Nick's Concept Art Feedback Thread
Hi guys, new here but a long time lurker. I wanna start a thread to get some harsh feedback and pointers to help me on the road to becoming a concept artist. I've been persuing a vague "freelance illustrator" path for over a year but recently i decided to really buckle down and focus on a specific field: environment and prop concepts. I needs to get paid :P Plus even though i've only just dipped my toes in the water i really love it and its something i enjoy getting real deep into.
So here's what i have so far:
So here's what i have so far:
Replies
Your other pieces are nice, but if you are moving towards props/environment concept work, I'd focus more on those. The pieces you have above look more like an illustration/pre-vis shot for a film.
Virginia Critchfield had a post on this, here's what she said about env. concept portfolios for games:
1. Promo image in color- the selling image to get AD approval and team alignment. Solves for Design mechanics. 2. Various Views- game view angle, Level layout, Interior/ exterior. 3. Mood/ Weather shifts- Lighting, time of day, weather, mood variants. 4. Call outs- anything that needs to be described with more detail. Usually a "hero" asset, and population assets. 5. Texture Swatches- Material keys. 6. Iteration studies.
This spread should leave no questions on what the environment is, and what elements are needed to pull it off. (In a Holodeck, build an environment kit, culture kit, Modular kit, or whatever the game/genre calls for). A good environment can be expanded and extrapolated upon or scoped way down and still preserve Look/Feel.
Notes: Some gameplay mechanics will be in every property you work on. Its your job to solve it in new and interesting ways. Crates for example: if I get a spread of crates that are interesting and memorable but still cheap breakables that I have never seen before, then you're on my favorite persons list. Again, you don't need to render the hell out of everything, solve what you can with tight comps.
Hope that helps!
Right now i'm in the process of starting a portfolio project where i've made up a fictional game that i'm gonna do concepts for (wich is why i'm throwing in couple of characters to flesh things out a bit) and those 6 steps Virginia laid out seem a great way to go about doing enviro's.
Seems obvious now but it also makes me understand at what point prop designs come in. One thing im unclear on: "Solves for Design Mechanics" - not sure what that means... can you clue me in?
Here's one such image by Herman Ng from a recent expansion from the team I work on:
We did model some things from this, but it very much was a promo piece. It was an idea of a scene and a feeling for what this world would be like. It has areas for gameplay, how we will break up gameplay spaces and direct the player, as well as scale and color cues.
In other games, like a platformer such as Rayman Origins:
It provides answers to the same problems, but with different gameplay. What would be considered a walkable surface? How do we differentiate that from the background/foreground?
These questions are similar for other game types,
Cover based shooters might need you to come up with cover that integrates into the environment so it isn't a bunch of chest-high walls and crates.
Puzzle games might need you to see key pieces from various places in the scene so you can see progression of a puzzle you are solving. Not to mention the actual puzzle integrated into the world.
Platformers need clear direction and obstacles that look natural, not just placed there.
And so on and so forth. I guess I'm just saying you need to show how gameplay and design works in the world you are designing.
(that Herman Ng piece is beautyfull btw and is going straight on the inspiration board!)