Learning Outcomes

1.  Demonstrate a critical understanding of business aspects of working as a concept artist including copyright issues pricing, and the rights of an artist.

Generally contracts are created by the employer for the concept artist to sign making the artist aware of their rights. This contract usually explains the work that is produced will be owned by the company, and the artist cannot show this work to anyone until a specific date. The concept artists work must be original in its entirety without breaking copyright laws. Pricing changes depending on the artist and the work that is being created. The price will be settled between the artist and employer before any work is created. 

2.  Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of concepts, information and techniques at the forefront of Concept Art. 

Cognitive & Intellectual Skills

3.  Synthesise complex concepts and professional practice into the production of original imagery.

4.  Demonstrate a critical understanding of the key issues relating to Concept Art practice.

Practical & Professional Skills

When considering concept art practise there are two stages; concept generation and execution.

concept generation: developing ideas for concept art has its own difficulties such as being suitable for the project at hand as well as having the potential to look good and be original. For the assassins creed brief I spent a long time debating what country to base my ideas on. I found his decision at the very start would shape the success of the entire project. I decided to choose 19th century Japan because the clothing and hand to hand combat elements lent itself towards the assassins creed franchise.

As a concept artist it can be easy to fall into predictable conventions for design such as a creating a woman in a tiny outfit with a giant sword. To become successful this initial conceptions stage must be considered in great detail. 

Execution: To execute an idea efficiently and effectively, the artist must first research relevant material and then create several quick sketches or paintings to try and solidify an idea, these are often small to stop the temptation of adding detail. Once a strong sketch is chosen it can be developed further into speed paintings or a finalised sketch. At this stage all the design problems should be solved such as composition, perspective or anatomy. When developing the final piece value, light and colour need resolving. A concept artist should find a streamlined process for creating pieces efficiently and reliably while giving the art director as many choices as possible throughout.

I created these designs in Alchemy. This allowed me to be very fast while getting the idea out onto the page.

5.  Demonstrate a professional and effective approach to the specialist area of 'Pitch Presentations'.

A theme should be created for each pitch to unify the work that is being shown. This theme should be simple to guarantee it does not draw to much attention. 

If text is placed in a presentation it should be concise, maybe one or two lines maximum. If more Context is required then the speaker should go into more detail while presenting.

All images should be in a suitable order that best describes the concept to the listener. 

In the context of the masters presentations they should demonstrate the entire process created by the student explaining clearly the steps taken towards the final piece.

6.  Analyse and interpret challenging client briefs and produce relevant and original work in response.

The assassins creed brief was challenging due to the requirement of creating pieces that could be associated with the assassins creed designs that already exist. focusing on 19th century Japan I created sketches to combine the key elements of assassins creed such as the hood and cape with Samurai attire.

Creating work for Atomhawk provided a challenge because the work generated had to resemble the same style as the concept art already in production. This is often a requirement from many studios, so this project was beneficial to see if I could adapt my own style to what the client wanted. 

7.  Demonstrate critical understanding of specialist techniques relevant to Concept Art.

8.  Explore and evaluate a range of visual responses to a brief.

Key Transferable Skills

Thumbnail sketches:

Thumbnail sketches are quick at creating several ideas. This stops the artist developing the first drawing because so much time was spent on it. It also gives the artist less chance of the client or art director disliking all of them. The images below were created using Alchemy. This is brilliant for quick development but tends to result in flat images which became a problem for this brief. 

Detailed sketches:

This is the next stage for a concept artist. This is where a chosen thumbnail is developed into a more understandable design. Variants can still be created for this process much like the assassins creed designs below. 

The final results can be speed paintings like the images below. These are created quickly which usually means there are several of them. 

Polished renderings can be created as a final outcome which will take an artist up to five days. 

This could develop into a final rendering if enough time was spent on it. Recently the art director at Atomhawk said if I neatened the bushes and apply more detail it would look more like a final illustration rather than a speed painting.  

9.  Reflect on practice and recognise and critically appraise strengths and weaknesses

The biggest fault during the atomhawk project was the lack of preliminary work. Designs were created in alchemy using the mirror tool which resulted in flat images. This is fine as a first step however the next process of creating detailed sketches was skipped where perspective could have been applied. This problem is evident in the rest of this project in particular. 

Due to having to create so much work for this unit I think I played some of the pieces quite safe. For example I didn't try any complex perspectives for the environments or dramatic poses for characters but I think I would have struggled to complete the project to a respectable standard if I did attempt these things. 

The final environments for Atomhawk are probably the strongest pieces I have created in a tight time frame. I believe I successfully created a Japanese samurai that could fall into an assassins creed game.