My drawings and art study

Art Studies

What is Concept Art?

To become a concept artist you need know not only the basics, but you need to go to life drawing classes so you can understand the underline form or a human being. You need to know about human anatomy, for example you can not create a beautiful piece of work where a character has a huge set of arms which hit ground especially if they are a human. Then again even if it did have long arms and a shorty torso and stumpy legs and head, the character would still use the human anatomy like clavicles etc.

As you can see with piece of concept art, the orc still uses a human anatomy source with the traps leading up to the back of the neck, so even though it is not a human the basic idea from the beginning would of been a human skeleton just formed to a different shape. 












Some concept artists have other back grounds which includes coming from a illustration background, you can come from an illustration background from children books as it can give you a different look because you have done stylized work before, or even comic book drawings which are cell-shaded with that deep black outline of characters etc. 

As you can see concept art can come from other backgrounds not just one area of studying and then going into it from education. So all concept artists will have there own unique style as many have come from different areas of art, some come from traditional drawing with pencil and paper, or from drawing story boards from films or comics. The visual library is something that all concept artists will know about. As a student, watching experienced concept artists such as Feng Zhu, it is clear they draw from instinct. This instinct is developed through a broad understanding of life and a large visual library built up over years of reading, visiting museums, watching documentaries and experiencing  different cultures.These sights and sounds are held in the visual library and used when needed. This visual library will grow from an early age, playing with toys and games as a child will help with original and "cool" designs as an adult.For example, an artist who creates a beautiful piece of art such as a huge alien based tower which can have loads of different details like spirals and spikes on, for example Feng Zhu mentions that when he visited the Eiffel tower, you can actually see the size of the iron and metal which holds it up, so it gives you a sense of how strong and tough the metal needs to be to hold up that huge structure, you can also actually see how far you as you look down so that can give you an idea about how far up you actually are. This gives you the sense of how tall a large building should be especially when you stand next to it and look up. so all of these ideas can help create a piece of art.

Concept art has a history which has been around from the early 1930’s which Disney animation used to create characters and scenarios. This is a pre-production design role which is needed to create the game ideas in artwork form. Concept art is used for ideas and images of how a game will look; it is used for characters, item or area. So the main objective for concept artists is to create a visual still image of a scenario. They are used to design items such as guns, for example the Gears of War franchise used an artist to spread around a logo which was designed by their lead designer and then the concept artist would create this in a couple of different ideas of how it could look. These artists aren't just used to draw and create images they help on the design team until the project reaches the end for the drawing a creative side, concept artists must be able to work deadlines in capacity of a graphic designer. Concept artists don’t always just use paper and pencil to start off, more advanced ideas have been used with using software like Photoshop and Corral Painter; this is easily available for artists. They would also use a graphics tablet to draw an image on Photoshop for example.

Other techniques like oil paints, acrylic paints, markers have been used, but now modern paint packages have been programmed to simulate the use of blending the colours.

Concept art has changed through themes. They have been used to create the look of how science fiction and fantasy stuff could look like, but overall concept art has had many subjects in which is the involvement in films and games, but recently it has been a big thing for video games development, this is because it’s a different way to portrait how something would look. The different range in concept art has different views, especially from photo realistic to the traditional styles of painting. With the use of new software it has changed because artists can edit images pixel by pixel and this has given them the choice to use natural paint on a computer to imitate real paint. Concept artists have to create a lot of work in the early stages of work to show different interpretations, which are done in sketches, speed paints and 3d over paints but later when concept art is created they would use matte paint which is then used to give a realistic view which would be required.

But what concept art is actually used for is to create a view of an image, this is then done in a few different styles and looks, they would design the scenes that are in the game like walls and the floor of a building for example, they would create a few different looks of it and then the 3D modeler would create it in 3D. They also have to create an item which needs to have a specific look, which the game designer would show him what he wanted it to look like.

Their job includes to get the majority of their work to 100% because they give the main look to a game, they might create their own textures so that the world has its unique look and feel, especially since it has been hand drawn.

When creating concept art, it is good to have reference images to help you expand your brain because they need to be able to create a whole environment, so the role of a concept artist is hard and time consuming but without them games might look a bit different.

Composition

The first step is composition, all pieces of art have composition within them. One thing that you have to do is to make sure that you had made you drawing or photo interesting. It doesn't need bright fancy colours or heavy intense detail, you can make it interesting by just making sure that the image has rules. The rules are as follows.

The Golden ratio, and this is a spiral which goes round the image and a lot of pieces of art use this. They use it because you're going to follow the the outline on a picture even though it is not there.

You can see in this picture of the flower where your eye line will follow whether it be from the center to the outside or from the outside of the flower to the center.







Another way of choosing a good use of composition is the rule of third, and this is used just as much as a lot of photos have this especially in maybe environment or landscape photos or drawings.

This is rule of third. The rule of third is this small grid which covers a image and the main points are where they cross in the middle. 

The 4 points are useful in drawings as shown in this image of the wasp. The two main points on the right where the wasp is, is where you pay attention.

In a lot of images it will have a horizon line and this can sit at the bottom or even in between.

You can see the horizon line in this photo, which is the edge of the ground and sea just behind it. The photo has been taken there for a reason not by accident.

This beach photo is to explain another rule which is called the Diagonal rule, you can see in this photo that you are supposed to follow the beach line where the sea and beach meet.

This image shows you where your eye will automatically follow, you will start from the bottom left and follow it all the way to the top right. 

This is S-Line and the purpose is to have you follow the road line which takes you to the end on the photo, you can also see the horizon line in the background of this image. This shows the the rule of third  has been also used in this photo as it is above the top line on the rule of third grid.

The triangle rule is where if an image has a lot of stuff in it they will all be close together and you will glide across each other the interesting points. The points in this image is the car on the left and then the house in the middle and then the car on the right and back to the previous car on the left. 

This is the rule known as the frame, and this type of art or photography is to make you look straight through the dark space into the light like if you was in a dark tunnel. in this image you are looking through the woods towards the buildings in the background. 

Understand Perspective

Perspective is something that is used in art, photography and among many things. Perspective is used because it can create an illusion of depth which gives 2D images a sense of realism.

These three images are what perspective is. 1, 2, and 3 are the 3 main types of perspective views that people will use in the images that they draw.

1 point perspective is the top image, it is 1 point perspective because the point which you follow is the end of the road which your eye will follow.

The second image is 2 point, this is 2 point because the angles go off in 2 different directions unlike the first image which only goes on in 1 direction.

The third image is a 3 point perspective, this is image is 3 point because its goes off into 3 different directions, to the sides and to the bottom of the buildings.

Tonal value and light and shadows

Light and shadows are created by light and darkness, when an object has light aimed on it it will create darkness on the opposite side. You can then see the light and dark as the sketches show, and tone allows you to see certain textures within an object.

This is tone, tone is something that is created by an object and a light, for example if you take a brick and cast light on to it, it will create a shadow. like so in my sketch of a triangle which has had a light source aimed at it from one side and then that created the shadow.

The definition of tone is where a degree of lightness and darkness are, tone can varies from bright white to the shades of grey and then to the deepest dark black shadows. the tone can depend on how the light touches the surface of the object and what the objects texture, colour and background is.


This demonstrates a spectrum of tone, this shows us how it goes from light to dark.







This image shows us that there are up to 4 different tone values. When you squint you can pick out the 4 different tones, I have leveled off the 4 different areas with colour so that it is easier to notice the change in tonal value.

You can see the colour tone in this game play shot of Skyrim, the colour theme is very neutral with browns and greens, but they have been darkened. The black and white version of the image shows us what is closer and what is further away, you can see that far in the distance is blurred trees which is normal as it is seen like this in the real world, grey is further away and and black is close, you can see all of the different types of grey and black at the side which show us that there is a huge amount of tone in the different shades are darkness.

Colour Theory

This is colour theory, This colour wheel shows us the primary colours which are red, blue and yellow, it also shows us what colours they make when mixed together, for example red and yellow can make a bright orange or a darker tone of yellow. Complimentary colours are where two colours work together, the red and the green are both complimentary colours this means that they both work well together.

This triangle shows us in another style how you can make certain colours like green which is from blue and yellow.

Colour theory is something that comes into play especially when creating pieces of art work. One point which comes into play is tertiary colours, tertiary is where if you add black and white to any of the colours on the colour wheel, you would get brown.

Here are two different games which would of used two different colour pallets. 

Silent hill

Spyro

These two games are known well through out the games world, the first game I have chosen is Silent Hill, and the colours for this game are dark and tertiary colours, so there is a lot of browns and other dark tones, and the lighting and shadows create a even more dark atmosphere, then you have Spyro, it is a very bright open world with vibrant colours like purple, greens, blues etc. they create an atmosphere of friendly and happy which is quite the opposite of Silent hill.

Art Work and Drawings

These are some of the drawings that i have done from a previous year. These were the bests ones from when i first started doing life drawing.

These drawings are from my first FDA year, as you can see my art has greatly improved from the previous course i have done, we have used all different types of media, from chalk, pastel, paint and pencil.