Concept Art – Ideas

Arena Shooter Design #1 Pirates

My first concept idea was for a pirate themed arena map, with a dark or light clothed pirate in a pirate cove or islands where civilians have deserted it a long time ago, where the pirate uses either a sniper, a crossbow or a flintlock. For the character I wanted them be a tall character who is already very battle trained and is very used to a crossbow and swords. For the environment I wanted to go with a form of a pirate cove or town which is empty and broken from constant battles as it will offer a varied battleground with lots of cover and open spaces. The other idea for the environment I had was a battle on pirate ships that are circling around abandoned islands, offering battles on the ships and the islands. For the weapon I wanted to go for mainly a crossbow or a flintlock as it would fit the character design I wanted perfectly, but otherwise I wanted to for for a pirate inspired Sniper rifle.

These are different concept arts done by other people that I had taken inspiration from when thinking about the concepts for the pirate arena game I had the idea of. The reason I took inspiration from these images was I thought, out of all the pictures I looked at for transportation, these pictures fit what I wanted for my arena shooter more than any other especially the environment designs.

Arena Shooter Design #2 Western

My second concept idea was for a Western themed arena map. For the character design, I wanted either a cowboy, who is trained in the use of revolvers and other weapons as an outlaw, a sheriff who fights the outlaws and is also trained in weapons, or a Rancher who is trained using a shotgun to defend his ranch. For the environmnet I had the idea of using caverns and mountains, a old western town or forts used by outlaws in the eras for the battlefield as all will offer great cover and a good fighting field. For the weapon I wanted to use the traditional weapons they used at the time with a cartoon style for them of a shotgun, revolver and rifle to match the character I will choose.

These are different concept arts done by other people that I had taken inspiration from when thinking about the concepts for the arena game I had the idea of. The reason I took inspiration from these images was I thought, out of all the pictures I looked at for inspiration, these pictures fit what I wanted for my arena shooter more than any other especially the environment designs.

Arena Shooter Design #3 Medieval

My third concept for the shooter arena map design was a medieval era design with weapons and characters. For the character, I wanted to go with a form of armored knight or beserker which has a shield and a weapon to block and attack with. For the environment, I had the idea to use a town with a huge castle atop the hill, where the knight has to protect the castle and enter the fights, or a battlefield with lots of cover and opportunities to sneak about and attack enemies. For the weapon I had the ideas of a sword and a shield, a mace and a shield, or a bow and arrow to pick off enemies from a distance.

These are different concept arts done by other people that I had taken inspiration from when thinking about the concepts for the arena game I had the idea of. The reason I took inspiration from these images was I thought, out of all the pictures I looked at for inspiration, these pictures fit what I wanted for my arena shooter more than any other especially the environment designs.

Finally, I have decided to use the pirate idea for my final idea and design as I feel it will be the most interesting to make, and it suits my creative ideas for the map idea I have been wanting to make. For my final design I have desided to use the character design of a black hooded male pirate who uses a crossbow, designed by himself, with the environment being a pirate town called whiskey peak which is a town surrounded by water with lots of open spaces and buildings to offer cover and a great battlefield opportunity.

 

What Is Concept Art

Concept art is where you have something that you want to create something, this can be anything from game art to car manufacturing. It starts off with an idea that someone has and it visualised by drawing. It is done this way because it makes it really easy to get the ideas down as fast as possible. Concept art is a necessity if you are working on a visual project either on your own or with a group of people.

The benefit of doing concept art even when it is only you in a team is because you get to know what you are making before its made, this means that you can make fast changes to your original design without having to put in hours of work. Also if the project is put on hold or someone joins it then you can have a catch up and refresh on what is being made. If this is not done then with a game one half may be styled on way and the other a totally different way. This can be really off-putting in the game and take you out of the experience of the game as it doesn’t flow well.

Concept art is more commonly used when there is a big project is being done like a game, where there will be a lot of people working on it. This is done because everyone in the project needs clarity on what they need to do to contribute to the project, also to make sure that what everyone makes would fit together in a final game. This could be a big problem if not enough concept art isn’t done people may have too much creative freedom and assets don’t match up in the final product.

The downfalls of concept art is that it takes a long time to do, this can add a lot of time onto a project. It takes a long time because you need to have the artists sit down and com up with the ideas and style of the game. This is done so that nothing is out-of-place during development. Another drawback is that you need more people on the team to do all the concept art, this can be because you have specialised people to make concept art look good on paper. For bigger companies where roles are more specific this can mean having a team to design the concept art and then the artist following what they are given. For a small games studio where one person may have to do more than one job, the artist may have to spend time doing concept art when they could be better spending their time making models for the game.

Concept art is one of the biggest areas of development in a lot of industries, this is because it sets the foundation of a project. It can take a long time to get concept art to a standard in which people can work from them. This is because to make things easier a lot of different styles of a character are made like in different poses. This gives the artist to get all the detail in that’s necessary. Also it can show how the character should act so the animators can get the movement right.

Concept art is not only used in the games industry, it is used in a lot of other media like Film, animation and comic books. Concept art started out for automotive industry to show the design of a car before it is made. An example of concept art being used was for the Last of Us.

Another example is for a character model. This concept has a full body picture of what the character will look like, his stance shows how the character will act like. It also shows the colour of the character and style which shows the style of how the character. There is also different views of the character so that the 3D modeller can take those and make an accurate model out of them. There is also a close up on the face to, this is because there is more detail in the face as that is where people look on a character. this means that the artist can put more detail in them.