Kamz Games design and interactive media (of course): Unit 72 Drawing Concept Art for Computer Games

What is the purpose of concept art for games?

Tom Zhao- http://www.tomzhao.com/

Tom has managed to capture two things I usually like to focus on when creating scenarios; characters and environments. He focus' on more of a sci-fi element and pulls it off incredibly well. His character, is well designed with everything making anatomical sense and looking smooth and stylish to boot. The environment he has drawn is incredibly simple in design yet so effective due to its use of lighting and reflection. The door he's created is put together using machinery that would make sense in the real world and he's even shown how it works on the side.

Levi Hopkins- http://levihopkinsart.blogspot.co.uk/

Levi has focused more on environments here although he may have done some character design on his website. The way he's done these scenes though has made use of something that I think is one of the most important aspects for a picture; light. Without lighting, your picture looks flat, two dimensional, it looks in general, incomplete. Add lighting however and it's a whole different story. Certain things can stand out more while other things fade into the background. And should you use light as Levi has done in his top picture, you can add a very particular atmosphere to an area. It's not just light however, in his top picture he's put in some very unique aesthetic pieces, being very reflective pillar-like structures. The shape and smoothness of them gives them an already futuristic feel. The picture below has made use of movement in water and reflections. He's used lighting once more to add a clean, smooth and shiny feel to it, and combined with the golden light and surfaces, it almost seems like a place that should be left untouched. Maybe someone should tell that to the figure walking over the bridge.

Nicolas Bouvier (Sparth)- http://www.sparth.com/

Nicholas has focused on a very particular art style in his work. It's a form of minimalism but with his own twist, and that twist is his use of lighting. As I've said before lighting is incredibly important when drawing a picture to add depth and make it look just better in general. Nicholas has taken this, added his own style, and made visually pleasing and aesthetically correct pictures. The top picture is a little disorienting due to its angle but because of this, the picture looks interesting, we want to see more. The bottom picture, looks like a city and due to his use of colours has a very particular atmosphere and feel to it.

Svetlin Velinov- http://svetlinvelinov.tumblr.com/

Svetlin has a very common theme with all of his art, and that's the fantasy element. He tends to stick to a very particular area and he does it incredibly well. The top picture for example, makes incredible use of lighting and texture and just looking amazing in general. Svetlin does tend to focus a lot more on the characters than the background which I find to be a good thing. The characters makes the story after all. In the second picture he makes use of this once more, adding shine where there should be and positioning it in such a way that he almost outlines all the lumps and crevices. The final picture has included the feather texture and all the small spines on the arachnids legs seem to show up just enough to add that elemont of "creepy."

Why concept design?

When you think of an idea, it starts forming and developing in your mind. It becomes more complex as you tweak and perfect it. You can imagine exactly what it looks like, except there is one problem; the average human brain cannot remember everything down to the last detail, every crack, every wrinkle, every shade of colour on clothing. This is where concept art comes in, it's a way of placing your ideas, taking them out of your head and showing them on paper to improve any obvious design mistakes.

These concept artists have created various ideas and formed them visually to tweak and improve them as they see fit. It helps them visually see how something works and if nothing else, makes a pretty good picture.

The Human Form (Development).