Final Concept Pieces

Final Ice Mountain Concept - Screen Recording

Ice Mountain Experiments

When I was making the Ice Mountain, I had changed some things about the image to see if it had given a better look to the overall painting. First, I had changed some of the levels in the image to give it a darker look, then I had amplified this and it had given a dark blue colour to it which made it feel like it was dark ice, instead of snow. This look also gives the image an complete overhaul, and makes it look a lot more in the Ice Age period.

Ice Mountain

This is an interpretation painting I had done of an Ice Mountain during the Ice Age. This painting was done using Photoshop and had a snowy, and icey look to it. Also, this work was done on Photoshop using a variety of brushes to get the right textures and general look to it. I had used a lot of 'cool' colours to make it have an Ice Age look and also, to make it portray that look too.

Industry Concept Artists - Methods

In the industry Concept Artists use a lot of methods to help their workflow. One mehtod that they use is organistation, as this would help them too keep all of their work due dates on time and also, to help them to be more prepared for their work when they need to find certain pieces. I think that this would also, help me because it would help me to be more on track to my personal due dates for my pieces of work as well as, to be able to have my work at a presentable standard for other people to see.

Another method that the concept artists use, is to incorporate a lot of thick and thin lines in the final concept pieces. This is a good method to use as it would help to define the predominent and minor places for detail and attention. I think this would also be as it would help to give off detail in a lot of places. As well as this, making the image conote either cool or warm colours to suit the theme of the image. This is what I want to use in my final piece as it would help the piece to suit the theme as well as the time it was situated in.

Also, using the golden ratio in their art pieces. I think this method is a great type of method to use as you can slowly add detail to the image in the form of a spiral and guide the audiences eye to were you want the main focus to be on, which is what I want to do in my final art piece.

Industry Concept Artists - Software

In the Gaming Industry, many concept artists use a lot of programmes to help them create their concept art. Most of these concept artists use a programme called Adobe Photoshop, which is also the programme that I am going to use to create my final piece. This programme is great for creating concept arts as it has all the basic tools necessary to such as the paint brush, marquee tool and the eye drop tool, as well as this it has the advanced tools making it easy to use for beginners as well as people who are familiar with this type of software.

Another type of software used in the industry is a programme called Autodesk SketchBook Pro. This programme is used to help concept artists develop thier sketches and basic animations, this tool is also used to create art pieces with perspective. This will help a lot of the concept artists to develop their initial sketches and also, bring some new concept ideas from it.

As well as this, concept artists use another programme called Corel Painter 2015, this programme is used for the variety of brushes it has to help the concept artist create the concept pieces that they were looking for. This programme also, has a range of unique tools which makes this seem like another good programme for concept artists to use.

Previous Final

The work I had previously done, some of it was deleted and I had to re-do the characters quickly. The characters had looked a lot better than this, but the computer had gotten rid of them and the bushes I did, as it did not save them.

Evaluation

Analysis

When I had started my work, I wanted to do a Primal themed project which had humans and animals in it. I also, wanted to be able to develop my Photoshop skills to help me do my final concept piece, I will do this by looking up tutorials, asking my peers for tips and by also asking my tutors. I have developed my Photoshop skills a lot over the duration of the course, like learning how to add more colour to my art pieces to give them more depth, which I had learnt from my peers and tutors. A lot of the colours I had used before didn't really match or blend with each other, but after learning how to blend them together and which colours to pick and use, I had a better outcome, as the art pieces I had drew had a lot more detail and techniques used in them.

Shiam Wilcox - Artist Research

This is my tutor and they had showed me how to do a lot of work in the style of the way they do their work. This has helped me a lot to present my work, and how to do a lot of the techniques on Photoshop. One of the pieces of work that my tutor had showed me to do was the fur experimentation, they had showed me how to make the fur pattern by changing the brush presets to custom made ones, which I had made and then change the brush size, hardness and flow to make the brush able to imitate the fur patters. And also, I learnt how to add colours in and blend them to suit a fur pattern properly, which had helped to add a lot of detail to the art piece that I was doing, as it brought out a lot of colour and the colours I had used were also blended into the fur.

Composition - Research

 

While I was doing my Photoshop design I was thinking about how I should compose my Concept Art to make it guide the reader to my characters. I had looked at the Golden Spiral to help me decide if I wanted to have this or Rule of Thirds. The Golden Spiral is a good composition to have as I could gradually expand on the detail, and have the main part of the art in the outer spiral. This could be very useful as I could have, in my final piece, the 2 characters in the concept art walking forward while there is animals in the background. Where as the Rule of Thirds has the main action in the centre of the image, and I think this could equally be useful as I could have the centre of the image having the main action or point of the image then the top and bottom third showing less detail but still guiding the viewers to the centre.

These are the 3 forms that are usually used in a image, there is the Dominant Form, Sub Dominant Form and the Subordinate Form. The Dominant Form usually has a large structure and mass and is the first thing a viewers eye is drawn to. The Dominant Form is mostly placed of to the side and never in the middle as it is meant to guide the viewer to the Subordinate Form and not just be the only thing a viewer would look at. The Sub Dominant Form is used to balance the Dominant Form, as there is something there of comparison and is usually smaller than the Dominant Form. It would typically be the next thing a viewer looks to after looking at the Dominant Form

New Project Proposal

This is my new Project Proposal that I have done, it has a lot more information on what I am doing in my project. Also, it has what I am going to do for my evaluation in my project.

Perspective - Research

While doing my final concept piece, I had considered what type of perspective I wanted to do my piece from. I had done some research on the different points of perspective that you can do and took them into consideration. The drawing with all the types of perspectives you could have from the centre point was very useful in my work as it had helped me to see what I could do if I wanted to expand from the centre of the image. The Vanishing Point, was very useful as this was the type of perspective that I had wanted to have in my work. I wanted to have my characters walking along a path and the start of the path, vanishing off into the distance. The Three Point Perspective, has three different vanishing points which would be useful but, not exactly what I wanted as I wouldn't be able to get a lot of detail on the top / bottom half of what I am doing depending on if, I was doing Bird's Eye or Worm's Eye View. The Two Point Perspective is useful as it has two vanishing points and it can show the type of detail that I wanted to convey out of my work. The Single Point Perspective is the type of perspective that I think is also very useful, as I can include the environment as well as the two characters and they will be clearly visible.

I have decided, that the type of perspective that I want to use is going to be the Single Point Perspective, as this one has one vanishing point and in my opinion I think it is overall better than the other perspective, but they still are have given me some though on how I should position the centre focus and the vanishing point.

Mudbox - Software Research

Over the past few weeks I have been using Mudbox to get a basic male character done on it, to help me visualise what the character should look like. I had used YouTube to help me do some of the sculpting on the head, especially a video called ... which had helped me to see how I could form a male face and build up the detail gradually on it. Also, I had used this picture (https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2534690/uncharted_4_drake_smile.0.jpg) of Nathan Drake from Uncharted 4 to help me see the male facial structure as well as I wanted to have a reference that I could use to refer to. This had helped me a lot to see the different parts of muscle in the face and how everything should be structured on the face, neck and head. Also, I had used another tutorial ... to see how to use the tools like waxing to build up the facial structure of the model that I was making, this was very useful as it had helped me to add more detail, and also I had learnt how to use stamps on brushes and use them to also make detail.

But, some of the time I had problems which I had to fix either myself, with the help of my tutors and peers or by searching online for example. the layers on Mudbox kept on locking themselves and would not unlock, so to overcome this problem, I had to save the document and quit the application, then reopen it and the problem was fixed. Another problem was that I had done a lot of my work and didn't save as often, sometimes the application would close itself and I wouldn't have saved my work. I had looked online to see why this would happen and it had said that the application does this when too many things are going on at once. So, to help prevent a lot of progress from being wiped I had made sure I saved it every so often

Peter Chan - Artist Research

Peter Chan

FILM / TV EXPERIENCE

Keep on Keepin' On (Documentary)
Illustrator
Absolute Clay Production - 2014

The Boxtrolls
Pre-Visual Development Artist
Laika Entertainment - 2014

Rio 2
Visual Development Artist
Blue Sky Studios – 2014

Escape From Planet Earth
Lead Visual Development Artist
Rainmaker Entertainment – 2013

Monsters University
Visual Development Artist
PIXAR/ Disney – 2013

Rio
Visual Development Artist
Blue Sky Studios – 2011
(The 39th Annual Annie Awards 2012, nominated for production design in a feature film along with Tom Cardone and Kyle Macnaughton)

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas
Visual Development Artist
Blue Sky Studios, TV short - 2011

Coraline
Pre-Production Designer
Laika Entertainment – 2009

State of Play
Illustrator
Universal Pictures – 2008

Space Chimps
Concept Artist
Vanguard Animation – 2008

MOONGIRL (short film)
Production Designer
Laika Entertainment – 2005

Son of the Mask
Concept Artist
New Line Cinema – 2005

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Concept Artist
Paramount Pictures/ DreamWorks – 2004

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Concept Artist, Storyboard Artist, Visual Effect Consultant
Warner Brothers – 2004

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Storyboard Artist
Warner Brothers – 2004

Monkeybone
Concept Artist, Storyboard Artist
20th Century Fox – 2001

Star Wars: Episode One The Phantom Menace
Storyboard Artist
20th Century Fox, JAK Films – 1999

ANTZ
Concept Artist
DreamWorks/ PDI – 1998

GAMES EXPERIENCE

Double Fine Productions
Grim Fandango Remastered
Massive Chalice
Broken Age
Iron Brigade 
Brutal Legend
Psychonauts
Concept Artist

LucasArts Entertainment Company
Star Wars: Star Fighter
Star Wars: RACER
Grim Fandango
Star Wars: Jedi Knight
Mortimer
The Dig
Full Throttle
Sam and Max Hit the Road
Day of the Tentacle
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Monkey Island 2
Lead Artist, Concept Artist, Creature Designer

Nihilistic Software
Playstation Heroes
Starcraft: Ghost
Vampire: The Masquerade
Concept Artist

Electronic Arts (EA)
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects
Concept Artist

Sucker Punch Productions
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus
Rocket
Concept Artist, Character Designer

Lucas Learning Limited
Star Wars: Pit Droid
Star Wars: Yoda's Challenge
Episode One: Gungan Frontier
Star Wars: Droid Works
Concept Artist 

Humongous Entertainment
Pajama Sam 3
Pajama Sam 2
Putt Putt
Character Designer, Concept Artist

Crackpot Entertainment
Insecticide 
Concept Artist

Infinite Machine
New Legends
Concept Artist

Pileated Pictures
Planet Cazmo
Concept Artist

745 Studios
Power Gig: Rise of the Six String
Concept Artist

This is an artist who works in the movies industry as a concept artist. He has worked on various films such as Ice Age, Rio, Monsters University and many more. His type of drawing is very original but, it is very clear to see the illustrations. Also, he uses very good shading and tonal techniques in his work to get the detail into it. I think his work is extremely beneficial, as his work will help me to plan out my design, add various techniques into it and present the characters clearly too.

Brain Froud & Alam Lee - Artist Research

These are two artists who made the book Faeries. They used lots of drawings of mythical creatures from fairy tales. Their work is very unique as a lot of the creatures suit the bio that was given to them and also their surroundings. All of the drawings in the book were done with a pencil and lots of colour and shading. This has helped me to think about how I should position my characters and how I should also, make them blend into the environment.

Andy Timm- Artist Research

Any Timm is a Concept artist who has been working at Hi-Rez Studios for just over 1 and a half years. He has also done different types of concept art on other projects. And also, has done 9 years of freelancing.

This is a concept artist who works at Hi-Rez Studios, he does a majority of the concept art for the character variants in the game. These concept arts are very useful as they are well suited to my theme and they also reflect the characters personality which is what I want my work to do. Also, they have different types of creatures on them as clothes like the leopard, which is the same type of thing I was going to include in my work. However, mine was going to be a mammoths fur which the characters were going to wear instead of leopards and jaguars. 

Teshia - Artist Research

This is some artist research I did on an artist called Teshia, she does amazing animal paintings with a variety of other colours. She also, does other type of work but her main type of art is animals, when she is painting she uses a variety of colours to depict the highlights in the animals, shadows and tones. I think this is a great idea as it is very original and unique and this has helped me to decide on some of the colours of the work that I am going to do, and how I should use the animals if I decide to include any in the picture. The animals that I will use will be less detailed as the main focus of the concept piece is going to be the characters.

Xavier Etchepare - Artist Research

 Xavier Etchepare is a Senior Concept Artist at Ubisoft who has been working there for 5 years, he has also done other projects and freelancing work for 5 years too.

This is some of the work done by a Senior Concept Artist at Ubisoft studios on the game FarCry Primal. His concept art pieces show mainly the animal as the main focus, which isn't exactly what I need but the way in which he has done the concept pieces are really good. The use of dull colours in the first two pictures go really well with the snow field. This is the type of skill I want to be able to do in my concept art piece.

 Also, the way the animals blend into the environment is also, beneficial to me as I want the characters to do the same thing in my work, as it would give the concept art piece more life.

Way Way - Artist Research

Way Way is a Concept Artist, he currently works at Ubisoft and has done concept art for games such as FarCry Primal and FarCry 4.

This is some work from a Concept Artist who works at Ubisoft and has worked on the game FarCry Primal. He has done a lot of concept art for the game and some of which were unaccepted. His concept art helps me a lot because it blends well with the background which is what I want my concept art to look like. He is also very good with the character concept art and how they are positioned which is very beneficial as it will help me to see how I can adapt my character to the environment to make them blend in to it and not look like they have just been placed in that place. The use of colours in his work also, go well together which is what I want to be able to do in my concept piece.

Naomi Savoie - Artist Research

 Naomi Savoie has been at Ubisoft for 3 years, she has been a concept artist for nearly 3 years and has been an illustrator for 3 months. 

This is work from a Concept Artist at Ubisoft who had worked on the game FarCry Primal. In her work she did a lot of concept art for the main characters, which is extremely useful as it is exactly what I am looking for. Her work shows a variety of different characters each with their own unique look. Her work will help me to design my concept are and also include pieces that I would have not before. For example in my work shadows, was not a priority as I can't do them very well but, in Naomi's work she has a great use of shadows. Also, her characters also have a distinctive facial expression which will help me to create my characters personality. Naomi also, uses garments and equipment for the characters which are used very well to help create the characters personality and also, to help the picture to have a lot of detail.

Can Etiskol - Artist Research

Can Etiskol is a Character Modelling Artist who has worked at Ubisoft for 3 years, and has worked on a variety of games. He has also worked on other projects as a Character Modelling Artist and a Texturing Artist.

This is work from a Character Modelling Artist who works at Ubisoft on the game FarCry Primal. Can has done a lot of work on the modelling of the game and I find all of his pieces very useful and beneficial to me. He has done character modelling which will help me to see how I can improve my Mudbox model of a human male, and also he has textured and modelled the different garments, and equipment that the characters have on them which will also, help me to think about what I should have on my character and how I should position the clothing both on the Mudbox piece and the Final Concept Art. This work also, helps me to think about the textures of the clothes as well, so I can help them to blend  in with the character.