A lot of concept artists who join our team are quite skilled, they just don’t quite know what is required from a professional concept artist in the games industry. So let’s walk through it.
### The Process! ###
The first thing that a concept artist should do is create a rough sketch of the asset requested. This will allow the artist to get feedback on their sketch before putting too much time into it. If the asset needs to be abandoned, it should be before the artist has put any significant amount of time into the concept.
Here is an early sketch of a bench asset for Kung Fu Kingdom done by Christa Wolf ( http://www.nameless-account.deviantart.com/ ).
This sketch was green-lighted, so the next thing Christa did was to create a turnaround sheet for the bench. The turnaround includes a profile view, a front view, and a 3/4 view. At this point she is able to add more details to the sketch, since the basic shape has been green-lighted.
Christa posted her turnaround sheets to the forums where it received feedback from the entire team. After several revisions, this is what she came up with. With the turnaround sheet green-lighted, Christa moved onto coloring.
Here is the final colored turnaround sheet. This sheet was passed to Joseph McCormick ( http://www.jmccormick3d.com/ ) with the additional instruction to change the seat color to brown. It was unnecessary to have Christa revise the turnaround sheet for such a simple change.
Here is the final product. Though this is not the final render of the Bench, it serves the purpose of allowing the team to provide feedback, and to show off our newest toy.
So, to all those artists out there interested in becoming concept artists for a game company – start practicing your turnarounds! It may be difficult to draw a character or object accurately from several different perspectives, but the hard work will definitely pay off.