With concept art there are many ways something can be designed, whether that is a character or environment. I have decided to compare my work flow to an actual concept artist that has done character designs for indie games. This artist has a whole video on their youtube channel on their flow and process that I have used and will be referring to. The concept artist I am referring to is Trent Kaniuga, the character he is designing is from the indie game “Ikeda the scrap hunter”. The video to me is very insightful with how characters can be properly designed.
Here is a break down of his work flow:
- Figure out your proportions, what this artist does is find a character with similar proportions and somewhat trace over the image. He only traces out the body shape and nothing else. At first I was a little bit shocked at seeing a concept artist who has worked on games like overwatch trace over an image for their work, but then again it is only the outline of the characters body shape and nothing else. I’m not sure if I would be okay doing this in my work but it seems okay if its only for proportions.
- Copy and paste the base you have made several times for clothing and hair ideas. To speed up the work flow, this concept artist uses the symmetry tool when designing areas that are symmetrical, he can turn this tool on and off.
- Block out the shapes of the clothing and hair in grey scale. This means you can focus on the shape and form rather than all of the colour as well.
- Do different versions and try out lots of different things, gender, shapes, hair, body, accessories and outfits. Don’t grow too attached to certain elements of a design as that can limit what you want to do later.
- Experiment with the proportions and shapes of weapons and accessories. What can be highlighted?
- Build up and add details in the designs.
- Use colour in chosen design. Experiment with different palettes.
- After this is done, take chosen design and create a reference sheet featuring various angles, outfit and accessory break downs etc.
Here is a breakdown of my work flow:
- Understand the brief and theme and do plenty of research on the theme before going straight into the project. This can include mindmaps, word association, mood boards based on words on my mind map and word association.
- Create mood boards based on what you need for the character or environment. Clothing, hair, accessories, weapons and items ect. Refer back to boards while designing.
- Think about proportions and facial structure for your character. Experiment with different proportions for your character.
- Move onto hair and clothing design, refer back to mood boards for this. Do several different versions of outfits.
- Do several different colour ideas for each outfit until you can find the one you like the most.
As you can see, both mine and the actual concept artist’s workflows are very different from one another. The first difference is how we handle shape. This artist blocks out shape and explores body shape in the clothing, whereas I do the body structure out of clothing and design clothing after. The artist designs the clothing by painting everything on in greyscale to get tones and values in, I would often sketch the outline of the outfits with the details. A big difference is how we add the shapes and structure, he paints it and I sketch it, painting it seems better to create dynamic shapes overall and to add tone and value so I may give that a go next time. Another big difference is that he does his character designs in a t pose position to show off as much of the design as possible, I drew them in a plain position that makes them very compact and crushed in a way, I will definitely try this position in the future of character designs. The way we do colour ideas is the same, only he had done it in greyscale to add value in for when he colours, so it is reference sheet ready straight after colouring.
Watching an actual concept artist work and to properly observe how they work and do designs has been very insightful and eye opening. I have taken many ways of working from this and know the ways I could improve my work.
Roxanne's Development Blog (Second year) 