While we can look at a concept art book to see hundreds of pages detailing the overall production of a game I feel standalone concept artists get lost amongst the pages and possibly we don’t even get to see any of the concepts they created for the sake of being scrapped in early concept development or for the book layout. However now with online portfolios we get better insight of their personal methodologies.
The example I feel strongly shows this is from the concept artist Clair Hummel.
In this interview i found with Claire Hummel, one of the questions the interviewer asks is about her process of creating concept art - i found this information useful as it coincides with the post i found of her concept art and is the artist herself describing her methods from start to finish - my plan with this information is to note down her methods in order to formulate a pipeline for myself to use so i can review and reflect on this example of an industry level method and if i feel it could work for me.
Process always starts with an idea or prompt she wants to work with; this could be brought on by a reference she has stumbled across but usually she wants some intent or purpose to motivate her character design - who is this character? What’s their role, social standing, personality, career, genre and universe?
At this stage she asks herself “What do i want to get out of this piece?”
From that prompt she will jump into loose sketches and brainstorming; she notes the value of getting a raw idea for a character onto paper, whether it’s in a sketchbook or on a napkin. “Trust your instincts, or atleast get them down on paper to refer back to. Sometimes there’s some weird genius hidden in there that you would have over thought.”
Once having some sketches down she moves into more in-depth research and referencing; gathering images and reading books is a huge part of her process and the larger the body of reference is the better and more plausible the work is going to be.
Clair brings up two facts i believe are important to referencing -
Not everything needs to be a mirror of something that already exists as it would defeat the purpose of character design but knowing what she is drawing and knowing when to deviate from the source material will make for better, more unique character designs.
When working from a reference you’ve never used it is best to try and do some quick studies of the reference, this study can lead to discovering things about the concept art subject matter that you wouldn’t have otherwise with just a glance.
From that point Claire starts integrating the references into her initial concepts which allows her to tighten up the structure, design elements, details and take into account things like shape language and silhouette.
At her industry job she will produce several variations on any given idea and in order to get so many initial concepts created Claire will work in black and white - this is a method used for the sake of speed and value “no amount of good colour can save bad design or bad value structure”; leaving the colours to a later stage helps her focus more on the design so when finally reaching the stage of initial colours and colour blocking she can pick a colour scheme that reads clearly and reflects the character.
After settling on the final design and colour scheme Claire moves on to the final stage of her design being the final concept - for her job in the game industry this means a painted trunable art piece that will be then passed off to a 3D modeler.
As an example of this process put into practice I went to one of her online portfolios and found concept art of young Elizabeth from the game Bioshock Infinite. In this portfolio Claire Hummel breaks down her methods and the process of designing the young version of Elizabeth.
She details how the Art Director was looking for a design that reflected the characters bright-eyed and youthful demeanour that we see at the beginning of the game when we as the player first meet her; as part of her concept they wanted a historically inspired design with an appealing and modern silhouette - we can see that these concept methods where used to communicate an idea by an outside source, which is what i have found as a common description of concept art and its role in the industry.
In Claire’s notes she researched into types of schoolwear/ uniforms that would be worn by girls in the 1910’s as the game uses this time period for its aesthetics. “While school uniforms weren't nearly as prevalent during the Edwardian era as they are today, we ended up zeroing in on a blouse-and-skirt ensemble that echoed that theme and communicated her youth to the audience.”
Initial Concepts: In her initial concepts stage Claire has created four rough sketches of Elizabeth’s design - the sketches are quick, fluid and coloured in greyscale. The sketches are also annotated with details about the fabric materials and inspiration of each concept, these details serve as a way to show functionality of the concepts and are useful to the different departments of the development team e.g 3D modelling, texturing, lighting and animators; which will come into use later for when the character is rendered into the game.
It can be seen in the second part of her initial concepts that a design has been chosen by the art director and so Claire is tasked with developing the chosen design further along with experimenting with different hairstyles - in these five concepts we can see how Claire is trying to bring out the character’s personality through how Elizabeth wears her uniform. Claire has also shown the details and functionality of these clothes in her initial concepts; these details are to be quick, readable and although it seems to be sketched in passing these sort of details are important to other members of the development team e.g ‘sketch 1’ shows the bottom of the skirt folded over, showing the under layer petticoat; without seeing this the 3D modelers, animators etc. would not know this needs to be added to her in-game render.
Colour Blocking Exploration: We can see in this stage of concept art that a design from the previous initial concepts has been chosen; which Claire has tweaked and refined as she moves onto creating a colour scheme for Elizabeth - the concept art has now transitioned from pencil sketches to flat digital paintings, this is so she can quickly swap out colours in order to experiment and create a visually pleasing palette.
As part of her concept art methodology Claire has created a process in which she takes the same sketch, duplicates it and redraws over it to create a new piece of concept art.
Damage States: This is a more specific piece of concept art for the game due to a story feature where Elizabeth’s attire will gradually become more torn.
Final Concept: The final concept shows a front and back pose.
On reflection and what i’ve taken from this research is that i’ve learned a lot about concept art methods into practice; i feel her method utilises efficiency and visual communication while still maintaining her unique art style.
Research Reference :
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XbEoa
http://claire-hummel-interview.blogspot.com/2013/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html
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