I suck at concept art
ngon master
I'm trying to improve my general game art skills, I've never been great with photoshop and actually fleshing out sketches and ideas. Attempted making a sword, turned into a dagger, spent too long on this, probably about 1.5 hours.
More pieces to come.
More pieces to come.
Replies
You'll get it, but do keep at it. I remember when I first started out, it would take me three or four hours to do something that now can be done in 10 minutes. What used to take me 30 hours of trying, redoing, etc, now takes me 2 hours. And I've still got a hell of a long way to go.
I never said I didn't like doing it, its just painful sometimes working with it. A lot different than painting in real life looking at a still life, or sketching in a note book.
did 3, 10 to 30 minute sketches this time trying to get an idea for a scene to go with the sword, developing concepts for the scene and then modeling them, trying to get a real work flow going, fluff out my portfolio.
Baggy clothed spy, the arm is really bad on it, just noticed that
Tavern, trying out a sketch style, guessed on the perspective.
Weird armored monster?
I feel the same though, I always see some awesome art on here then go draw/paint stuff and think 'Wow, I suck' but one thing that I've had to tell myself is that 'I am not a Concept Artist'! Obviously someone whose sole job is to create stunning pieces of artwork to pitch game ideas would have to put out top quality work, but as a 3D Artist, I think the ability to get across clear ideas is far more important than visual beauty.
Unfortunately there are some extra talented dudes who are just amazing at everything, like those kids at school who would be top of the class as well as captain of all the sports teams. Although I'm sure the only thing that has got those people to where they are is a LOT of practice.
You'll notice a lot of studios who offer employment advice state that 2D and concept art skills are 'beneficial or preferable' and I honestly don't think a company would throw your reel or resume in the trash because you're not Van Gogh if you see what I mean.
The dagger at the top looks great and all it needs it a little more time spent on the blending, especially around the handle, and you'd be on for a good looking little concept.
I'm not saying its a good thing, but I'm stoked when i finish a 2d piece in less than 6-8 hours.
Granted, if you just wanted to come up with a sword, I would suggest that you start of by doing quick, chicken-scratch thumbnails to get a general idea of the shape you want to do. after you figure it out, then move into doing the nice Photoshop paint job. That should shorten your time, and stop things like the sword turning into a dagger.
The thing that really bugs me about the dagger is that it's really short. The blade is almost as fat as it is long, which is can work if you're going for more of a push dagger style, but the handle grip's width in relation to its length makes it seem that a whole hand wouldn't quite fit it.
The blade also becomes a bit of a problem as the tang (the part of the blade that goes inside the handle) is very thin, and the blade might break.
Maybe something more like this?:
think of something worth drawing, focus on the parts that make it interesting, new and cool, then give it your best shot with faith in the outcome. The point of concept art is communicating strong ideas, so you need to be doing that first and foremost, and the rest will follow
edit: here's a tip I just remembered too- sometimes a blank canvas is very daunting. put stuff down as soon as possible, even if it's random scratches and marks.. the brain is a great pattern finding machine, and sometimes ideas emerge from the mess and you just need to fill in the gaps. I remember in one of gauss's concept threads someone suggested overlaying lots and lots of images in different blend modes, and picking bits out of the madness to form new concepts.. it's a great exercise
Well you know what. I can't count on all me digits the amount of sketchbooks I've looked through that have been active and ongoing for multiple years - two or three seems a good average, of people doing self portrait after gesture study after self portrait. And you know what. Two or three years later. Their shit still looks the same and it's still boring.
It is ABSOLUTELY about confidence, and the drive to make your cool ideas look cool and show people how cool they are. From there, people will either like it or they won't, but artists should never be in it for the replies so that's irrelevant.
Cheers to you!
Nicely rendered knife! BTW
I've always had more luck painting by blocking out the silhouettes with broad brush strokes, I'll try the line idea though.
Blocked out the low poly, its around 1k tris, I want to keep it around 2-3k.
I'm still working with the high poly, the edge flow kinda sucks on the basemesh so I have a lot of clean up to do.
Tweaked the proportions a bit, still need to smooth a lot of stuff out, but it matches the concept art pretty well, still not sure exactly how I want to do the top and bottom of the handle, I'll figure it out when I do the detail work... Do I really need a high poly for something like this? or are there better work around?
I'm amazed how well I did with the lighting in the concept, only a few areas are different than how it turned out on the model with 1 directional light.
do keep drawing tho
Lampoly has a good point, it depends what you are really looking for, good painting(rendering) or good concepting skills(Design, choices, style)?
If you are looking to get better at values, I would suggest to study light and values from digital images first, then onto studying reality values etc.. . Bring in a good picture into photoshop, put it in black and white and focus and light accents. check what give pure white, pure black and what values are displayed onto different lighting conditions... its a long process but the will to become better is a very good start.
If you are looking to get better at design, study the functionality of things, the culture, read or watch lots of movies and study their design choices.... if that make any sense.
but always keep in mind what you want to become better at, because doing everything at once is brainwrecking.
I hope this helps.
Doodle page getting ideas, listening to crazy new artists, nothing pretty besides the sperm with the mustache.
Drew with small sketchy lines, liquify to fix scale and shapes, silhouette, added mid gray line work, liquify one last time, drew in scene, trying to get some atmosphere, no lighting yet.
I want to add some humor into the scene not sure if this is going to be present/future/past/fantasy etc etc or whatever, but I want it to be bizarre. Expect a urinal somewhere.
More detailing, a bit busy right now...
and unfortunetly for the lazy, theres no other way to do good drawing expect for practicing and drawing alot.
Getting the scale right in 3D and blocking it out.
I kinda like how the distant trees look, but I really need to figure out how cartoony vs how real in terms of the stylization. Time to start looking at fable and borderlands for ideas.
How is this?
http://i34.tinypic.com/257nio8.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/9gdj4p.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/15ryv5y.jpg
http://i38.tinypic.com/2dvu13a.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/1690nlz.jpg
http://i37.tinypic.com/icmxkh.jpg
http://i36.tinypic.com/1y38mu.jpg
this looks really nice, I would explore down this route some more!
You should learn the basics first before attemping to do more complicated things. Having knowledge about perspective color theory, anatomy and composition etc will grealy improve how everything comes together. Also just block out the scene with colors and shapes to a rough idea of what you want, this way you can tell from the start whether the scene will work or not. Also try not to use pitch black uless your drawing a blackhole.
Also drawing from life or drawing realistic things will help you understand these theories better. You can then take these concepts and then twist them into any sylization you please.
So I know whats going on, gotta low poly barrel (508 tri I'm gonna do LOD's), there's 3 smooth groups, top sides bottom, got it. And there's the high poly on the right, I was hopping to get the bumps like on the high poly, but the shading is still almost exactly like the low poly, besides the top being less flat and the bump getting a little extra push, what should I do to fix it?
Not much more than color-ized doodles from my sketch book
getting ideas for the scene
You take us back to the basics, enforce through your learning what is the most important part of all conceptual artwork - the idea.
It might not be photorealistic. It might not be promotional image worthy by any means. But you get your ideas across very effectively and very clearly for your skill level. Trying new things, going again and again.
Keep at it my friend. It is, very strangely, a joy to look through this thread.
I like the direction you're going with the concept art, all I can really say is keep it up
So I should have hard edges around the 'rings'?
I'll play with it.
Better, but not exactly what I'm looking for, I think I'll try xnormal.
I don't know what way I should have the normals if anyone wants to help me out, I want the transitions between the bumps to be smooth, I have the top of the UV's set up a bit weird but don't worry about it, its not what I'm trying to figure out how to fix.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2184180/highpoly%20barrel.obj
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2184180/lowpolybarrel.obj
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2184180/Lowpolybarrel2.obj
Had to add the eye and touch up the gore, but there's still a lot of refining left to do.
Time to talk about the general idea:
post-apocalyptic!ish
Modern technology but being used in harmony with older tech, not everything got destroyed or damaged for that matter, its for a more badass Zelda adventure game, but more surreal and guns.
Gonna get some photo reference together and start working on assets and critters, of course going to do the concept art before working on each piece.
I made it more Dali-like
cool :P
as far as concepting goes, you could always try blocking things out with a marker (sillhouette), get the larger shapes happening... working at smaller size for enviro stuff, and as far as human drawing skills go, just gotta practice anatomy and life drawing.
But i am digging the 3d 'arty' peice from a while back... with the trees. Really cool visuals.
edit: those 'fake' hand-drawn textures aren't bad. I'd usually say try and hand draw them for a better effect but looks cool. Maybe throw some more colour in there, like a cooler colour in the shadows.
The normals kinda suck ass on the ground but you get the idea.
Trying to figure out how to use textures but keep the cartoon-ish vibe, I really don't want to go cell shaded, and figuring out how to make these trees work close up is giving me lots of head aches. I'm kinda in the limbo land of styles trying to get everything to work together. first ever attempt at making low poly grass/shrubs, worked really well, a little faint though. Just throwing the different props in the scene for fun.