What is Concept Art – part 1

Concept Art can be an abstract “concept” to wrap your head around. Many times, I’ve run into people who’ve misunderstood what we do at Vizlab Studios – not just friends and family, but also people from the game industry and even potential clients and employees. I completely understand the misunderstanding as most of the concept art you see on social media, Artstation and similar places, is very different from the concept art we do on a daily basis. In this article I'll try to give a definition of what concept art is - and what it is not – at least from my perspective.

While researching for this article I found a quote from the website The Tate, which fits my interpretation of concept art very well:

“Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object.”

If this is concept art, then it leads me to my first point; “what concept art is not.”

What concept art is not

First, I would like to define what concept art is not. Concept art is not marketing art, splash art or illustrations. Even though a final piece of concept art might look like it, concept art is not necessarily pretty images. That is where I see the main misunderstanding, when people are looking for concept art, but really expecting game or marketing ready art. One of the main reasons for this, I think, is that everyone has online access to the best of the best artwork, so we think that is how it is supposed to be. As most of the “liked” artwork you see online is highly polished, people trying to get into the industry will naturally try to emulate this. In general game or marketing ready art needs much more time to be completed and polished than concept art usually does, as it has specific requirements and fidelities to satisfy.

I often see artists online tagging their art as concept art, even when it clearly is not. The main reasons are probably “mass-tagging” as well as the misunderstanding described above. The reason most of the art you see is not concept art, is because it does not solve any problems.

Concept art solves problems

Concept art focuses on a problem to solve, which could take many forms. It could be the design of an object, be it a character, a car, a weapon, a place, or a terraforming machine. Or it could be fundamental in exploring how a world works; how does fire look here, how does time work, or how does the colors behave. Some problems are very tangible and some are abstract.

It fits very well into the Cambridge definition of design “to make or draw plans for something, for example clothes or buildings”, which is why we often call what we do for concept design ?. The focus is really on the core design and idea, i.e., the concept, not so much the art. The final result can be a beautiful illustration, but if it does not solve any problems, it is not concept art. So, even if the results can look identical, it is all about the process of getting there.

Concept art bridges the gap from idea to design. It can transform the rough idea within your head to be created as a game asset. An art director or game developer might not know exactly what they want but talking about it and showing a mood board of inspiring games or movies, can give a concept artist what they need to develop a piece of concept art clearly showing the final design. Concept artists can take the world within a book, visualize it, and make it work for a movie or game.

Concept art is iterative

As the concept is in focus, art is being used as a tool to display the concept. Unless the style of the production dictates a specific use of medium, whatever gets the idea across the best/fastest can be used. So, no reason to use oil painting if photo bashing can do the job.

As speed can be of the essence in pre-production, quick and dirty sketches are often used instead of fully rendered illustrations, as rendering and polishing often require a lot of time. If the goal of a sketch is getting an idea across, it might only take 1 hour to achieve, while a fully rendered piece of marketing art might take several weeks. This means that you might be able to make 100 sketches in the same time it takes to make a fully rendered illustration.

And through the sketches it is possible to explore many angles of the problem and go through many iterations getting feedback from a client or art director. It is also much faster and cheaper to discard a sketch (or 10) than a piece of marketing art, as a huge part of the early pre-production process is also figuring out what NOT to do. So, this malleability through an iterative process is also a big part of what concept art is; being able to change, modify and straight up throw out ideas, concepts, and designs.

In summary...

“Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object.”

I started the article with this quote and will end with it as well, as it fits perfectly. If the idea is more important the finished art, call it concept art. If the finished art itself is the most important element, it falls in another category.

Thank you for reading. In the next part of this article, I will show examples of different types of concept art, as we produce at Vizlab Studios, including how and when these are used in preproduction and production.