Creating Concept Art

BTEC: Level 3 Games Design
Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games
P2: Creating Concept Art for Computer Games

Concept art is a way of displaying visual ideas for games, films, animation, comic books etc. Concept art can include ideas for characters, weapons, backgrounds, vehicles and much more. The concept art in which is created for a project is used as a guideline for the entire projects itself, it gives the look and feel to the project. Others consider concept art as visual development for concept design. Usually, when it comes to designs of characters and weapons, they show different designs for the same character/weapon. For the characters, the concept art would contain different styles of clothes the character might be able to change into in the game, the specific stances it will do and the different facial expressions.

This concept art is from Final Fantasy XIII, it shows the different viewpoints of a character they have created and it shows what sort of weapon this character specifically uses. The different viewpoints show that the game artist has thought about this character thoroughly. Also you can see the development of this concept art. The top right images, show the original design of the front and back upper part of the body of the character and then underneath is the characters full body in which has a lot more detail to it, added colour and detail. The concept of the character from the side viewpoint has a lot more detail and tone on its body. They have also added in where the light hits the character and where the shadows are created.

This is concept art from ARK: Survival Evolved. This is the idea behind the snow biome that they have implemented into the game. What I particularly like about this concept art is the tonal colours of blue. Also this concept art has used light and shade effectively, they have implemented the shade of where the light hits the cliff that we can see and has created a shadow where the player is. What makes this snow biome really effective is the icicles that are hanging off the cliff and arches and the different shades of snow which are covering the surroundings.

This is concept art from Dark Souls. You can see that they have drawn smaller, line drawings of the weapons which have now been turned into completed drawings of the weapons. The line drawings show development and their first idea of what they wanted the weapon to look like. What is interesting about these weapons is that the game artist has included a lot of texture on them, particularly the first weapon on the left, it contains quite a lot of texture on the handle and on the body of the sword. On the other hand, the sword in the middle does not contain as much texture as the others however, its colour of blue is toned down and it look effective because it blends in with the darker colours on the body of the sword.