“concept designers - This's exactly what it sounds like. It's problem solving. The big old "We don't know what we want, but we'll know it when we see it!" - This is lots and lots of ideation and exploration to try and pull an idea out of someone elses head, and get it on paper.”  - Riot Penguin III 

 

Within this article, I am going to discuss what concept art is. How research is conducted for concept art in games, the methods, techniques and tools used in the concept art industry and what the future holds for the concept industry or if there is something new for game designers could use instead.  

Concept art is an illustrative form of art which is used to convey ideas/moods of a game before the final product is released this is done by concept artists drawing environments, characters, monsters, weapons/armours worlds etc. This gives a better understanding of the feel of the world, how characters are perceived for example if the environment and world is dark/moody it gives the perception of a hard game with dark and menacing undertones to it like Bloodborne, the same works with characters if a character has scars along their body and wears thick plate armour with a big sword and shield it creates the perceptions of a “tanky” person who can handle a lot of damage and on the opposite end of the spectrum if you have a petite character with a hood and wields a bow and daggers you get the feeling that this person is quick, sneaky person essentially a rogue/hunter that attacks from a distance or up close and personal without being noticed. This is not always the case but that’s the point of concept art to give the developers ideas a form that then, can be altered later to fit how the developers want the game to be.  

Concept art is also used to produce “hype” before and during the creative process of a game and can be added to the final game as extras/unlockable content as seen in the popular fighting game Mortal Kombat X who not only put their own concept art in the game “figure 1” but some of the fans as we can see in “figure 2”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                      Figure 1: Concept art of the refugee camp of unlockable in Mortal Kombat X. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                  Figure 2: Mortal Kombat X Fan art unlockable left: Kitana centre: Mileena and right: Jade.

 

Some artists that have produced concept art for popular games include Laurel D. Austin, a senior illustrator for Blizzard Entertainment who has produced concept art for Hearthstone and Brink. See “Figure 3” a fantastic piece of concept art that she produced for Hearthstone as a she describes it “An image I painted as "box art" of sorts for the Blizzard game Hearthstone.” what is great about this piece of concept art that even after four years of this being available you notice little thing you have missed for example the Murloc in the bottom corner or the Goblin that looks confused at the card game or even the dwarf handing you a tankard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                    Figure 3: Hearthstone concept art produced by Laurel D. Austin for the launch of Hearthstone.  

 

Riot Penguin III, (real name unknown) a concept artist for Riot Games the company that created League of legends (here and henceforth referenced as LOL) Riot penguin III has been a concept artist for LOL since 2011 and was producing fan art as you can see “Figure 4”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                          Figure 4: concept fan art made by Riot penguin before he joined the Riot company 

                                                                                                as a concept artist 

 

Riot Penguin III also explained what a concept artist is in his FAQ on his blog named Riot Penguin III: The Penguining he explains this by saying: “concept designers - This's exactly what it sounds like. It's problem solving. The big old "We don't know what we want, but we'll know it when we see it!" - This is lots and lots of ideation and exploration to try and pull an idea out of someone elses head, and get it on paper.”  

 

Ross Dearsley, a freelance concept artist and illustrator gives a list of “15 concept art skills to power up your standalone illustrations in an article he wrote for creative blog. Even though this article focuses on the illustrative side of art the techniques/methods are taken from concept art skills. Some of the list consists as followed: Sketch studies to build confidence, use isolated layers for composition, begin broad the refine, contrast your cast of characters, just to name a few all of these are techniques concept artist use to make they’re art as good as they possibly can, but it also makes their life easier. It is also to make sure they don’t dampen the impact that characters have in games, because if too many characters look similar the effect they’re meant to have on the game softens and it feels like it doesn’t really matter who lives or dies or the story of the game just wouldn’t seem to matter. 

 

Some of the tools that professionals use is rather simplistic and for beginners it won’t cost a massive amount and only make things easier, but it can be done with the bare minimums of pencils and paper with a lot of practise, professionals can't stress enough that some type of art education is highly, but if you want to buy the tech then the industry standards are a Wacom tablet as seen in “Figure 5”. Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 FHD Interactive Pen Display is just one of the Wacom tablets that professionals use to create concept art, digital drawing programmes are like photoshop is recommended but you can use other programmes like 

Corel Painter 11, Pixologic Z-brush etc. You can also use 3D modelling software e.g. Maya, Sketchup, 3DS Max, Rhino etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                     Figure 5: Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 FHD Interactive Pen Display 

  

With all the picture examples I have used; Mortal Kombat X, Hearthstone and LOLs Teemo have different styles for example: Mortal Kombat X Refugee camp concept art shows an environment and you get the feel that it’s a slum and people don’t want to be there but have nowhere else to go the emotion you feel are that people are trapped in a place they can’t escape not because they’re forced but it’s the safest place for them. Whereas the Mortal Kombat X fan concept art shows how “beginners” draw concept art and as you can see there is a massive difference in style one has been polished to massive details with digital software and the other is done by pencils and paper both look good but has a different process to get to the end result. 

 

Hearthstone a popular game based on World of Warcraft (here and henceforth referenced as WOW)

the launch concept art has a lot to take in, but it has been made to make

viewing it feel welcome to the game with familiar races from both factions,

the little Gryphon trying to help the Gnome and the Murloc in the bottom

left corner all appearing from WOW, every aspect of this piece of concept

art is inviting. All the races gathering around watching the match, the Dwarf

handing you a tankard and even the Night Elf and Blood Elf “chatting away”

even though they’re on opposing factions. When I see the two elves in this

 I personally get the feeling that the Blood Elf is explaining the rules of the

game to the Night Elf which give the feeling of the picture a more in-depth

meaning to it like “enemies can be friends in the right circumstances”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, Assassin Teemo the concept fan art made by Riot Penguin III before

he started working for Riot Games shows everything that is “Teemo”  a little

furry anger inducing champion in LOL giving the concept art the name. 

Assassin Teemo just adds to actual picture for those who don’t know who

 Teemo is then you are lucky, I won’t go into details of why but believe

me you are! The feel you get from this picture is that he is a stealthy

character that is ready to pounce out of nowhere to get the kill, which if

you have played LOL then that is 99% of what this champion does. The

colour pallet of this picture has been used to emphasise the fact that 

Teemo is moving around within a dark cityscape moving to kill his target.

the contrast between light and dark colours has been used to accentuate

a three-dimensional feel to a two-dimensional picture with buildings

looking far apart with Teemo poised in the front covering some of the

distant buildings help add to the feel. The colour the lighting and how

it's portrayed on hitting Teemo adds the 3D feel to the picture with the

bottom half of his face and body being lit up slightly but his hood casting a shadow over the top. 

 

What does the future hold for this type of concept art within the gaming industry, personally I feel that it’s going to be around for as long as games are being made then concept art will be necessary.  The other programmes that could be used just take too long to produce the outcome required for example if you used 3D modelling software even though you would get fantastic results, the time it would take would be astronomical compared to using graphics tablets and photoshop or even pencil and paper. Obviously, I can't say for certain that using graphics tablets and drawing software will be the norm in the future because we have come so far in the past 48-60 years (depending on when you as a person believe the first game was made), we are continuously making new or adapting old software/hardware that makes producing concept art easier. If concept artists stuck with “the old” then the industry would never progress to the point it has now, we wouldn't have photoshop or tablet if we stuck with pencils and paper even though a lot of professionals believe nothing beats it, but concept artists have to do many drawings of characters, environments etc. that they have to be realistic when making these designs as a lot of resources would be used with pencils and paper which costs money for the majority to be scrapped. It also equates to the skill of the people using the software/hardware and the skills of the artists in general because they put the time and effort into making hundreds of drawings for games and are continuously learning new techniques and refining their skills to produce better art so if a concept artist feels more comfortable drawing on photoshop they will produce better quality pieces than if they used other means and "vise versa".  

 

References: 

 

1.  Eraldos (2015). MKX KRYPT UNLOCK: Fan Art 3 Concept Art (5,3).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMIRE_POZos: NetherRealm Studios. 

1. Eraldos (2015). MKX KRYPT UNLOCK: Refugee Kamp Concept Art (6,34). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neKbgJrwOuY: NetherRealm Studios. 

1. Blizzard Entertainment (2014). Hearthstone Launch Art. [image] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EkX0 [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018]. 

1. Riot (n.d.). Assassin Teemo - Fan art from before I was a Rioter!. [image] Available at: https://riotpenguin.blogspot.com/2013/12/fan-art-for-fans.html [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018]. 

1. Park Cameras (n.d.). Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 FHD Interactive Pen Display. [image] Available at: https://www.parkcameras.com/p/U157404H/graphics-tablets/wacom/cintiq-pro-13-fhd-interactive-pen-display?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=pricecomp&utm_campaign=GoogleShopping&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9NbdBRCwARIsAPLsnFY7s_C-Hrp5et8atQg2TjYL49r-LIjQaZJxdYUYoL80CyJoAMYBjCIaAgt2EALw_wcB [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018]. 

1. Penguin III, R. (2013). Riot Penguin III: The Penguining. [online] Riotpenguin.blogspot.com. Available at: http://riotpenguin.blogspot.com/2013/12/ [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018]. 

1. Dearsley, R. (2016). 15 concept art skills to power up your illustration. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: https://www.creativebloq.com/features/15-concept-art-skills-to-power-up-your-illustration [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018]. 

1. Newitz, A. (2010). Tips from professional artists on the 5 things you need in your digital art toolbox. [online] Io9.gizmodo.com. Available at: https://io9.gizmodo.com/5567512/tips-from-professional-artists-on-the-5-things-you-need-in-your-digital-art-toolbox [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018].