[Tomasis]

hello i'm REAL newbie.. i dont know about all types of drawing.. anyone can explain about these? which material do you use? i think to begin with traditional art then i purchase wacom tablet later. i was very inspired by your images. i could be grateful if you post some good links to newbie drawing sites and other of that kind here.

[Loki]

Hey! Welcome to the world of pixels!

Concept art is a very general term. It's basically a first visualisation af a hmmm - concept!
That could be for a car, for a computer game (how the characters & enviroments look) or amongst many other things for a movie (also - look and functional developement of visual elements involved).

Syd Mead is one of the most famous conceptual artists. If you do some research about him, you'll get a good picture of what it's all about.

As for sites - why don't you check out mine (heeee!) www.guerillapixel.com - under the digital illustration section there's a lot of babble about digital painting.

and there's always www.goodbrush.com for some nuclear inspiration & motivation.

Now go paint!!!!

[Tillek]

Welcome to Sijun. You may want to check out www.polykarbon.com as well. It has some good tutorials and a webboard. Also, Sijun's tutorial on his main website.

Good luck!

[jezelf]

Hi there, Tomasis welcome! theres room for us all!:-)

Well part of my job is as a concept artist. I work for a computer game developer concepting, storyboarding, creating 3D models and textures, marketing art as well as tradional art and its always good to get back to life drawing.

Concept is pretty much similar to the film industry, as Loki suggests - it's drawing something as a concept, whatever the image. From architecture, vehicles, characters, weapons, enemies, to objects animals, aliens etc etc.

If you decide to go in this direction - well actually, any art direction - its important to gain as much reference as possible. You need to look, observe a hell of a lot - I guess about 70% of my career I've just looked at things - how light hits things, shapes of things, colours, how light effects the colours, the hues, how the elements (natural and man-made) attacks, shapes, and stains things etc etc. you can do all this when you're not at your drawing board, but its vital. take photos if you want, it all helps and you can use that information in your art.

No-one creates in a vacuum. you have to have inspiration, but try not to let yourself get into 'tunnel vision' - in other words, drawing concepts from only one source.

Star wars is a good example. every one loves that stuff including myself. it's what was part of my inspiration to get into concept art(check out 'the art of star wars' books). so why is it so popular? because they draw their inspirations from real life objects and turn them into their own.

some people copy star wars style, but if you want to be unique - just learn from their work, rather than copy it. same can be applied about anyone's work - learn techniques etc. but be your own artist, not a clone of someone else. you'll then develop your own style and techniques.

We all have our individual imaginations, explore yours. As far as concepts go to an object, I guess the thing that I've learned is that unless you are trying to be completely original, like creating a breed of aliens which you deliberately want to be incomprehensible, then make sure you have elements which your audience can relate to.

for example - you can do this with textures and shapes. is your item organic or not? then draw ideas from things in your environment that reflect this. It could be water, a fruit, furniture,parts of an engine a hub cap , a drainage cover, part of an aeroplane - simply anything, depending on your concept.

Loki suggests Syd Mead - another great concept art. He's also set a standard. He did set and vehicle design for 'Bladerunner' and 'Aliens' (de designed the 'Slocaco' (sp?)- the military 'mothership') - and now you see his work diluted in endless stuff.

Ive seen one of his concepts where he says is just the interior ceiling of a cathedral turned upside down.

H.R. Giger - well know for his 'Alien' and 'Species' concepts. He's based them on skeletal bones - something we're all familar with - he makes an exo-skeleton. the whole face hugger thing is from a real-life parasite that lays its eggs in a host and then leaves, the young then eat the host.

He also has used our fears - theres a subliminal sexual reference involved there too.

look a bits of things and isolate them, mirror them and scale them. you could take an Art-Deco pepper pot for example, turn it upside down and scale it big. it could now be a hot air balloon.

I'm just think on the fly here, but you get the idea. Also look at art history.see how other people have tried the same thing - learn from them.

I guess something else which I feel is important if you are concepting, is additional to the above advice. That is to put your mind into that of who's sole job would design the object you are doing if possible.

As a concept artist you have to be a 'jack of all trades' to master them all wouldn't leave you time to draw! so for instance, if you are concepting a car, think in the mind of a car designer, drawing a building, think in architectural terms, etc. so, again, researching and reference is vital. If you are making a hydrolic suspension for landing gear of a space craft, make sure you understand the basics of pivots and joints. If you have the oppurtunity, ask engineers questions on relavent topics, go to museums -look some more take photos. You don't need to go into massive detail on stuff that wont be seen.

the last thing you want is to design something like a building and an architect to say 'that would fall down' or an engineer to say 'that is just not feasible' - if you want people to believe in your concepts. There are always exceptions to the ruleand how far you go with this is up to you, but generally its good to keep that stuff in mind.

Finally, with concepting, well, art in general, everything is just as important as everything else. The details of your work can make a difference.

If you have a busy scene, the little things; props etc in the scene, are just as important as the main focus. You should treat them all with equal enthusiasm and attention - the main character's shoes are just as important as him/her/itself

Hope that all helps. Sorry it went on! :-)I've tried to keep it brief (would you believe!) but there's lots to learn and you pick up a lot on the way. I wish I had this forum when I started! Im sure Im gunna learn a lot at this place. I found this site through a link at this guy's site
http://www.artbyfeng.com/index.htm

he's a concept artist and has some lessons -a good place for you to look.

good luck!
jez