How close should you try to match concepts?

Hayden Zammit

When using concepts found on the net, how close should you be trying to match those concepts?

I always try to match things exact, and often end up spending way too much time getting caught up in tiny detail and often losing interest as a result.

Do studios looking to hire care either way? I know they'd want you to be able to match a concept relatively close, but does it matter how close?

thanks!

Goeddy

totaly depends on the concept.
a lot of concepts you find on the web are heavily stylesized, and you don´t have any theme you have to follow or a style to fit in other then your own.

just to give you an example

those are dragon age 2 concepts, now the games style is totally different.
so as a 3D artist you would have to improvise a lot to get the concept to work in 3D and in your games style.

on the other hand, if you are getting bored with your work before you finish it, that might be a workflowproblem and may have nothing to do with you trying to match a concept exactly.
if you tend to loose yourself in details, then teach yourself to work bolder, or maby try less detailed concepts for a start, and then go with more detailed ones, when you get better at coordinating your workflow.

Hayden Zammit

Ah yeah, I understand with concepts like that you need to improvise. But take this concept that I'm making in 3D for example:



Now, with something like that, are you expected to have the exact same amount of floor panels, distance between beds, size of windows, etc?

ysalex

You're going to get a hundred different answers here. It's all circumstantial. I would imagine in a studio environment, the art lead would make it clear. Some would be strict, some would be loose.

If you're playing around with stuff on the net, as long as the original artist doesn't care you're free to do as you wish. But if you make changes that lessen the work, say scale changes to the tiles that make the scene noisy or the proportions wacky, then you're going to be presenting work that doesn't measure up. If you're going to make changes, make sure they work, make sure that they add to the scene.

Kwramm

make sure to ask questions when in doubt. We had this one guy in my previous company who copied a concept 1:1 in amazing quality. Too bad we wanted a standard riggable pose and not something with the arm held across the chest

Hayden Zammit

You're going to get a hundred different answers here. It's all circumstantial. I would imagine in a studio environment, the art lead would make it clear. Some would be strict, some would be loose.

If you're playing around with stuff on the net, as long as the original artist doesn't care you're free to do as you wish. But if you make changes that lessen the work, say scale changes to the tiles that make the scene noisy or the proportions wacky, then you're going to be presenting work that doesn't measure up. If you're going to make changes, make sure they work, make sure that they add to the scene.

Ah yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't planning on making any major changes.I think there are just times when I'm looking at concepts and I just want to change little things for the sake of modularity, which I'm assuming is acceptable.