MA Concept Art Practice 2015

Learning Outcomes Concept Art Practice

1 – Critical Understanding

Producing artwork for a client has always been fraught with problems, and even today the issues encountered can still cause problems for a freelance concept Artist. There are a number of things in place now that do make the process that make things a little easier, but on the whole it is still a bit of a nightmare to negotiate.

Copyright issues are most definitely central to a lot of problem’s encountered by Concept Artists, this is made slightly easier by the use of NDAS,(none disclosure agreements) but again these aren’t set in stone. I have been asked to produce work under NDA, and while it is great to be producing work for a professional company, quite often the artist hands are tied when it comes to what can and can’t be shown once the artwork has been produced. A good example of this was some licenced work for a large automotive company, the work was produced submitted and approved, but the actual ability of the work to be shown by the artist was that tightly controlled, the artwork has not been added to my portfolio.

Another area that is also problematic is that of payment, how much is a piece of artwork worth, and how to realistically price your work, so you don’t loose out on the commission. There are a number of ways of pricing for work is it a one of price for the artwork, or indeed an hourly rate, but again this needs to be clearly identified at the start of the brief. It is no use turning up and insisting I have spent hundreds of hours working on an a image, when the client has a tight budget that needs to be adhered to.Also when starting out in the business being relatively unknown, it is better to slightly lose out on the money bin order to gain the experience, a novice artist that charges top dollar for artwork from day one will generally no make an instant fortune, but similarly you have to assess the actual value of a piece of work and this can include more than the monetary reward.

Artists do have a character by which they are protected, the Visuals artists’ right was put together in to try and help protect the artist when it came to producing work for clients. While this is a useful thing to know exists, its use is limited if someone genuinely decides they aren’t going to pay you.

2 – Concept and Technique

I have used a number of different techniques to create the artwork for my hand ins, these have been suggested by a number of the visiting lecturers. One of the key things I have started to do is my own Photoshoots to help with my character work. This was suggested by Jack Couvela, and while I haven’t used photos quite as much as some of the work he showed at his talk, it has had an impact on how I put image’s together. 

The only real danger here is making sure that the images don’t become photo collage and start to have the reverse effect on the quality of the artwork. This also limits how you would approach a more intuitive brief, for example Shelley Pages brief, though she talked about realism; she actually meant believability which is a completely different issue.

I have also tried a number of techniques to develop characters in different ways, focusing on silhouette for example with Alfie Bloom, it was fundamentally important when creating Alfie that he  was recognisable when he was tiny on the screen but also even if you only saw his feet or his hair! 

 

This was done by making sure his silhouette was different enough visually to identify him. This was done regularly when designing key Disney characters, and has massive validity in how we create interesting, and engaging characters for game and animation.

3 – 0riginal Imagery

By breaking down the set task into a number of key parts, this really helped to develop my production pipeline, this is different to the work I normally produce as I have previously produced artwork for characters that are a lot more unfinished in their approach, this was in away so that the final sculpt didn’t become to overworked or to  boring for the 3d artist, by tying everything down in the design while this is good in one way, it does stifle the look of the final character, if you are to prescriptive early on. The artist making the characters needs to have their input as well; they aren’t just robots producing work on an assembly line.

So I would produce really rough drawings just to get a rough shape out onto paper, once this had been achieved I would then do a lot of research into the clothing to make sure I could get the costume to look as convincing as possible.

For me this is probably one of the most important parts of character design, making sure the character lives and breathes, anything that distracts from this really does break the immersion.

For me once the research has been done and the final piece is put together this is where I really do start to look for areas that are going to be difficult to model and texture and for me this is probably one of the things that slightly lets my work down, by have in the silhouette that works and the correct attire, the final piece in a way becomes less important.

4 - Novel Visual Solutions

The most important thing to me when creating the characters for Alfie Bloom was to make sure that they actually looked and behaved the correct age, it was felt a large number of my colleague’s made the characters far too old, as stated in the brief Alfie and Amy Sui were supposed to be twelve years old, so my main research came for trying to identify what twelve year olds were actually like. I spoke to my Father and was given a massive amount of family photos of me and my brother at 12, and this really did set the rough ball park as to what Alfie might be like. 

Mr Bloom I presume!

I also looked at the 1968 film Oliver, looking mainly at the Artful Dodger character, he had been written by Dickens as a 13 year old boy that dressed in adult clothes, and this seemed to work really well for the son of a Scientist.

 

 

From a production point of view I made sure I received feedback from a number of sources that weren’t artists or indeed knew the story, and this overwhelmingly proved that my characters looked the right age.

5 – Autonomous Action

 

For me the brief that I did feel I acted autonomously on was the Shelley Page Brief, and this was for a number of reasons. Probably the most important part of this was the brief that clearly stated “to produce something outside of your comfort zone”. In approaching this I would never have attempted the steam punk character as I find it very clichéd, and in a way overdone. 

To counteract this I actually started to look at what is was I disliked about Steam Punk, and make sure that didn’t work its way into my final piece. I tried to make sure in my moodboards I looked at all elements of the steam punk genre, and didn’t just stick to the most obvious predictable things. So I tired to find diving suits and mechanisms that looked believable from an engineering point of view, and then build this into my final piece. I was fascinated by the vehicle I chose and again this really did fuel the drive to create a character to fit.

The backstory helped to identify the characters world and how I was going to create a character that was believable, but then could operate within the realms of the vehicle.

 

Feedback from Shelley suggested I need to look at slightly older characters and this really did happen at the right time in the project to have an effect on my final output. I am happy with the character created and it was well received when I presented it to shelly at the final feedback session.

6 – Relevant and Original

Staying relevant was harder for certain briefs, for me the Assassins Creed brief was slightly easier stay relevant to because the IP is so well developed, so the artwork I produced did feel a little in the style off. Where I had no real relevant point of view for the DreamWorks brief.

Alfie was perhaps the most original in his approach, and this was down to the quality of the writing in the character design, this made it relatively easy to come up with an interesting and engaging character.

7 – Explore and Evaluate

It was hard to make sure I didn’t come up with the same response to each of the set briefs. For me one of the hardest was the Assassins creed brief, because he IP is so well developed it is really hard to come up with anything completely original. This coupled with the fact it needs to be somewhat historically accurate, I did find myself chasing my tail on a number of occasions.

The final solution came from a stroke of luck and finding a painting that had a character that was similar to that I had been drawing. Once I had this image, I was able to explore the uniform and follow this character though a particular timeline in history, this gave depth to the character and made him more believable from an Assassin’s creed point of view.

I am happy with the way the turnarounds have worked, but frustrated I couldn’t spend more time developing the final imagery for the brief, this came down to running out of time and the impact of a full time job.

8 - Strengths and weaknesses

Probably my biggest weakness or hindrance is not having the time to develop my work to a higher level, but also having worked in Games for a number of years, I think I actually design out problematic areas on my characters, so they are all achievable in a Game or a movie, but this is often a safe option, possibly the Alfie Bloom work is more cartoony in its initial design, and I think this is where I have found an interesting balance between reality and the cartoon world, but this also has its problems. Also the focus on detail and the process of drawing becomes more important than the initial concept, I need to look at this and find a way of not getting caught up in the detail of a piece.

Another area that does frustrate me is digital painting, it looks so flat and has no depth, or is over painted and looks like sculpted chocolate, I am yet to see a digital artist that can paint like Rembrandt or Caravaggio and this really makes me doubt the medium. For me it’s about the surface, the paint needs to float or have bold impasto marks in it, not be a series of pixels on a screen.

I think my strengths are originality, and being able to bring a character to life and make them believable in their world. Technical knowledge of 3d and rigging is also an area I feel helps to make my characters achievable. Moving forward I am excited to work on new techniques and hopefully break the spectre of digital painting, or find another way of using the medium to get a different look to my characters.