task 1
Research
what is the purpose of concept art for games?
the purpose of concept art in gaming is to show and flesh out ideas, creating all kinds of different perspectives on just one idea, constantly updating and refining it until theres enough there to say "yep thats exactly how i want it to look in game". concept drawings are there to bring all the primary and secondary research together to help visualise the final idea, often the final idea being something completely different to what was first imagined. thats the beauty of concept art, its a single thought thats able to grow and become something more then what was first imagined.
concept art isn't just a modern day practice, in fact our art owes its self to the old masters because it was them who were on the forefront of intense study, learning about perspective,proportion,light,tone and realism. with out the study they would have been stuck to traditional two dimensional drawings most famous in places like ancient egypt.
the best old concept artist i know would have to be leonardo Da Vinci.
i say this because he wasn't just an artist, he was an inventor and this is what i believe to be true conceptual art, the invention of something new. Da Vinci had countless inventions put down on paper all drawn from the mind but also from real things, real sources he had used to bring his ideas together.
an example of this would be his flying machine(ornithopter), a sort of glider you would strap yourself into. the idea was formulated by da Vinci, a device to enable man to fly. to come up with the final design he had to go through a process, da Vinci had a portfolio on detailed flight and the wings of animals that could fly, he based his contraption on things and sources already present in nature to create something completely new and innovative. then he made it and refined the idea even more based on problems with the technical aspect. the wing span was around 33 feet, made of pine and covered in raw silk.
image source
http://thesinofman.com/
final design
this is the final poster for this unit
every drawing and mark making experiment contributed to the design of this poster, practicing with depth of field and perspective really helped me envision this design, the way i draw is very organic, i add and change as i go along so although you may not see the correlation straight away with this final design when compared with the earlier experiments, the techniques i have built upon and learned through this process helped me to create the final piece. a lot of the inspiration came from some of the research art works i found (see above mark making experiments), these really helped me to understand large scale landscapes and the ways to correctly give the illusion of depth. i decided against putting any sign of a mian protagonist in the drawing because i felt it would take something away from the the image, so instead, dotted around the landscape are a few humanoid figures to help the eye understand the scale contained within the picture.
in this final poster i imagined a large landscape, going far into the distance with a large mountainous area. this would be my basis for a grand scale drawing. i wanted to add a bridge because from earlier drawings i realised they give the best sense of depth to a drawing when done correctly. everything from this point on was very organic. i started to create a world around the skeleton of the original design, adding the hanging cages with people trapped inside, a molten lake of lava and off in the distance the massive colosseum, where a race of fierce god fearing people would travel on pilgrimage, past the hanging corpses, up the twisting steps towards the entrance of the dark mountain and on though to pass the bridge in front of the colosseum. to give the impression of an alien world i added the standard " foreign planet hanging in the sky".
source
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/leonardo.html
image source
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=da+vinci+flying+machine+date&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=iokdU4bUJIiUhQeVqoEw&sqi=2&ved=0CE4QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=693#facrc=_&imgdii=QhE63vClenXzHM%3A%3BpgK8VwRD4W7-eM%3BQhE63vClenXzHM%3A&imgrc=QhE63vClenXzHM%253A%3BCJnB-UV9F6qatM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.leonardodavincisinventions.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F02%252Fleonardo-da-vinci-bird-wing-with-mechanical-connections.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.leonardodavincisinventions.com%252Finventions-for-flight%252Fleonardo-da-vincis-glider%252F%3B642%3B410
john martin
born 1789, john martin was and still is a famous biblical painter, depicting quite hellish and grand scenes. he started very young in art, being an apprentice of Boniface Musso, an italian artist. his first oil painting was sent to the royal academy in 1810 but was not hung, but re sent a year later it was hung under the title A landscape composition.after this he produced many more landscapes and scenes inspired by the bible. in them you can see the influence of the northumberland crags and real life landscapes, and in some of the more apocalyptic canvases you can see his familiarity with iron works of the tyne valley. these canvases come from his knowledge of the old testament but also from his real life observations about the environments he been in, this again is pure conceptual art, taking the information you've gathered weather it be from books or just looking and studying your surroundings and putting it all together to create the beauty of something new but so real it almost seems like an actual account of something that already exists.
info source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(painter)
images source
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=john+martin&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=2aUdU6TdMImQhQe6jYCQCg&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=693#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=pTvN2e6pAFeHHM%253A%3BpBZckuQ1uoqnOM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fi710.photobucket.com%252Falbums%252Fww109%252Fvolcanism2%252Fvolcano-art%252Fmartin1821a.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fvolcanism.wordpress.com%252F2009%252F06%252F06%252Fsaturday-volcano-art-john-martin-the-destruction-of-pompeii-and-herculaneum-c-1821%252F%3B450%3B313
His work could be compared to modern conceptual works like one artist in particular, Noah Bradley. a freelance concept artist and illustrator who works for many clients and even teaches people how to improve their own skills in art. i've chosen him to compare to john martin because of a set of conceptual designs called " the sin of man".
they show vast landscapes, much like John martin, of huge scenes. in them i can see slight hints towards religion, huge monoliths dwarfing men, and one reminds me of Jerusalem, in it a huge looming cloud with streams of light seeming like a heavenly presence is watching over the city but something about it seems like its an alien world, which i love because its a hard thing to accomplish, balancing sci-fi worlds with a religious touch is a delicate matter and in my opinion he pulled it off.
the depth and scale in these pieces are beautiful and very inspiring for me, the subtle remarks at humanity and our religion, heavenly and satanic beliefs mixing with a science fiction undertone are very compelling and resonate with me on an artistic and intellectual level.
image source
http://thesinofman.com/
final design
every drawing and mark making experiment contributed to the design of this poster, practicing with depth of field and perspective really helped me envision this design, the way i draw is very organic, i add and change as i go along so although you may not see the correlation straight away with this final design when compared with the earlier experiments, the techniques i have built upon and learned through this process helped me to create the final piece. a lot of the inspiration came from some of the research art works i found (see above mark making experiments), these really helped me to understand large scale landscapes and the ways to correctly give the illusion of depth. i decided against putting any sign of a mian protagonist in the drawing because i felt it would take something away from the the image, so instead, dotted around the landscape are a few humanoid figures to help the eye understand the scale contained within the picture.
in this final poster i imagined a large landscape, going far into the distance with a large mountainous area. this would be my basis for a grand scale drawing. i wanted to add a bridge because from earlier drawings i realised they give the best sense of depth to a drawing when done correctly. everything from this point on was very organic. i started to create a world around the skeleton of the original design, adding the hanging cages with people trapped inside, a molten lake of lava and off in the distance the massive colosseum, where a race of fierce god fearing people would travel on pilgrimage, past the hanging corpses, up the twisting steps towards the entrance of the dark mountain and on though to pass the bridge in front of the colosseum. to give the impression of an alien world i added the standard " foreign planet hanging in the sky".
