Task 14 Planing and Concepting

I’m re-visiting some of my early blogs due to a very helpful industry talk/workshop.

During this blog I’m going to be talking about planning and concepting in this blog post and how I go from initial ideas to final products. I didn’t get taught that many techniques or methods to get to a final piece, until I came to university. I would sketch out lots of ideas really small and quick so I can combine and further my ideas till I would come up with a really solid design.

I used to take life drawing classes out of school and I used to draw blind and also draw whilst not looking at the paper this helps you with hand to eye co-ordination and also can then further the speed of you jotting your ideas onto paper.

Since being at university I have learnt a number of different methods. This past week I have learnt a number of small tricks as well, due to a great workshop from a lead concept artist and a senior concept artist. Most of the techniques I have seen or used before but forgotten how helpful they are. One of these methods is called the silhouette method here is what it looks like.

    

I have used this method because it is very quick and you can jot your ideas down straight away. Also you can then use a layer mask to add detail to the specififc ideas that you will then choose to futher concept.

Here are five enhanced versions of my very simple designs for my reef characters project. As you can see it is very rough but its not supposed to be a polished piece yet at this point as im still working on the outfits and I might have a change of heart and decide to blend to outfits.

I would then complete a final design and put my final idea into storyboards so I could show how my idea would look in certain environments. Before going into photoshop I would do really quick tumbnail sketches that would literally be only for my eyes just to understand some quick compositions and where certain main objects should be in the scene. After this I will do a larger thumbnail and using markers and biros to produce some tonal values and some simply lighting. Then I would choose to do some quick black and white scenes as you can set your tones and values really quickly and have an overall working image. Also a good tip I have picked up is only to use stock brushes and mainly the round brush for doing quick photoshop paints.

I find if you do not plan or go through cerntain thought proceses and methods you will not reach a consise and well thought out final product. So I tend to set myself a certain amount of time for each process so I can spend my time the most afficiantly.

For some quick environment work we got taught to use 3dsmax to create a 3d alley way, we then took certain renders i.e. z depth and group mask to help with our digital painting in photoshop. We used a mixture of textures and handpainting to create a dark mysterious alley. The talk/ workshop was very helpful and im glad we had it and its thanks to our course that we have been given all these opportunities to meet industry workers and gain valuable knowledge.