight and golden spiral as well as rule of thirds so i make the meteorites to follow the golden spiral and crash into the dark tower. For visual weight what i did was i used the technique of adding different size objects and i made the tower my dominant form by making it the biggest object in this scene. I have then made sure that the meteorites are the same size in order for them to be my sub dominant form and made sure that the one of the meteorites is hitting the tower where the cross hairs meet are to give my piece some action and mystery of why the tower is being attacked. I decided that the tower would be my dominant form so i started adding leading lines. In the finished concept i would of had people on top of a rooftop looking at the tower being destroyed and i would use them as leading lines. I wanted to make the story for this very mysterious so  made the sky look animated to make the viewer confused.

One Infinity point.

Today we had a look at perspective and how to use one single infinity point. You first start with drawing your horizon this is done by drawing a horizontal line anywhere on your paper. Then you add an infinity point or also know as vanishing point. Then after you've done that  you start adding your true shapes these are squares or rectangles that face you and never change shape and you draw orthogonal lines towards the vanishing point from every single corner of your true shape this will give your image depth and the illusion of the 2d paper being 3d.

I have given this piece depth by using scale and one infinity point this has allowed me to make a head first perspective of someone looking forward and as you get closer to the horizon objects will start to get bigger and bigger, however if you move away from the horizon the objects will get smaller.

Two infinity points.

For two infinity points  you add your horizontal line like normal but instead of one vanishing point you have two and make sure that the orthogonal lines face one infinity point and not two and also make sure that the true shape is at an angle this will give It the illusion that your facing the building from an angle and the further the horizontal lines the further away you are. For two infinity points there are no true shapes as the perspective is from an angle.

Three infinity points.

I have made an mind map with all the ideas about potential environments i will pick to create i will pick one idea form the mind map below and expand the idea further by creating ten silhouettes and sketch over in order to pick the best environment that i will like to make.

Props and ideas for the final digital painting.

Brief

The brief for this project was to create a fully finished 2D environment using digital painting in Photoshop, this environment could have been anything we wanted as long as it had a strong idea / concept behind it.

Why digital painting?

For my final digital painting I feel neutral about my final outcome in the sense of it being quite close to my original idea. The reason I think this is because I did not manage to fully finish the digital painting this is because I kept changing the original idea of the final piece which lead me to loosing too much time. I also feel like I didn’t prepare for it as much as I should of because I spent too much time on creating outlines for every single silhouette that it made me lose precious time that I could of spent on finishing my final piece. However the final piece is not that inadequate as it is very close to my original idea and concept of what I wanted it to look like. The benefits of doing my final piece digitally was that doing it digitally saved me huge amount of time, this is because doing things digitally means that mistake such as a wrong lines or inaccurate shapes could easily be corrected with the right tools and the Software Photoshop has multiple tools to prevent that or fix that issue from happening, for example the history tool is designed to save all the steps you make into the computers ram and the more ram you have the more steps you can save, this means that if you’re not sure of where you went wrong you could literally go back step by step until you reach the beginning. Additionally Photoshop offers an unlimited range of colours which saves not just money but it allows you to make anything you can possibly think of with ease. 

Instead of digital painting

If I didn’t use digital painting for my final piece I personally would have used pencil and biro as it would have made my final piece look really good adding the style of one of my favourite artists Miles Donovan and some mixed media. However, I feel like the final piece would not reflect my idea the right way as it would have looked flat with just pencil and biro and no other colours.

The Original Idea

In my original idea I wanted to create a futuristic scene where technology has destroyed our beloved planet earth and where robot use time travel to hunt down over powered politicians. This army of robots is led by a powerful rebel woman from the 31^st century. I originally wanted to use bright colours of yellow and blue but then changed my mind and wanted to use a monochrome of the colour blue and purple to create a dark mysterious atmosphere to match my idea. This idea was inspired by the retro 80's style of chrome which made me think about using that and applying it to my futuristic city concept.

Different Techniques used

While creating sketch overs and silhouette for this final piece I have had to think about my composition very carefully and what techniques I am going to use to make my idea stand out. I ended up drawing a horizon and adding just one infinity point this meant that my orthogonal lines and true shapes had to be the right proportion in the right composition so I used the internet to help me get ideas of different building designs and different characters I could use in this final piece, I ended up choosing a futuristic automobile and a robot. I then decided to use the rule of thirds to choose a place for where I am going to make a portal where supposedly and army of robots would come out from, I ended up choosing the middle and I made sure that the portal is on the cross hairs to match the rules of using the rule of thirds meaning that the portal is my focal point and action.

I wanted the viewer to look at the portal first so I used the road as leading lines, I further decided to use the dominant buildings and also use them as leading lines. For lighting I decided to use purple to create a dark apocalyptic and hopeless atmosphere so I made sure to add purple shadows everywhere. I made the buildings the dominant forms and the woman and the robot the sub dominant forms because I wanted the person looking at the final piece to look around at the distress the subdominant forms have created and also the dark and dull atmosphere.

last edit: 24/11/2017 :15:20