Unit 2 - Concept Art Analysis

In the making of computer games, perhaps one of the most critical stages of a game’s design is the game’s concept art. From an aesthetic standpoint, and a mechanical one to some extent, concept art defines a game’s overall feel from a very early stage, eventually becoming the inspiration behind the part of the project it depicts. As such, it can be very difficult for a game development team to make a computer game without concept art to guide them, as they will lack any guidance.

Concept artist Thomas Scholes (the artist behind the above artwork) says he wants his work to have a balance between functionality and inspiration; while one must consider that the concept art must be able to be made into the final assets, as well as taking budget and time constraints into account, concept art should also only be a guide for asset creators. Each of the above three works are plausible as a game environment, but it should be left up to the level designers which is the most plausible – do they keep the level simple, or complex and chaotic? It all depends on the gameplay as well as the setting.

Like the above example, the first purpose of concept art is to define the environment’s tone and setting. The concept art could indeed be directly based on the game’s mechanics, or vice versa.

Game developer Blizzard, the team behind Destiny, said that the game’s focus of exploring old ruins was thought of because they initially wanted to design a fantasy-style game, but the sci-fi concepts were later implemented because they wanted a contrast between exploring futuristic spaceships and historical ruins. This contrast works in the game’s favour because of the game’s overall theme: innovative technologies are being made all the time, yet society still reveres its origins. The above example works in showing this quite well, showing the ruins more prominently while making the futuristic city barely visible in the background.

Another purpose of concept art is to design a game’s characters. Like the concept art for environments, a character’s concept art could either be inspired by the game’s mechanics or genre, or vice versa. Unlike environment concept art, character designs are usually far more memorable, as you’ll encounter major characters more often than you would encounter most levels or stages in a game.

The above images are examples of first concept art versus final designs for characters from Valve’s Team Fortress 2. The overall designs are drastically different from the first concepts. This is because the game’s overall aesthetic theme went through many cancelled design stages, before the developers settled for more “cartoony” designs, rather than the realistic initial sketches. In my opinion, the final designs are far better from a design standpoint, because the final characters themselves, the voices especially, work far better for the final designs than the initial sketches. The characters’ final designs are much more comical in nature, which ties in well with this.

Above is a screenshot of all nine character classes from Team Fortress 2, which demonstrates another trait of good character design, not only in video games, but in any visual media. Simply by looking at the above image, most people can take a decent guess at each character’s personality and perhaps even their gameplay roles, which is far more than can be said for the earliest sketches in these examples. What this means is that character designs are usually much more transformative than environment designs. This also means that any concept art can be useful even when drawn midway through a game’s production, contrary to most peoples’ presumptions that it can only be useful at the initial stages of creation.

This presumption is not entirely mistaken, however: most concept art is done in the initial stages of design. Concept art, and by extension the game’s aesthetic, might be revised completely when it reaches quality assurance, if enough testers are adamant that it be changed.

For example, Capcom’s Street Fighter V initially had much more photorealistic graphics, as depicted in the above artwork. This was later scrapped in favour of the art style in the final game, which is more reminiscent of Japanese anime media. The Street Fighter series is well known for its anime aesthetics, so it would make more sense for the game to keep this tradition. In addition, this realistic style makes considerable changes to the returning characters’ designs – they could be seen as much more low-key and serious, as opposed to the over-the-top designs that series veterans would be used to seeing.

Concept art, while vital to the development of a game, does not need to be too detailed, however. Most initial visual designs are rough sketches, usually accompanied by annotations, while more developed versions of these are released as promotional artwork.

One example of this is from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney; as seen above, the drawn scenes are undeveloped in their visual detail, but alongside them are notes from the artist, Shu Takumi, for the rest of the team to go on. Unless one has played the game, it would be difficult to see exactly what the images represent, which is why the annotations are there, to help other members of the team see the sketches from Takumi’s perspective, and give them an idea of his vision. There are some elements in the sketches not visible in the final scenes, which are presumably to give the sketches more effect.

So, in conclusion, the purpose of concept art is not only to guide the rest of the development team in terms of both aesthetics and mechanics, but also to inspire them to make their own decisions and make improvements to the final game. Concept artwork is by no means a strict requirement that everyone must follow precisely, nor must it be to the highest standard right off the bat, but it should be clear enough to capture the artist’s vision, with appropriate annotations or notes as necessary. References

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/06/26/concept-art-guide-thomas-scholes/ https://www.polygon.com/2013/3/28/4158618/destiny-bungie-gdc-concept-art http://1.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/70/25/a35f1e57cbadc562cd892bcc6c97374c.jpg https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MichelSabbagh/20150825/252065/Out_of_Character_how_to_design_good_game_characters.php http://gameranx.com/updates/id/41351/article/street-fighter-v-originally-featured-photorealistic-graphics/

http://www.capcom-unity.com/zeroobjections/blog/2014/09/12/the-early-days-of-ace-attorney