What you need to know about Concept Art and the video game industry as an artist

Or some basic knowledge I wished I got 10 years ago about the Video-game industry as an artist.

Hello Steemians !

Ten years ago I begun drawing seriously. I was 16, still looking for something to do with my life as school teaches us so well. At the time, there was no smartphones, no real internet and I was chatting with my friends through MSN ( I have to say, the wizz misses me dearly). To learn how to draw was through books and friends for me and the rare tutorials my dad could find on the internet were very basics. Needless to say, the video game industry was just beginning to grow and no one really knew what was going on on that field (in my area at least).

I had no idea what was a concept artist, a game artist, a marketing artist, a game designer, an environment designer or a character designer and so on. For me, everyone was game designer. So much easier to remember.

That's why I want to share the little bean of knowledge I have acquired since then. And hopefully, help some of you find their ways through the Industry jungle of weird and epic titles. =)

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First, let's find our way in the multiple titles and positions here, I will present a few only, as the industry grows fast and new positions seem to be created every day (joke aside, it evolves rapidly and organicly so you can cross fields pretty easily on the artistic side to the least).

Let's begin with an overview of a studio (production side) :

Game Designer : the GD creates the game. He is in charge of looking for the mechanics, patterns and underlaying stuff of the game. On Super Mario let's say, it's the guy in charge of defining that the game is about a guy running from point A to point B, getting coins on the way and avoiding turtle shells and Koopa's along the way.

Developpers : I won't talk a lot about them I don't know anything about these guys haha (they create the game and implement your art in the game, they are the invisible structure of the game, think of them of the masons of a beautiful church.)(they are really really important, and really really wanted, if you want a job in the industry, learn how to code.)

Sound designers : they do music =D, they are in chareg of creating the music, sound effects of the game to bring it to the next level. Astonishing work in my opinion (sorry I have no real knowledge about them, feel free to fill the blanks in the comments I want to know more !)

Writers : They write stories, quests, and every text in the game =)

Now about....

Artists : The guys in charge of the aesthetics of the game, we will talk about the different kind (keep in mind that for each position, you should have a professional quality skill level) :

• The Concept Artist :

In charge of concepting the game, he finds the visuals, the style of the game, the character designs, the environments... His job is to convey an idea, how the idea of the GD's, writers etc will translate into the game ? The drawings don't need to be beautiful, the artist must be quick and with a strong sense of design (ideally haha) to be able to convey the right feeling to his team.

Here is an exemple of what I did for the RUNES project for the different rooms. It is messy, not beautiful at all, but we could vote, discuss and chose for the best ones during the team meeting.

• The 2D Artist (or 2D Game Artist)

This dude or dudette is the one who will render the beautiful concepts into final assets. He should have strong skills of fundamentals, lights etc (I mean, the Concept artist too but here it is usually critical as it is the art that players will see at the end).

When I say render or concepting by the way, it means everything a game needs, fo exemple in Skyrim, whether it is the chairs, the tables, the doors, the walls, the rocks, that bottle of wine or that stupid chicken you shouldn't kill, everything is concepted, designed and rendered. So you will have to accept to draw some not-really-interesting-stuff a lot of time because you have usually more objects assets than characters in a game =) Personnally I don't care I love it haha.

Check out this bed for Runes, I drew the lines of the bed + the matress in order to be able to quickly change the asset if needed. If I want a broken bed for exemple, it will then take less time than drawing each bed of the game. And I did that for all the assets.

• The environment artist

This one is kind of a trap I think in the sense of basically, you have a Level designer who will design the level to be interesting oon a gameplay point of view and then, land it over the Environment artist who will have to paint over it (Actually I always thought it was the same person but no...). It can be a 3D block-in (Basic shapes in 3D of the level). So your job here is to make a 3D basic shaped environment really beautiful according to the game's logic.

Concept of the Temple's Hall for Runes, you can see how I explain every details in the temple through schemes or text

• Illustrator

The illustrator makes beautiful images for the game, whether it be for marketing purpose (sometimes it falls to the marketing artist), or for events or for artbooks or for ingame purpose...

• 3D Artists

I am not familiar with the 3D artists, they sculpt the concepts done for the game in order to implement them in the engineand you can usually find character artists (3D modelling of characters), 3D environment artists.... They have quite their own family with their own specialties as well (but unfortunately I never worked in a highly specialized environment, as you can find in big companies =))

And that's it !
Hopefully you learned something new, I wasn't rambling too much and if you have any comments, feedbacks (on my writing or complementary informations such as 3D artists in specialized companies, I know it is very specific sometimes. or about Sound designers) feel free to share them !

Also feel free to ask questions if you have i will be glad to answer them =)

Have a good day,
Cheers !

RUNES is a personal project I did with friends. It is a rogue-like (a game where your goal is to finish a level as fast as possible) where you have to find 4 runes of elements in a temple (like a maze) in order to defeat the final boss