Concept art
Hey everyone this is my first post on this forum, I am a recent Game Art grad from Full Sail and have been having issues finding work in my field after graduation thought i would post of couple of pics for critique. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=714255308659258&set=a.112235725527889.25592.100002243865386&type=1
https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10690207_713565425394913_7862626078620088437_n.jpg?oh=54763203c348d333936a3c2c9f16b323&oe=54E995E6
https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10690207_713565425394913_7862626078620088437_n.jpg?oh=54763203c348d333936a3c2c9f16b323&oe=54E995E6
Replies
As for your art itself, I'd recommend focusing on your rendering of 3D shapes, getting that skin smoother on the various forms. I'm a pencil/sketch artist myself so I'm not going to be able to tell you how directly, but I can point you toward CtrlPaint which has some great video tutorials on exactly the skills you're seeking to improve.
http://imgur.com/533bGqK
These are really all over the place, and don't work as strong images on a very fundamental level - there would be many issues even if they were just linework, so I think you would benefit from nailing a good base before trying to render the shinies on the "T&A", as I'll call it.
The first image (the one with the guy with the panther(?) and the girl), I'm not certain at all what's going on in this image. I mean, I can see that it's a guy with a panther and a girl, but I can't tell why, and can't infer much about the situation. Why is he walking through the desert (is it a desert?) with a panther, why is that girl out in the middle of the desert, and what is she even leaning/sitting on? The guy doesn't look like he's stepping over anything, he looks like he's standing in place and this wall of some sort of material I'm not sure of is inserted between his legs, and that wall is also the floor. The composition of the scene has no sensible perspective or depth, and the information present is difficult to interpret. There seems like a strong light source behind all of them, but the guy is casting no shadow from that light source, and the light source doesn't match any of the specular highlights present on his (or the girl's) body. His front foot appears to be casting a shadow in the opposite direction. The canvas looking texture it looks like you've overlayed onto the ground doesn't offer any information about what sort of ground it is, and none of the characters in the scene (except perhaps the panther) are interacting with it in any realistic manner.
It looks like you can portray some decent shapes if you've got a reference (again, this is an assumption that reference was used, particularly for the human bodies in some capacity), but the overall rendering style is fairly inconsistent, and they come off as very "airbrushy", and without confidence.
My overall impression is that the digital medium is something you're trying to rely on too much, or maybe it's something you haven't been using for very long (which is fine). What makes a good painting, or drawing, or what have you - isn't that you can swap to all kinds of brushes or blend things a certain way or overlay patterns/textures when available - those are just tools, you can do amazing stuff with the basic round brush (even if it's a hard round brush).
Look at other illustrations and images similar to the ones you've done, from long time professionals and artists you admire. Study how the characters in a scene interact with their environment, look at how they portray depth, and the physical aspects of everything in the scene. I think you can do some decent stuff if the information is there (reference) or it's something you're very familiar with, but understanding how to form a good, solid, readable base for an image will help you out a lot.
If you want to be a concept artist, your designs need to inform us about the characters and the world they live in, even without an action to tell the story. It needs to be inherent in the design itself. I get that one of the guys is some sort of Roman gladiator (not historically accurate in any way). But who is the woman? Why the panther? Where are they, even? What is each character's relationship to the other?
You can make many more design decisions that inform us about these characters. Hopefully those design decisions can be informed and bolstered by proper research on the subject matter. In their current form, your characters have little substance or depth to them, as relatable people or as interesting designs.
Besides the inconsistent lighting direction, it looks like you're highlighting with white and shading with black in some cases. This isn't good practice, as light doesn't behave this way. Typically you highlight with warmer colors and shade with cooler ones, or vice versa. On a basic level, that's a good rule of thumb. Blacks and whites tend to muddy up your colors and make them lose their inherent saturation in exchange for a darker or lighter value. Don't let the colors get washed out like that.