Frequently Asked Questions
About Concept Art
Just what is concept art?
And other excerpts from Creative Blog Staff
Original Words: Jason Pickthall
What exactly is concept art? Well that’s easy isn’t it? It’s super polished art used to promote forthcoming films and games. Right? Wrong!
The main goal of concept art is to convey a visual representation of a design, idea, and/or mood for use in films, video games, animation, or comic books before it is put into the final product. In other words, it aims to convey the overall design vision rather than specify everything in exact terms right at the start.
What is concept art for?
So why is concept art necessary? Well, just consider the vast amount of money involved in creating a modern movie, game, etc, and then think about the amount of money that can be lost if it all goes awry.
We live in an age where; visually speaking, just about anything is possible – which is fantastic. But where there are infinite possibilities there is also infinite opportunity for error. With hundreds, even thousands, of people work on the most successful franchises, everyone needs to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
Concept art is key to focusing that single artistic vision and to iron out any visual kinks that could be problematic down the line.
What does concept art involve?
Concept art can range from ethereal mood shots to more detailed schematics of a prop, or character for example. The purpose is to reduce margin for error, and therefore, reduce time and cost.
But crucially, it’s not just the art itself that’s important. Remember in math class you used to get hassled to show your workings? Well guess what? Concept art is those workings.
For every ‘art of book’ quality image you see there are tens, sometimes hundreds of images that have all played a part in that piece.
It could be a scratching that helped explain an idea to the art director or the design that was completely wrong. The point is, they are all part of the process, even the ugly ones. Concept art is an iterative process and hitting the bull’s eye first time is rare.
Concept art is not illustration
Concept art and illustration are not the same thing. The quality and techniques of the two are closer than ever and there is considerable overlap but they have one intrinsic difference. That difference is the word ‘concept’.
The purpose of the concept artist is to quickly explore ideas and communicate them effectively as possible. The role of the illustrator is to create highly polished artwork.
There is no value in having a finely finished piece of work that offers little new in terms of design, mood and feel. This would be a considerable waste of time and effort. It’s better to have a rougher, looser sketch that sparks interest and promotes discussion. Its artistic flaws will be quickly overlooked.
It’s key to remember that concept art is part of a bigger production process as opposed to being its own entity such as illustration for a book or editorial. Often, projects will hire separate illustrators to work up some of the concept art for promotional and marketing use.
Can I use your concept artwork for my own purposes?
The best answer would be that I hope, if you should find that you like what you have seen, that you will contact me and ask before doing so. Why? Simply put, I have exerted a lot of work both in time, swearing, searching, learning and effort into the concept art found here and own the rights to use most if not all of the artwork that you may have seen.
Sounds fair right? Well in reality, for the most part, people on the internet these days are prone to do what people on the internet do, however they want to do what they do wherever it is that they do it and there is little one can do to stop the more determined of those from abusing what others have done for their own benefit.
In the end, if you have actually asked yourself this particular question, please feel free to contact me and I can probably point you in the right direction.
