Concept Art Training Course

Concept Art (Adapted from a forum post by Seedling, aimed more at assignments. Please see paste "Perspective 101" first)

 

So you like drawing characters, and monsters, and swords and guns and space-ships. It has come to your attention that there are people who do this professionally for movies, television, and games. You’ve got a sketchbook in your hands, and you are wondering how to get from the sketchbook to the job. What sorts of things should you draw? What sorts of mediums should you learn? Should you draw from photos? From life? From other artist’s work? From imagination?

 

 

What is Concept Art?

Concept art is a subset of illustration.

 

What is illustration? Dictionary.com says this of the word “illustrate”:

 

1.      to furnish (a book, magazine, etc.) with drawings, pictures, or other artwork intended for explanation, elucidation, or adornment

2.      to make clear or intelligible, as by examples or analogies; exemplify

3.      3. Archaic. to enlighten

4.      to clarify one's words, writings, etc., with examples: To prevent misunderstandings, let me illustrate.

 

So, an “illustration” is art that communicates something.

 

There is much of fine art that falls into the category of illustration. Any imagine that tells a story or represents an object is illustrative, whether it is communicating something as complex as a scene from the Lord of the Rings, or as simple a thing as “a horse” or “a man”.

 

What makes concept art different from illustration is that the audience isn’t the person who reads a book, plays a game, or watches a movie. The primary audience of concept art is other artists, and other people involved in the making of the final product. Concept art is the blueprint that is used to make more art. It is also used to communicate with the holder of the intellectual property rights involved in a project, and it can also be the leverage that is used to get funding for a project.

 

Value

 

“Value” is the amount of light or dark in an image. A black and white photograph is all values and no colors. It is black, white, and all of the shades of gray in between, is “shading”.

 

The following assignments should be done small and quickly! Don’t agonize over these. They are intended to get you thinking about values and then quickly moving on with a new skill in your pocket. If you take too long on them, they’ll get boring; if they get boring, you won’t finish them, and if you don’t finish them, the assignments won’t help you as much.

 

******Week 1 – Many Ways to Render Value, Making Value Decisions, Shading Non-White Objects *****

 

Go through your house and find a hand-full of small, white objects. Look for simple shapes like a matchbox, or the lid of a tube of toothpaste, a q-tip. Set the items on a white sheet of paper, and point a strong light at them.

 

Now, what are you drawing with? How many ways can you think to shade with that tool? Chance are you’ve got either a pencil or a pen. With a pen, you can shade by hatching (making parallel lines), cross-hatching (parallel lines crossing over parallel lines), scribbling, stippling, or making other funky little marks. This can all be done with or without outlining the subject.

 

A pencil can do everything a pen can do. And additionally, a pencil can be gently rubbed across the surface of the paper in a manner that doesn’t leave lines. It can be removed with an eraser. It can be smudged somewhat using a paper stump, too, but don’t be tempted to rub it around with your fingers, because fingers are oily, and the oil will stain the paper and interfere with the particles of graphite. Use a scrap of paper to keep your hand from smudging up your drawing if necessary.

 

So, you have your drawing tool, and you have your collection of very simple objects. Draw each object (and the shadow it casts) using a different shading technique.

 

Be fast and loose! If you are using a pen, try this exercise without first doing any drawing with a pencil. Try methods that you’ve never used before. Try methods that seem absurd, like filling up space with little squiggles. Draw with clouds of cross-hatches just vaguely in the right place, disregarding edges. See if you can find a technique that’s quick and fun and that captures a decent range of values.

 

When a photographer prints a black-and-white photograph, they make a very important decision: how much of the photograph, if any, is going to be the white of the paper, and how much of it, if any, is going to be the blackest possible black. When you work with values, you get to make the same decision. You can choose to make a drawing range from the white of the paper down to just a pale gray. You can choose to coat most of the paper in compressed charcoal – one of the darkest (and messiest) drawing materials – and leave only a few highlights.

 

An image that ranges from white to gray is considered to be “high key”. An image that ranges from gray to black is “low key”. A “neutral gray” is right in the middle between black and white. “Contrast” refers to the difference in the image between its lights and its darks. An image that has both strong whites and strong blacks has high contrast. An image made of subtle grays, that avoids black and white, is low contrast.

 

Pick another item from your collection of white objects. Draw it twice. The first time, draw it “high key” – meaning leave most of it white, with just some gentle grays for the shadows, and maybe one or two subtle dark spots in the darkest shadows. The second time, go for a lower key. Make the dark parts of the image massively dark, and make everything gray, except for the highlights, which should remain the white of the paper. OR draw the item first with high contrast, then with low contrast.

 

There is no one “right” way to accurately draw value – there is only what you prefer to do. Which did you prefer?

 

The point of drawing white objects is that A. there is no color to confuse the issue, and B. it’s really easy to see what the light does on the surface of a white object. But not everything in the world is conveniently white. So, take another trip around your house. Round up a black item and a gray item. Set these on your white sheet of paper under the strong light, along with one of your white items. And draw.

 

******Week 2 – Fun with Value*****

 

You must be sick of all those dice and buttons by now! Time for some fun: invent a creature or a robot that has black segments and white segments. Think of killer whales and police cars as examples. And, using what you have learned. . . draw it!

 

 

From Life to Imagination

So you’ve got your sketchbook. You’ve been having fun drawing Spider Man, and you’ve had some folks tell you that you should draw from life, but dang it, still lifes are dull! Why bother with them? How is a drawing of a shoe supposed to help you to draw better superheroes?

 

These assignments should help you to answer those questions.

 

*********Week 3: From Still-Life to Imagination************

 

Pick a real-life object to draw. It can be a shoe, a car, a tree – anything that is available to you for direct observation. Draw it.

 

Using that first drawing as a guide, draw the same object from the same position – but change it somehow. Add an imagined element. If it’s a car, you could change the curves of the lines to make it look like it belongs in a science-fiction movie. Or turn it into a hovercraft. Or give it a crazy flame paint job and fins and monster truck wheels. Or make it steam-punk, or aquatic, or turn it into a thousand-year-old rusted wreck.

 

By doing this in two steps, you have both the benefit of direct observation, and you get the challenge of coming up with something from imagination and communicating that thing.

 

 

********Week 4: From Self Portrait to Imagination and Half-Imagined Environment ************

 

Self portraits are hard! They are also the best way to prepare yourself for drawing one of the most difficult and yet ubiquitous subjects that every illustrator must draw: the human. If you want to be an illustrator of any stripe, then you must learn to draw people. Don’t be afraid of messing up; just try it and keep trying it until your results don’t stink.

 

For this assignment, set up a mirror and draw yourself. No, don't use a photograph, use a mirror. All drawn? Great! Now add some invented element to your drawing. It could be a crazy hat, or a plate-mail shirt, or a crazy facial tattoo. You can turn yourself into a Klingon, or add faerie wings.

 

Whatever you add, the challenge will be to make the imagined elements look like they belong in the drawing. It should look like the entire image was drawn from observation.

 

Now instead of drawing yourself, draw a landscape or interior space. Add in an element from imagination. For instance, you could draw a hallway in your home, but draw in a giant crack across the floor filled with lava. Or draw the buildings along your street, but give them turrets and towers and cannons. Or draw a field with trees, and add a herd of invented animals.

 

Once again, the challenge will be to make the imagined elements look like they were observed along with the observed elements.

 

The Use of Photography in Illustration

There are four ways in which photography can be useful to illustrators: direct copy, inspiration, reference, and inclusion.

 

Since the invention of the camera, many famous artists have made museum-quality art by copying directly from photographs. But what gets overlooked by novice artists is that A. these artists took the photographs themselves, B. these artists already knew how to successfully paint the subject, and C. these artists were in most cases not concept artists.

 

Copying photographs is a shortcut for illustrators who have already mastered a subject and who need to hurry. For a novice, a habit of copying photographs is a crutch that will hinder your progress.

 

But this does not mean you should never go near a photograph. On the contrary, it is through photographs that we are allowed to see parts of the world that would never be visible to us otherwise. Use photographs for inspiration liberally!

 

By “inclusion” I mean using a photograph directly in your art. This applies to collage, and also applies to making photorealistic textures for 3D models. Inclusion isn’t useful to you if you are trying to learn the basic skills necessary to a concept artist.

 

And what about that abused word “reference”? Reference doesn’t mean copying. It means using the information contained in an image to better understand a subject. For instance, if you are going to draw a manatee, and you don’t happen to have either a live manatee or model of a manatee on hand. The next thing to do would be to find photographs of manatees, and use those images to gain an understanding of the shape of a manatee in 3D. Using that 3D mental image, you can then draw a manatee from any angle, in any pose.

 

********Week 5: Concept Art from Found Photographs and Your Own Photographs ****************

 

Pick a subject or multiple subjects, such as a llama, or an antique car, or a preying mantis. Use either the library or the internet to find photographs of that subject from different angles. Study the subject until you feel that you have a good understanding of it. Then, draw the object from a perspective not used in any of your reference photographs. Refer back to the photos at any time for information you might need, such as the shape of a preying mantis’ leg joints, or the proportions of the car’s wheels to the car’s length.

 

Now you will need a camera.

 

Hunt down an interesting subject and photograph it from several angles. Repeat the previous assignment using these photographs that you took yourself.

 

If you ever intend to use photographs as a part of your art-making process, then you need to get in the habit of taking your own pictures. The internet is full of pictures of the darndest things, but the quality is often awful – and you do not own the rights to those images. So get yourself a camera and learn the basics of photography.

 

Art Direction

There are many myths about art. One of them is that art is a noble solitary endeavor. It is only sometimes noble, and in the context of illustration it’s rarely solitary. Many artists emerge from their education without ever really having confronted the idea that as an illustrator you have to work with other people who will be telling you what to do. The result is an uncomfortable clash of egos, disillusionment for the illustrator, and a headache for the art director.

 

So instead of waiting for your first experience with art direction to be an upsetting one, you can try it out now, as a game.

 

 

***********Week 6: the Art Direction Game*************

 

Draw something from imagination. It can be any subject whatsoever. Don’t spend any more than about an hour on the drawing. This is about getting an idea down on paper and then iterating on it.

 

http://www.random.org/ Now go here and generate a random number. [min-1 max-20]

Now roll the die or draw a number from the hat. Look up that number on the chart below.

 

On a fresh sheet of paper, draw the same subject again. But alter it according to the directions below according to the number you picked. Don’t spend any more than an hour on the drawing. Do some research before you start if you do not know what the directions are asking for or if you need to get your thoughts in order.

 

Go!

 

1. Make it creepy.

2. Make it in the style of Art Nouveau.

3. Reduce it to utter simplicity.

4. Double the number of interesting details.

5. Redraw it in the style of a Chinese ink painting.

6. Add foliage.

7. Add horns, spikes, or other pointy bits.

8. Replace one of the major elements with something cute.

9. Replace part with an element of Japanese architecture or culture.

10. Replace part with an element of African architecture or culture.

11. Add an element of Gothic architecture.

12. Draw it again, as if it has been destroyed by something.

13. Add defensive elements.

14. Remove the item or character of primary focus, and focus on the secondary elements.

15. Pick one of the items or characters involved and redraw only that, in detail.

16. Draw the same subject from a different perspective.

17. Make it high-tech.

18. Make it low-tech.

19. Add a character or creature that interacts with the main object of focus.

20. Re-arrange the elements of the picture, or draw it in a different pose.

 

Try doing another iteration or two on your subject. Or pick a new subject. Or, have a draw buddy write up a new list of twenty instructions for you to test yourself with. Have fun with this.

 

Art direction can either be an annoying limitation, or it can be a challenge that gives you opportunity to flex your creative muscles, demonstrate your versatility, and have a bit of fun. The difference between those two states is your attitude.

 

Perspective, From the Beginning

You’ve probably tried some basic perspective by now – you started with a cube, and perhaps you went from there to a street scene or a castle. And at least one person has told you that you’ve got the perspective wrong. It’s hard. How do you get from a basic understanding of perspective to the point where you can sketch out a complex scene with accuracy and ease?

 

Let’s go back to that cube and do it a step at a time.

 

***********Week 7: Cube Contortionism and in 3D *************

 

Draw two or three cubes sitting on a plane. Each cube should use two-point perspective, and just to keep things fun, none of those cubes should use the perspective point used by another cube. In other words, whoever left these cubes lying on the living-room floor didn’t line them up neatly.

 

Don’t do any shading just yet. Focus on getting the perspective points at the right distances from one-another to make your cubes look like proper cubes, and not like funky rectangles.

 

Once your cubes look like cubes, subtract rectangular pieces from one of them. Make it look like the Borg’s version of Swiss cheese. Make sure every hole is drawn properly in perspective.

 

To the second cube, try adding rectangular extensions. To the third, try whatever you like.

 

Then draw a sun into the sky and use it to cast shadows from your abused cubes. See if you can get the shapes of the shadows on the ground to be shaped accurately. No blob shadows allowed.

 

I know, it’s not as exciting as a full city-scape with flying cars, but you’ll get there. . .

 

Draw another cube using two- or three- point perspective. Add some rectangular holes and extensions to it. Keep it simple, and don’t fuss with shading. Now, on the same page, draw the same cube again, but rotated around to another position.

 

Are you familiar with 3D modeling programs? The way they work is that in the center of the 3D space is your model. The virtual camera that you look through to see the model gets rotated around, so that you can see the model from all sides.

 

With this exercise, I want you to do the same thing in your head. Build a mental image of your cube-shape. Understand how it exists, not in two dimensions, but three. Then, use your sketchbook to capture what you imagine.

 

The drawing isn’t the important part of this process. The important part is holding a 3D image in your mind, and using your paper and pencil to communicate that shape.

 

This is what concept artists do when drawing characters, environments, and other things destined to exist in 3D.

 

 

 

Atmospheric Perspective

Atmospheric perspective is one of several ways to give your paintings and drawings depth. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it means that the farther away a subject gets from the camera, the more gas you are looking through to see them. So, the farther away the subject is, the more it becomes the color of the atmosphere.

 

It is easier to understand atmosphere if you think of a thick fog. In a thick fog, your hand looks perfectly normal one or two feet in front of you. The highlights are still bright, the shadows are still dark.

 

Look at someone’s arm twenty feet away, and the values and colors are all going to be a little closer to the value and the color of the fog.

 

Farther away still, and that arm will be just a silhouette that is the color of fog, but a little darker and a little bit skin-colored.

 

Atmospheric perspective occurs on even the clearest of days, which is why distant mountains become blue or purple. The color they become is the color of the sky, darkened by the color of the mountains.

 

You don’t need to work in color to practice atmospheric perspective.

 

***********Week 8: Atmospheric Perspective Still-Life and From Imagination *************

 

Find two objects of the same variety: two forks, two bishops from a chess-board, etc. Set them up on a table-top so that one of them is as close to you as possible, and the other is as far as possible. Then arrange yourself so that you have an eye-level view of the table-top. You will want to be able to see those objects as close to overlapping as possible.

 

Now, unless you are living on Jupiter or are on top of a mountain in a cloud, you’re not going to really see any atmospheric perspective to draw. You’re going to have to make it up as you go along.

 

Hint: sketch in both objects lightly. Then darken the closer object.

 

You don’t have to get into crazy shading to do this assignment, but some shading is a bonus. There are two ways to handle the shading: either assume that the paper is the color of the fog, and darken all shadows down from there accordingly; or assume that the paper is the color of the highlights, and shade the empty spaces down to the level of the fog. (Or work on toned paper, using a dark meduim and a light medium.)

 

The goal is to make the second object appear to be properly far away, rather than looking like a smaller version of the same object.

 

Now try the assignment again, but this time, draw two characters from your imagination, or two robots, or two dragons, or. . . you get the idea.

 

***********Week 9: Furniture from Observation**************

 

Furniture is ubiquitous, and generally boxy, so find yourself a chair or dresser or shelf. Draw it from at least two angles. You don’t have to get into crazy shading – just focus on getting the proportions correct in proper perspective.

 

Then, based on what you observed, draw a similar piece of furniture, from imagination, from at least two angles. So, if the first time you drew a Mission-style dresser, maybe the second time around make it a dilapidated and defaced dresser made by Orcs. If it’s a school desk, you could turn it into an elegant Elvish writing desk complete with inkwell and calligraphy set.

 

************Week 10: the Back of the Building**************

 

Pick a building in your neighborhood that you can only see from one side. Draw it. Good.

 

Now, imagine what the back of the building looks like. It could have a simple porch that matches the style of the front of the building. Or, it could have a third-story loading dock for dragons. Make it so!

 

Color Assignments

 

To learn to draw a thing, the best way to go about it is to draw it from direct observation. But there’s no good way to paint a moonlit landscape from observation, because it’s too dark to see what you are drawing. Let’s say you want to paint a scene with a ninja on a rooftop at night. . .

 

 

******** Week 11: Night and Day from Observation and from Imagination *********

 

Set up a still-life lit by a strong direct light-source. Sunlight is preferable, but a lamp will do in a pinch. Paint it or draw it in color, doing your best to capture the colors accurately. Remember, this is a sketch, so don’t spend more than about an hour on it.

 

Once that is done, start a new image. Paint your still-life a second time. This time, don’t use “accurate” colors. Use the same value information in your image, but substitute blues and greens for the original colors. Turn that sunlight into moonlight.

 

This can be repeated with any subject from observation.

 

Now repeat, but instead of working from a still-life, draw something from imagination – such as a ninja on a rooftop. Paint the subject first lit with sunlight, and then lit with moonlight. Use what you learned about colors from assignment 12.

 

Skin Tones

The big secret to painting skin is that there is no single “skin tone”. Skin is made up of different colors depending on the setting. Whether skin looks correct has more to do with the values then with the hues.

 

********Week 12: Self Portrait in Arbitrary Colors********

 

Set up a mirror and a light-source so that you have a view of yourself with one part of your face lit, and one part in shadow. Then, pick two colors, one warm, and one cool. One of those colors is going to be your shadow color, and the other will be your brightly-lit color. Adjust the values accordingly – lighten the “brightly-lit” color and darken the “shadow” color. Add a little of another color to one or both of those, if necessary.

 

Once you have what is essentially a full monochromatic sketch, then you can try adding in little bits of other colors, such as red for the lips and ears. But don’t forget: this is just a sketch. Don’t get caught up in painting details. The goal is to get the colors to work as skin tones.

 

As you work, think up different possible scenarios in which such a color scheme might be useful. Red shadow and blue highlights? That’s a figure standing on the rim of a smoldering pit of lava at night, lit by the sharp glow of a crystal ball. Green shadow, red highlights? He’s in a jungle, lit by the setting sun. And so forth.

 

This assignment is best if repeated three or four times with different sets of colors. It is also a wonderful opportunity to practice sketching crazy expressions.

 

 

Drawing Humans

People are hard to draw. They are also the most common subject matter in representational art. Between those two things, it is a good idea to practice drawing people.

 

The following is by no means a comprehensive list of exercises for learning to draw humans. It’s just a few things to try that maybe you haven’t thought of yet, in an order that may or may not be useful.

 

********Week 13-14: Researching Anatomy********

 

There are a number of books out there that teach methods for drawing humans from imagination. These methods often involve sketching limbs as basic shapes, or starting from some sort of simplified skeleton. There’s no one right method. Try one for a while, then try another, or invent your own.

 

Keep in mind, however, that in order to get the most out of these exercises, you also need to spend time drawing humans from observation, and you need to spend time studying muscles and bones – also from observation, if at all possible. It does no good to sketch a human from the skeleton up if you don’t have a basic understanding of the human skeleton.

Make a few pages of studies.

 

********Week 15: Adding Bones to a Mastercopy********

 

Pick out a piece of art with a human in it. The more anatomically correct, the better; and also, the more foreshortened or contorted the position, the more fun the assignment. You can use comic-book figures or you can use a Michelangelo – it’s up to you.

 

First, draw the figure and focus on keeping the proportions correct. Then draw the skeleton onto the figure or next to the figure. Use whatever reference you have available to you. See if you can make the bones work correctly in space.

 

********Week 16: Constructing Humans from Spare Parts********

 

Draw a human from imagination sitting in a chair. Don’t get too worried about details just yet. Focus on proportions; focus on getting the basic building blocks into place.

 

Good. Now, draw the same figure, in the same position, from the side. And then try again from the top. Focus on understanding the figure in 3D.

 

Don’t forget: there are about a thousand ways for a human to sit in a chair, and there are a thousand types of chair. This doesn’t have to be boring.

 

 

Still More about Drawing People

 

********Week 17 Sniping********

 

Take your sketchbook to a public place with lots of people, such as the food court at a shopping mall, or a sporting event. Find a strategic place to snipe-draw, and start attempting to catch heads or whole poses on paper.

 

You may want to start by sketching people who are holding still and absorbed in some task that doesn’t involve much movement. But the really fun part is trying to capture people in motion. For that, try to catch a mental snapshot of someone in action. Then, blot everything else out of your mind, and try to get that snapshot down on paper.

 

One trick to this is to draw until your mind runs out of real, remembered details. Then use that scribble you did manage to capture as the starting point for a character that is made up by your imagination.

 

It’ll be very clumsy for a while. You’ll get lots of scribbles and wasted paper. But don’t worry about that – it’s all part of training yourself. The paper can be thrown away, and you will improve.

 

********Week 18: Figure Drawing********

 

If possible go to a life-study session, or draw as much figures as possible from pictures found here.

1.      http://artists.pixelovely.com/

2.      http://www.quickposes.com/

 

 

********Week 19: After Figure Drawing Class: Costumes and Spare Parts********

 

After you find yourself with piles of sketches of naked people. Now for something a little more fun! Copy those figures, and add costumes. Go crazy! Historical dress, armor, fantasy chain-mail silliness, stylish fashion drawings, mech exoskeletons, superhero costumes, grafted-on animal parts; whatever floats your boat.

 

Now take one of your nude drawings and copy it over – only this time, use your “spare parts” technique to rebuild the pose. Use this to reverse-engineer the spare-parts technique. Where does the technique work? Where does it over-generalize? How can you change the process to build a better human from scratch?

 

Try to come up with a technique that works best for you. Don’t stick so slavishly to someone else’s instructions that you are limited.

 

******Week 20 – Mood, Non-Representational and Representational *****

 

Pick a simple emotional state – happiness, sadness, anger, etc. Without using any representational or symbolic imagery (meaning no pictures *of* anything) try to convey this mood. Use color, shape, line, value – whatever you want.

 

For best effect, do at least two, so that you can compare one to the other.

 

There is no “right answer” to this assignment. And if you feel intimidated by the idea of just drawing marks and shapes – don’t be. There are artists who have made a career of making marks and shapes, who would be intimidated by the idea of drawing a superhero; and there are illustrators who would shy away of drawing non-representational art. But the most versatile artists are the ones who can do both. If you can do both, then you can use the marks and colors and shapes to reinforce the mood that the superhero is in.

 

Now set up a still-life, draw a landscape from observation, or draw something else from direct observation. But before you start, pick a mood to convey. Perhaps you are drawing a pear, or your shoe. Make it a sad pear, or an angry shoe. Don’t add anything from imagination to this one – no sad faces or angry rusty spikes. Use changes in color or shape or mark-making to communicate the mood. Perhaps the pear slumps a little more in your image than in reality; perhaps the colors have shifted to moody blues and grays. Perhaps the shoe is rendered in reds with jagged strokes.

 

Now you can try applying the same mood and technique to this representational image. For instance, if you drew “sadness” using soft swatches of shades of blue, then draw your “sad pear” using the same colors and types of marks.

 

******Week 21 – Acting, Facial Expression*****

 

When you include a person in your image, that person doesn’t just sit there like a piece of fruit. That person becomes an actor. You are the director, and it is up to you to tell that person what they should be communicating, and how.

 

Pull up a mirror. Imagine yourself in a fantastic setting where something dramatic is happening. You are being abducted by aliens! You are leading a charge across a battlefield! You have just won the lottery! You are about to see the fruit of years of malicious planning!

 

Got a good facial expression? Good. Have you got it lit dramatically? Light from below can add creepiness. A bright, sharp warm light, with a weak blue secondary light can mimic sunlight.

 

Draw what you see. Then show it to your Study buddies and have them guess at what is going on in the image. Write down their reactions in your sketchbook for later, like a journal entry.

 

******Week 22 – Body Language*****

 

Do some gestures. They can be 30 second quick gestures, or 2 minute well defined gestures.

 

Bitch mode: Do 500 gestures.

 

Hardcore mode: Do 1000 gestures.

 

God mode: Do 1500 gestures

 

[Remember to feel it, Speedy.]

 

 

 

Composition

Composition is the art of working within a rectangle (or other shape) with line, color, value, and form, for the purpose of making an interesting non-representational set of patterns.

 

Composition is non-representational. That is, a good composition can contain representational objects, such as people or buildings or monsters, but it doesn’t have to. It can be nothing but smears of color, and still be effective. A good composition grabs your attention and makes your eye jump to specific parts of the picture. A bad composition makes you want to look away, or directs your attention to the wrong thing.

 

********Week 23 - Studying Existing Compositions*******

 

Go pick out a favorite piece of art. It can be the cover of a novel, a page from a comic book, a still frame screen cap from a television show/vidya, or a painting by an old master. (But for now, don’t pick a sculpture or other 3D work – this is all about 2D.)

 

Do a sketch of this piece of work. It doesn’t have to be a meticulous ten-hour labor; half an hour should be ample. Leave room around the edges, because you are going to take notes.

 

Take a look at the original. Where does your eye keep returning to within the image? Chances are, if there is a story being told, then your eye is being drawn to parts of the image that tell the story. If someone is menacingly wielding a knife at a dog, chances are your eye will most often go to the face of the attacker, the knife, and the dog. This is not an automatic result of there being a story told here. Your eyes are going to those focal points because the artist has arranged things in the picture to assure that those are the most important bits.

 

Consider that this same knife-and-dog story could be told in a setting of a lush green forest with a waterfall and a giant levitating glass castle glittering off in the distance. But what good would those extra details do if they were just there for decoration? Either that castle had better be important, or it had better not be there, because a floating glass castle is going to steal the show from a guy wielding a knife at a dog!

 

Anyway, back to your image. You can see the important places that the artist has directed you to look at. Or, maybe the artist didn’t do a great job, and you find yourself repeatedly looking at a boring rock. Either way, take some notes on what you see. You can even draw big arrows pointing from your notes to those details.

 

Now, why is it that your eyes go there? What tricks did the artist employ, or fail to employ?

 

Chances are those focal points are high in contrast. All sorts of contrast, too. It might be that the value (dark-to-light range) is highest there. The darkest darks and the lightest lights are right next to each other, whereas the rest of the image huddles in a grey area. Or there is contrast in the hue (color). Perhaps the dog is bright orange, the knife is purple, and the rest of the image is much muddier in hue. Perhaps the entire image has been made with little dashes of color – except for the faces of the characters. Because they contrast in texture, they are where your eyes go.

 

Or, maybe there are shapes or lines within the image that lead your eye around like railroad tracks leading a train. The important areas interrupt these lines, and act a bit like train-stations. Or, perhaps the focal points are like islands – your eyes drift continuously around until they bump into solid land. Or, perhaps there is another reason why your eyes are going where they are going. Figure it out and write it all down.

 

This won’t result in a pretty sketchbook page, but it’s a good way to start wrapping your head around the idea of composition.

Do 2 or 3 if possible.

 

 

********Week 24 - Non-Representational Composition ********

 

Say you’ve got a hankering to draw a lone figure rappelling down a vast cliff. Or a group of ninjas fleeing across an intergalactic garbage dump. Or, a giant ramshackle space-station. Each one of these things consists of patterns and marks that almost don’t represent anything at all. Aside from the challenge of making a cliff-face look recognizably like a cliff-face, how do you make the pattern of it look interesting, and how do you make it compositionally nifty?

 

Draw a series of tidy rectangles on a page or two. The size is up to you – maybe two to a page suits you best, or maybe a dozen thumb-nails. Each of those rectangles is going to be a complete composition. Using your medium of choice, start filling those rectangles with marks. The only rule is this: don’t draw any recognizable images. This is an exercise in non-representational art.* That means that marks and colors themselves need to look good, without the added burden of also having to look like something else.

 

Use line, value, pattern, hue (if working in color), shape, and anything else you can think of to make these rectangles into interesting things to look at. Use this to explore what works and what doesn’t – which of these rectangles would you want to pin to a bulletin board to look at again later? Which would you want to throw away? And why?

 

Use this to find out what your favorite medium is capable of, while you’re at it, because chances are you’ve never fully explored the range of uses for that pencil or those water-colors. You can use PhotoShop for this, but don’t use any funky filters for now.

 

If you want to get really methodical about this, then do a longer series. Do a batch of images that focus on value, then another that focuses on line, etc. Try to identify which element you are the least comfortable with – and then try to improve at that one thing.

 

Oh yes – and don’t agonize over any of these. They should be fast and fun. Spend exactly as much time on each as you feel you need to, and no more.

 

The next time you want to try speed-painting an intergalactic garbage-dump, you can use this approach to build an interesting composition before agonizing over what sort of garbage such a dump would be made up of.

 

 

* I am avoiding the word “abstract” here because abstract implies starting with a recognizable object and then simplifying or changing it.

 

 

********Week 25 - Build a Composition with Perspective from Life and from Imagination ********

 

Say you have to draw a building in perspective – and you also have to make a good composition out of it. That’s two large technical hurdles to overcome at once! How do you do it?

 

Start with a chair, or cardboard box, matchbox, lunchbox, or some other object that is made up of basic rectangles. Toss it in the middle of the room, and sketch it. For now, stick to outlines – but do use a straight-edge and your knowledge of multiple-point perspective to get it as accurate as possible.

 

Then, once you have a correct image of your object, use your straight-edge to draw a rectangle around it. Study the relationship between the object and the rectangle – does it make a stronger composition in the lower portion of a square, or the left of a horizontal rectangle? What happens compositionally when the rectangle slices right through the object, cropping it – is the composition improved by showing only part of the chair? Has the negative space, the space around your object, become as interesting as the object? If so, that’s good!

 

Repeat this quickly a few times, drawing the object from different angles and then bounding it with different rectangles.

 

Repeat, but using an imagined subject. Start with something as simple as the object that you drew from life, such as a pirate’s chest, a throne, or a simple building.

 

******Week 26- Build a Composition with a Character from Imagination*****

 

Repeat exercise 25, but with a character from your imagination. Bend and twist and pose and crop your character to make the negative space interesting. A well-designed character is great, but a well-designed character in an eye-catching composition is even better.

 

Communication

Communication – that’s the whole point of illustration. Some examples of communication in illustration: “this is a guy with a sword”, “this book contains medieval romance”, “this dragon’s wings could conceivably bear its weight in flight”, “this is George Bush”, “this is a sleek new car design”, “this is a landscape that invokes sadness”.

 

Communication in images includes everything from conveying the idea of a material (grass, stone, flesh, etc.) to acting, to conveying a mood through non-representational marks.

 

Setting Goals for Yourself

You know that feeling you get when you look at a picture made by your favorite artist, and you love the image, but it seems like what they have done is impossibly far away from your own skill level, and you have no idea how to achieve similar results? Every artist, even the best ones, have felt the same way about their heroes. Don’t let it get you down or discourage you from looking at the art you love.

 

Whether you are attending a fancy art school, or you are picking up art skills on your own, you will need to set goals for yourself, figure out how to achieve those goals, and then do the hard work necessary to get there. The art that you love can help you to figure out what you need to study.

 

******Week 27– Evaluation and Analyzing Art *****

 

Pick out one of those pieces of art that inspires you to be an artist. You can do a quick sketch of it if you want. Write why you like it. Then, make a list of all the things that the artist needed to know in order to make that image. You can even draw arrows pointing to those things on the image if you want.

These things can include

Human anatomy.

Animal Anatomy.

Acting.

Botany/Landscape.

Perspective.

Atmospheric Perspective

Light.

Value.

Color.

Cloth.

Costume/architecture/prop design.

Composition.

Media.

And so on…

 

In order to achieve that frighteningly lofty goal, You now have a list of smaller goals that are more easily within reach. Compare to works you’ve made over the course of these few weeks, what do you need to work with to achieve that goal? Write that shit down and share it.

 

*Note, the following few weeks will require a study partner as well as a tablet and literacy in 2D and 3D software. We advanced assignments now. Not for the weak of heart.

 

**************

 

Concept Art for Environments

 

The first thing you have to know is that all games are made on a budget. Not just a money budget, but a manpower budget, and, most importantly, a technical budget. As a concept artist, you can’t just draw up ten thousand acre vistas and just hope the artists who build it in 3D are going to be able to pull it off. You need to know that the monsters in your game have a vertex budget, and that certain things, like dressing them up in a necklace of twenty skulls, may be impossible to do within that budget. Textures are also budgeted. The modelers/texturers will have to convert your environment drawings into a few tiling textures, and if you throw too many crazy ideas into your art, they just may show up at your desk saying “we can make either the shiny rock-things or the trees, but not both. Pick one.”

 

*****Week 1 - Analyze a Game Environment*****

 

Pick a game with not-pushing-the-envelope art. Examples would be We Love Katamari, Disgaea 2, Diablo 2, or the New Super Mario Brothers game for the dual-screen. For this exercise, the point is mostly just in looking. I want you to study the environment of the game *intently*. Don’t worry about the monsters trying to shoot your character; I want you to look at the *dirt*. And the rocks, and the trees; and the architecture and the dungeons. Look at everything on the screen that isn’t a player, a monster, and NPC, or the user interface. And then answer the following questions:

 

What sort of pieces is the environment assembled out of? Is every rock and chair and wall an individual object? Are the same individual objects, such as trees or chairs, used over and over? How many objects are there on screen at once? Is the entire ground and the buildings on it all just one big object? Where are the tiling textures, and how many of them are there?* How does one tiling texture transition into another tiling texture? How large are those tiles, compared to a human? Where are non-tiling textures used, and how often are they used?

 

Look closely at as much of the game as you can access. Get to know the boring bits – especially the boring bits! Grass is one of the most important and challenging textures that can go into a game’s environment, so give it lots of attention.

 

If you are wondering why I’m suggesting you pick a game that isn’t pushing the envelope with its art, it’s because there is less going on for you to unravel. It also happens to be more challenging to do concepts for, because there are fewer elements. Simplicity can be really tough – just try drawing an egg to find that out.

 

Now, with your new knowledge of how the environment in your game are put together, it’s time to have fun. Break out Photoshop or the pencils and go design a new environment for this game. Draw draw draw! If you’ve been looking at a snowy landscape, design a tropical landscape. If you’ve been looking at a tropical landscape, design a snowy one. Stick as closely as you can to the technical limits you have observed in your game – the same number of objects, the same number of textures. If one drawing doesn’t get across your idea, then do two, or five or ten. I’m not going to fuss at you about the particulars of your drawings, because mostly I just want you to look at an existing game, and really see the pieces.

 

There are two versions of this assignment that you can pick from, too. Either make your environment match the existing art style as closely as possible – or, using the same technical limits, make it a completely new art style. However, don’t try to emulate the existing art style and then change your mind halfway because it’s hard. If you start it, finish it, even if it goes badly.

 

*******Week 2 – Monsters and Concepts*******

 

Grab your draw buddy, because this assignment requires two people.

 

You are going to design, model, and texture a monster. First, each of you must produce concept art of a monster. Each of you needs to do quick sketches until you settle on a design that you like. Then, do a drawing of the monster from the front, and another of the monster from the side. If it is humanoid, draw it with its arms sticking out like it is flying. If it isn’t humanoid, just get it in as neutral a position as possible. No action poses.

 

Now swap drawings with your buddy. You must build each other’s monsters. If your buddy’s concept art doesn’t communicate to you what you need, then you will need to ask for clarification – either verbal or drawn. If the concept artist feels that the 3D artist is doing it all wrong, then you need to talk about why.

 

The purpose of this assignment is to learn about how to effectively communicate to another artist through drawings and through talking, and to learn what it is like to be on the receiving end of this communication.

 

*******#2A - extra credit******

 

So that wasn’t enough work to keep you happy, was it? Try this: do the assignment with technical limits. Make your monster with a maximum of 1000 vertices. Use a texture space that is 1024 by 1024. Within these limits you should be able to wrangle up a monster with four limbs and one head fairly easily. With more limbs or heads, however, it’ll get very tricky. The 1024 texture will give you lots of room to paint in details that are too small to model, so take full advantage of that.

 

********#2B - more extra credit********

 

You’re still standing? Good. Let’s turn that one monster into a variety of monsters. In the concept art, try changing the colors and markings on the monster to make four or five varieties. Don’t change the shape of the monster, because this will be a texture-swap only.

 

You did work in layers in your 2D files, right? For both these concept art and the texture, you will save yourself hours and hours of work if you work in layers.

 

Anyway, use that concept art to then make different versions of that 1024 texture your monster is wearing. Or, skip the concept art, and just mess around with the texture. Have fun!

 

2D Versus 3D

I suppose it would be possible for someone to begin their art education not with pencils and crayons, but with a 3D modeling program. In theory, since it is just another tool, someone could go from novice to professional sculptor without ever touching 2D art.

 

But, this does not take into account several things. In games, for one, you need to be able to texture as well as model, and texturing is a 2D art. You also can’t iterate on a model the way you can iterate on a drawing, because modeling takes longer. You can’t carry a 3d modeling program around the way that you can tote a sketchbook.

 

Drawing teaches you to think in a hybrid of 2D and 3D – and I think this is the most important reason to learn how to draw while learning to model or, preferably, before you ever touch a 3D program.

 

This assumes that you aren’t spinning your wheels by copying photographs. If you do that, then stop. Copying from photos is a shortcut for illustrators who already know the ins and outs of making the illusion of 3D space on a 2D surface. In someone just learning how to draw, copying photos is a crutch. You need to draw from life precisely because it is harder to do. It teaches you to take what you see in 3D and translate it into 2D. It teaches you to think in 3D without the need for expensive software. It teaches you to set up 2D compositions using 3D elements.

 

But my ranting is no fun to listen to, so instead, here’s an assignment.

 

*******Week 3 – Draw a Chair*******

 

Got a chair and a sketchbook? Good. Put the chair in the middle of the room. Draw it. Turn it upside-down and draw it again. Spin it around and draw it from the other side. Break out the two-and three-point perspective. Get way up close and draw that chair like it’s a mile high. Get to know that chair so well that there is a perfect 3D model of it in your head.

 

Now put away the chair and draw it again entirely from what is in your head. This time, make it a galactic space-going chair, or a predatory Amazonian chair, or a Muppet chair. Draw it rightside-up and upside-down and sideways, with all the same perspective love that you used on the last one.

 

Do you see? With only pencil and paper, you can practice both concept art and 3D thinking at the same time.

 

Simplicity from Complexity

What if your boss told you “we need a carousel, and we need it completely modeled and textured by Friday?” Rather intimidating, yes?

 

*******Week 4– Carousel********

 

Yup, that’s right. Make a carousel. It has to be entirely populated with horses – each of a different color. It has to have a round base with some details around the edge, a column in the middle with a calliope, and it has to have an ornate canopy. It also has to be completed, finished, wrapped up, from soup to nuts, AND it has to be finished in a reasonably short time, so that you don’t get frustrated and abandon it halfway done.

 

Okay, you can stop having a heart attack now. I’ll walk you through it.

 

Step one: Your boss is leaving the style up to you. This is unlikely to happen in the games industry, but for the sake of the assignment, you get to pick. Since you want to be able to actually get this assignment done in a reasonable amount of time, I suggest you pick a style that is highly simplified and isn’t realistic. Low-poly is a really good idea. Sketch it out.

 

Step two: Model and texture one horse. Do you remember the extra credit from the second assignment? That was where you made one monster and then fiddled around with the texture to make different varieties. You can use that same trick to generate a fleet of horses from only one horse model. You can even rig your horse and pose it into different positions if you want.

 

Step three: the canopy, center column, and base. Think of it like slices of a cake. You only have to model and texture one slice, if you plan it right. Make sure to get it scaled so that all of your horses fit nicely on it. Throw together some test cylinders before you begin in order to gauge how many cake slices you will need.

 

Step four: the calliope. After all of that, figuring out a strategy for this last bit shouldn’t be so intimidating. Be sure to give it character!

 

*******Week 5-6- Photorealism*******

 

 

So, you’re on a team that’s making a game with a steampunk theme. The style is already established, and it’s a dark, grimy realism, full of rust and peeling paint and dirt-in-the-cracks. And your art director wants you to make an old junker robot that’s been rusting in an abandoned lot for the past several years. Since it is an old robot, it needs to have especially quirky bits that are made out of unusual materials, like for instance wood or leather. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s even grown some moss, or been graffitied, or something.

 

This assignment assumes that you have three things: a 2D art program (with tablet – that always goes without saying), a 3D art program, and a camera. Yes, a camera. Digital is preferable, because if it’s analog you’ve got, you will also need a scanner.

 

Step one: go forth and photograph textures. Yes! You must leave the safety of your womb, er, room, and you must go on a scavenger hunt. Look for the following:

 

Tasty delicious metal! Try to find a minimum of at least a dozen samples of different metals, because, after all, metal is what robots are made of.

 

Wood. Look for old, weather-beaten samples. You get bonus points if you can find an antique shop that displays its wares out on the sidewalk in sunny weather.

 

Peeling paint. Mmmm, peeling paint! Don’t actually eat it.

 

Dirt. Very useful stuff, that dirt.

 

Anything else that strikes your fancy.

 

By the way, the best time to photograph textures is on a bright but overcast day. Direct sunlight is no good, because all the little bumps and bits will cast shadows that become frustrating to work with. Make sure the resolution is set to high on those digital photos.

 

So, you have your very own texture library. Pop ‘em into Photoshop or your Photoshop substitute, and see what worked out best. Then draw yourself a robot designed specifically to use these textures. You can even slap those textures right into you concept art, to test out how well they work together. But don’t fuss over it too much. It is, after all, just a sketch to help you figure out what the 3D version will look like.

 

Next, build your robot! If you want to really practice for the games industry, then keep the poly count low. Say, 2000 or less. The less, the better. Only add geometry where it is needed.

 

Lay out the Uvs in a 1024 x 1024 square, and then start adding textures from your brand new texture library. Always always always work in layers.

 

I’m assuming for the time being that you have never made a photorealistic texture before. Using layer effects and photos and your drawing skills, you can make a fantastic array of textures from other textures. Draw edges, draw cracks, draw bolts and weld-joints and jazz. Put dirt in the cracks.

 

From Observation to Concept Art

Drawing or painting from life is like eating your vegetables: sometimes it just makes you want to whine “I don’t wanna!” while lusting after ice cream. However, unless you are willing to push forward with life drawings, then your drawings from imagination are likely not to improve much, either.

 

*******Week 7– From Observation to Concept Art*******

 

Find a real-life object that is made up of one or more interesting materials. Light it, and draw or paint it. Make your rendition of the object be as realistic and life-like as possible. If you are painting, then focus on colors. If you are drawing in black and white, focus on rendering details that reveal what the material is.

 

Done with that? Spiffy. Now come up with something out of your imagination that is made of the same materials. If what you painted was made of metal, you could design a suit of armor or a robot. If it was cloth, perhaps a costume would do. Wood? How about some wooden machine with gears and whatnot. Get creative.

 

Now do a second drawing or painting of this thing you have dreamed up. Use your still-life as reference for your colors or details. Try as hard as possible to get the quality of your from-imagination piece to match that of the still-life.

 

If you like the results you got from this exercise, repeat it with different materials to build up your own internal materials library.

 

***********Week 8-9 – Rocky Environment***********

 

None of this corresponds to a specific game engine. It’s just practice that can be done with Photoshop and a 3D modeling program. If you can adapt this to work with an existing game engine, great! Unfortunately that’s one thing I can’t give you any advice on.

 

Part one: concept art. Your assignment is to dream up and communicate a barren, rocky environment for a 3D shooter game. The area must contain one open, arena-type area, with ledges that players can climb up; it can also contain side gullies. Cliffs will keep the players contained. Your first step is to do multiple, quick sketches to develop the color and flavor of the area. Don’t worry about the specifics of the layout yet; your task is to come up with a general desert theme that could be used to make arenas of any number of shapes and sizes. Focus on repeating elements, like large cliff-rocks, or a single cactus which could be used repeatedly throughout the environment. Do one or two more finished pieces when you settle on what specifics you want.

 

Part two: modeling and texturing. Now’s the puzzle part. How do you really break that art up into a few objects that can be modeled and textured within a reasonable amount of time? Here’s one way to do it. First, think of the ground and the cliffs. For starters you can make one tiling texture for the ground, and another for the cliffs. Don’t build the actual level just yet – instead, make a small test area to look at while you refine your textures. Make a roughly human-shaped model and pop it in for scale reference.

 

You can then take those same textures and make a small series of rocks and platforms that can be placed within your level. Range them in size from human to house. These, and other large elements will effect game-play, so as boring as they are, they are very important.

 

Next, make little deco things. These should be from about twice human-height down to knee-height. Again, use your human scale reference. If you make one shrub, you can use the same texture to make three shrubs of varying sizes. The same goes for crystals, cactus, palm trees, whatever. Figure out one or two objects that can be used repeatedly at different scales in your environment.

 

Lastly, figure out how to make a sky dome. I’m afraid I can’t give you any pointers on this, because I’ve never had to make one.

 

Part three: build the level. Start by drawing a map. Keep it small enough that you can realistically make it. Think about the exact game you want the players to play, and the tactics they will use. Then start building. Get the ground and cliffs made according to the map. Then add the large, gameplay-affecting rocks, and lastly sprinkle with deco objects. Put the sky dome on and light the scene. Take screenshots. Voila, you now have samples in your portfolio from concept art all the way to game level.

 

********Extra Credit*******

 

Got a buddy? When the two of you have built your environment assets and made your textures, trade. You each get to build a game level using each other’s work. It will be frustrating at times, as you discover the shortcomings of what your friend has made. When you discover that something just doesn’t work, ask for clarification or revisions.

 

This is exactly what you will experience in the industry. The purpose of this drill is both to learn what sort of art works and what doesn’t, and to learn how to communicate. Sometimes is isn’t obvious to the level-builder how an art asset is supposed to be used. It is your responsibility to explain it.

 

 

 

 

* An “art asset” is a 3D model that gets placed in a game, such as a tree, or a rock, or a statue of a three-headed dragon.

 

** “In-house” programs are programs which are written right there in the company. Instead of calling up tech support when these programs break, you run across the building and pester the person who wrote the program.

 

Low-Poly Doo-Dads

**********Week 10– Low-Poly Doo-Dads**********

 

The game that you are working on needs a cafeteria. A interior space has already been made, but at the moment it’s nothing but a big, empty room. Your task is to make the props that will transform it from an empty space into a highschool cafeteria scene. Tables, trays, food, flatware, milk cartons, books, vending machines, posters, backpacks – whatever you can think of.

 

Each item has to be low-poly. I’m talking bare minimum. For example, an open milk carton can be made with fifteen verts. A tray of food could be made with a similarly low number of verts, and the food could be modeled and painted right onto it with the texture. A fork could actually be a spatula with individual tines painted right on.

 

The reason you want to keep everything so low-poly is so that you can make fifty copies of that milk carton and that tray without causing the game’s frame-rate to plummet. Once your props are made and textured, then set up a few rows of tables and cover them with stuff!

 

The other reason you want to keep everything low-poly is because it’s a cafeteria, for cryin’ out loud. Do you really want to linger over a milk carton? I thought not. It’s the final effect of a room filled with junk that is exciting – not the individual doo-dads.

 

Set it up, light it, and take screen shots.

 

If a school cafeteria doesn’t float your boat, then you could try a film noir fantasy tavern, or a cartoony space-ship canteen, or an impressionist western saloon. Pick a style and a setting and have fun!

 

Paintovers

Sometimes it is the job of a concept artist in the games industry to take a screenshot of a 3D model, and paint changes.

 

One reason for doing this is because specific dimensions are desired for an area. Within a development team, since there are already 3D modelers on hand, it can make the most sense to start by having one of them make a quick model of the space. Then the concept artist can paint over a screenshot to establish what the details or lighting will look like.

 

Another reason to use this approach is that art has already been made, but something still needs to be added. The concept artist gets to paint in ideas for additional decoration while leaving the finished portions unchanged. This can be useful in designing additional outfits for characters, putting new spikes and doo-dads on monsters, inventing new decorations for the re-use of an existing dungeon, coming up with new windows and doors and balconies to put on existing buildings, designing rocks and shrubs for an existing landscape, etc.

 

*******Week 11- Paintover******

 

Attached are three screen-grabs of some very hastily made Maya models. Pick one. This needs to be painted over into a complete game environment. The scale, style, lighting, and type of environment are all up to you. You will do two paint-overs of this environment. The first is a full-blown painting. Go nuts. Make it beautiful. Light it. Put at least one human in it for scale reference. Have fun.

 

Once you are done with that, make a copy. In the copy, use the equivalent of a white-board marker to start circling pieces and making notes. What you should be circling and making notes on are pieces of your painting that can be built and textured in a 3D modeling program. Such features could be a rock, or a tree, or a balcony, or a grassy ledge, or a chunk of architecture. Look in particular for elements that could be used over and over to decorate similar spaces. In addition to this, look for open expanses of wall or ground that could be covered with tiling texture. Again, circle it, make a note.

 

In a blank file, sketch out the individual objects and the tiling textures. Communicate them in such a way that the 3D artist will be able to glance at your work and say “ah-hah! I know exactly what you are asking me to make!”

 

***********Week 12 – Drawing in Perspective*************

 

If you like the previous assignment, please listen to this – such paintovers are not a substitute for being comfortable drawing in perspective. The subset of illustration that is concept art is a very competitive field, and the chances that you will never be asked to draw an environment from scratch are small. If you cannot draw in perspective, your chances of being hired as a concept artist are small as well.

 

And besides – do you want to have a 3D modeler dictating the structure of your environments to you all the time?

 

So, in this assignment, use perspective to draw the bare bones shape of a 3D environment. What you draw doesn’t have to be much more complex than what you see in an untextured scene in Maya. Once you’ve got a structure sketched out that far, then proceed to paint over it as you did in the previous assignment.

 

********Week 13 – Paintover an Existing Game *********

 

Pick an existing game. Find a portion of that game that could use a little something extra. It could be as small as an alien potted plant, or a row of statues, or it could be a room redecorated for a birthday party, or it could be a giant fantasy structure perched on a mountain top. Take a screenshot, and paint in this thing that you have in mind. Make sure to match the style of the game.

 

Environment Art: Dungeons

When I say “dungeon”, what I really mean is “interior space”. Caves, sewers, castle hallways, spaceship corridors – these sorts of spaces are a standard in shooters and MMORPGs.

 

These spaces are built in entirely different ways depending on the game engine. Some engines require that a game level be built entirely within a 3D modeling program as one continuous model. But in other cases the dungeons are made up of modular pieces that fit together like tinker-toys. You can see this most apparently in isometric games.

 

Though our game is not isometric, its dungeons are made from modular pieces. These pieces are essentially cubes with holes through them. A basic dungeon “hallway” set includes a cube with a single hallway through it, a cube with a hallway that turns 90 degrees, a T-shaped intersection, a four-way intersection, a ramp up, and a dead end. Then there are the “multi-room” sets. The pieces that make up this set are like cubes with sides missing. So, for example, a piece might have a floor and one wall, or a floor and two walls, forming a corner; or just a floor, or just a ceiling. Each piece within a set must fit seamlessly with the other pieces. They are technically challenging to make and texture, even when the geometry is simple; and as individual pieces, they are often uninteresting to look at, much like an individual Leggo. The interesting part comes when the pieces are connected together and used to build large and complex spaces.

 

To go with these spaces, we build accompanying loose architecture. So, for example, a Roman dungeon might have plain stone walls, but to go with those walls it would have pillars, door-frames, bridges, stairs, balconies, and perhaps even entire building facades. In fact one of the most useful elements in any such dungeon set is what we call the “block”: a boring rectangle covered in wall and floor texture that can be placed anywhere in a dungeon to beak up the regularity of the space. Such an object is never meant to stand on its own. It is a piece of the background that shapes the game-play in a level; humble but important.

 

********Week 14- Modular Dungeon Pieces*********

 

Time to study another game. Choose a game that has dungeons made from modular pieces. Try to figure out how many such modular pieces are necessary to build a complete dungeon. Then, using what you have learned, design a new set of modular pieces for the game. If additional loose objects are necessary, then draw those as well.

 

Trees

There are some objects that are common to almost every possible game – rocks, crates, and trees. Of these, trees are vastly more difficult to make. Additionally, almost nobody thinks to include a tree in their portfolio. This should make a lightbulb go off over your head: if your portfolio includes a well-made tree, your chances of getting hired are going to be greater.

 

 

******Week 15– Trees*******

 

Before you rush to the drawing board, try going through the games in your collection and looking at the trees. Ignore “landmark” trees – trees that are complex objects used only once. The trees that you should be looking at are the ones that are used everywhere. Try to figure out how they are made. Chances are if it’s a 3D game, the trunk and main branches are cylindrical, and the twigs and foliage and small branches are flat planes with transparent sections.

 

The thing that makes trees hard to make is that they are always limited in vert count. Trees are not the star of the show, and trees are typically used in multiple, particularly if they are used to make an entire forest. That means the bulk of the resources spent on that scene are going to go to other things, such as the player character or the boss monster. So, each tree has to be as efficiently made as possible – just like that milk carton from a previous exercise.

 

A hint about trees: as backwards as this may sound, in most cases, you won’t want your trees to have so much character that they are recognizable as individuals. They should be just bland enough so that you can use the same tree a dozen times in proximity to itself without causing the player to think “wait, I’ve seen that same tree before”. What should be going through the player’s mind is “I’m in a forest looking for baddies to smite” or “I am going to hit the golf ball all the way down there on this beautiful golf course”.

 

About forests in particular: a tree designed to be a part of a forest may not function well on its own – and that’s just fine. For instance, consider the tall trees in the Night Elf region of World of Warcraft. They are, essentially, big umbrellas, meant to be used in multiple to create a canopy of foliage.

 

Sometimes a tree is a wall. Consider Perez Park in City of Heroes. The trees there are solid walls of trunks overhung with foliage. In such a situation, the trees are far more than a decorative element – they have a direct role in the game-play. For the time being, however, don’t worry about making walls of trees. Start at the beginning, with a standard tree.

 

*******#A – Concepting for Trees*****

 

I want you to draw three possible trees. For each, pick an art style, tree location, time of year, and tree species. For example: photo-realistic forest autumn oak. Or Chinese ink-painting open field spring dogwood. Or, Impressionistic windswept-cliff winter holly. Draw all three. There should be no question that each of the three trees belongs to a different game.

 

Be sure to sketch a human into each drawing to show scale.

 

No cheating – don’t make stumps!

 

********#B – Modeling and Texturing a Tree*******

 

Take one of those three trees and build it in 3D! Don’t be afraid to totally mess up. Not every approach will work. Try some different approaches and see what works best. See if you can come up with a method of working that allows for quick iteration.

 

Hint: do not build a model completely and then texture it. That approach works for characters, but for environmental art, it’ll often get in your way. Instead, try scribbling out a very quick dummy texture first. One possible layout is to use half of the texture space for the tree’s trunk (this portion can even potentially tile), and the other half for the alpha channel foliage. Then take that temporary texture and try building your tree with it. Then finish the texture after you have built your tree.

 

As far as vert-count goes, that’s a number that will differ from game to game. Arbitrarily, I’ll say stay under 400 verts.

 

*******#C – Expanding on What You Have Built******

 

Once you have created a single tree, the hard part is over, and it’s time for some fun. So, now you have an approach to making trees that works, AND you have a completed texture. Take that finished texture and use it to build two more trees. Your set of trees could be small, medium, and large; or it could be bare-trunk, trunk-with-multiple-branches, multi-trunk; or you could have three trees all in different bonsai configurations.

 

Then, once these are made, you can throw together a quick landscape and decorate away! Try your trees in multiples. Do they work in groups? Do they make a decent forest? How have you made the bottom of the tree, and is it difficult to place well on a sloped surface? Would the trees impede game-play with their branches in certain situations? Would your trees be able to fill the screen in an artistic manner without the addition of other decorative objects? If you could combine your trees with only two other objects to make a complete landscape, what two objects would you pick?

 

******extra credit******

 

For more of a learning experience, do this assignment with a buddy. Swap concept art and build each other’s trees.

 

OR

 

When you have completed building a set of trees, give them to someone else to use in a landscape of their own making.