Games

“The generic thought when people think about concept art is the polished, very highly rendered work that companies often share towards the end of production.”

“That isn’t what a concept artist does day-to-day.”

“More than 50% of their time will be spent reference gathering,” he said. “Part of that is gathering images, but that also includes reading articles, watching media, assessing the competition, watching videos about the way things work, consuming scientific papers, literally anything vaguely related to the project will be gathered by concept artists, sometimes in a repository like Miro or Slack or Pinterest, but always in the head of the concept artist.”
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“Something that I have found difficult for non-artists to understand is that the ‘early messy stuff’ that non-arty folks insist can be ‘fixed by a human artist later’ is where the best work is done. You cannot brute force your way to the end conclusion of an idea – you gotta work that out.”

Vitally, concept artists were keen to convey that their jobs don’t simply end when the pre-production phase of development is over. Their work continues throughout a project, which makes their internalised bank of influences and references vital to maintaining consistency – not just visually, but also when it comes to world-building and even informing gameplay systems.

“This is what allows [concept artists] to draw stuff fast for production, how they sort between ideas that fit or don’t fit within the aesthetic constraints of a project,” said Kirby Crosby. “In a pinch, we will regularly be drawing scribbles in 1 to 10 minutes that gets a basic idea across.”