Achieving correct proportions

Pleb Tier

I'm trying to replicate this concept piece. Not sure who its by because there's no artist listed, but you can find it here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/13585-Gallery-Squadron-42-Concept-Art

Currently I'm just blocking out the scene trying to get the proportions right, but I'm wondering how close you're expected to get to the concept in the industry. I don't really want to use the concept as an environment background and just trace it, because i want to train myself to see the forms correctly if that makes sense.

Is this just one of those things that gets better with practice? My current workflow is start with a random element, and kinda try to scale and arrange everything in relation to that. Is that how you guys normally do it? Any tips are welcome!

mutatedjellyfish

It really depends on what goal of the concept art is but given that you don't have the artist right there to talk to, it's somewhat up to you in the end. Working off of concept art is definitely a skill that you practice and get better at. Concept art is very often imperfect, especially in perspective and proportion, and you may find that even when you match it it will feel totally different in 3d.

Normally what I do is try to match the concept as close as possible as fast as possible, similar to what you've done already. I work in Maya where I create a new camera and import the concept art piece as an image plane on that camera. I then make some primitives and try to match them in perspective to the concept art by moving that camera around until it matches. It's useful to try to match 2 different objects this way to properly sync the 2. This takes a lot of tinkering but you'll learn a lot about the "truth" of the concept art this way and as you find pieces that don't line up right or areas where perspective is cheated or shortcutted you'll learn how to "read" concept art better.

From there, once you have the camera positioned ok, I put a key frame on the camera to save its position and start blocking in the complete space as quickly as possible. This gives me the true sense of the 3d space and I can really start to make judgment calls from there. 

Often times you want to keep the spirit or the feel of the concept art but take the reins and do what's best for the actual 3d space. 

Pleb Tier

mutatedjellyfish said:

It really depends on what goal of the concept art is but given that you don't have the artist right there to talk to, it's somewhat up to you in the end. Working off of concept art is definitely a skill that you practice and get better at. Concept art is very often imperfect, especially in perspective and proportion, and you may find that even when you match it it will feel totally different in 3d.

Normally what I do is try to match the concept as close as possible as fast as possible, similar to what you've done already. I work in Maya where I create a new camera and import the concept art piece as an image plane on that camera. I then make some primitives and try to match them in perspective to the concept art by moving that camera around until it matches. It's useful to try to match 2 different objects this way to properly sync the 2. This takes a lot of tinkering but you'll learn a lot about the "truth" of the concept art this way and as you find pieces that don't line up right or areas where perspective is cheated or shortcutted you'll learn how to "read" concept art better.

From there, once you have the camera positioned ok, I put a key frame on the camera to save its position and start blocking in the complete space as quickly as possible. This gives me the true sense of the 3d space and I can really start to make judgment calls from there. 

Often times you want to keep the spirit or the feel of the concept art but take the reins and do what's best for the actual 3d space. 

Thanks for the response, I'll keep at it and just hope that I get better with practice. Also I didn't think to keyframe my camera. Definitely doing that to save my camera position  

Larry

For concept art what i normally do is take something as a measurement, in this case it would propably be that middle opening in the concept that says "loading" above it, and measure everything according to that. E.g. the sides next to that "loading" part are about 2 times wider than that, the frontal piece is 1,5 times as big as that, etc