Unit 69: Exploring concept art for computer games
What is concept art?
Concept art is a form of illustration used to convey an idea for use in video games and animation before it is put into the final production. Concept art can also be referred to as visual development or concept design.

Uses of concept art in games development
There are many different types of levels in the production process: • Initial concept art initial concept art can be started from verbally or visually the artist will sometimes receive a rough concept design and told to refine and develop the concept further. A concept artist is an individual who generates a visual design for an item, characters, or area for game levels i am going to focus on thumbnails but there are more like storyboards and quick illustrations
Thumbnails
With thumbnails you start by thinking about a character that you would like to produce. like what weapon, body shape and poses that you would like your charter to have. Once that has been decided you can start with some ruff sketches. Image 1
This part of the process is the main creative part as you have what you charter will look like. These images do not have to be clean just a loose guide to show you what they will eventually look like. Chances are that you will probably only like about 2 out off maybe 10 that you make. but you try to illustrate with black lines what direction that the body will take shape. Image 2
You can use pretty much any element of character design to help in making the shape more interesting, whether it’s the pose, weight of the character, clothing, weapons, armour or hair you can use them to your advantage.Image 3 Once that is finished; you take a look through your designs and see what ones you like more than others. These ones you will take too the next stage, refining your sketches. Image 4
This stage is not necessarily about excessive detailing but is all about defining and tweaking the shape, adding a little value or sketching over your thumbs in order to bring out the design of the character a little more.
Some key:
- shape / silhouette / negative space
- How does the pose look / is the anatomy believable?
- Style: believable vs stylised proportions
- Bring out the design of elements such as clothing, hair, weapons. Figure out who the character is and what the purpose of their design is.
Varying your character design is next it allows you to experiment with your chosen design and gives you the opportunity to enhance elements of the character that you like and replace those that don't work as well with a better alternative. Image 5
One of the best ways to make your character pop is to think about the values. In my own experience. When it’s time to start detailing things you would push values from black through to grey and right up to bright white highlights. Pushing your values instantly helps with making the design readable and more believable. Image 6
For the bulk of detail work with a small brush, zoom in and just start working up the final details. You don’t have to go crazy about it and refine every single detail, but just enough to give all of the main elements enough form so that you can make sense of the overall design.
Your character can be highly detailed or slightly more suggestive and either method can look great. focus on the areas and elements you think need the most care and attention. Image 7 • promotional art promotional art is used as a head liner in shop windows like posters.Image 8 there can also be trailers of the game and through social media/side banner adverts on webpages. These are just a few ways in with the company goes about promoting themselves for the release of the game. This builds up hype for the games before they are released • Making of Art book Production/s
The making of art books for games are just the ideas and sketches that they use to come up with the game. t
They may not be the finished designs but they put across the main idea of where the game would take place.Image 9 what type off game it might be. Image 10 who might be involved within this game. Image 11 • Merchandise

There are many types of merchandise that you can chose from. Ranging from soft cuddly toys.Image 12 Too replica swords.Image 13 Merchandise is sold in a lot of shops to help promote the game further after the games has been released.

Pre-Production Art
Once a project gets the initial green light and enters pre-production the role of the Concept Designer becomes extremely important in developing the artistic direction. Working closely with both designers and Art/Creative Directors to take that initial pitch idea and develop it into an achievable product. This is the time to push new technology, experiment new styles or approaches, test or implement new pipelines and basically lock down the development schedule, pipeline and process for the entire production period. After this stage its best to have these types of things set in stone for project stability and to ensure milestones are hit.
Production Artwork
Production phase is when a project is signed, milestones and deliverables are set and the length of the project is usually planned out. This is generally the stage where most people are brought onto a team, which unless you're a Visual Development artist or Art Director type will include most concept artists too.
By this point the style is usually set, style guides will be developed already by the Art Directors and in the case of video games, the design is usually also being narrowed down too.
Depending on the skill-set of the individual some of your roles during production may include; character and creature design, environment and structure design, prop and weapon design, vehicle or robot design and effects and ui design. Most of these tasks are broken down with specific briefs by the art director or design requirements for game-play (in the case of video games.)
Working freelance tends to result in more written description then in-house briefs tend to include as there are always the obvious hardships of working remotely as a freelancer. Having said that this can also have drawbacks if the briefs are too thin, resulting in more revision. Its best to ensure you have enough info before starting a design.
Post Production Responsibilities
Not many people realise but some concept artist responsibilities go further then just creating character, environment or prop designs. Once the Production starts to ramp down many concept artists fill double or multiple roles in various fields including; storyboards, texture painting, matte painting, environment dome asset creation, modelling, user interface design and implementation, particle and effect design and implementation and even lighting. While not all concept artists have the freedom to specialise in only concept creation there are a lots of roles which the concept artist skill-set can effectively fill in. For those people trying to get into this line of work it is a good thing to be willing to also fill one of these additional roles.