Just remember this AAA stuff, not gaming as a whole. I can see AAA developers wanting a specific style of a specific quality and that's fine, Indie is here to appease those who want a more unique approach and that's equally as fine
Dragon's Breath exactly, this type companies offer their work for triple A games that need a very strict budget and time for concepts and the best quality they can get.
not true, indies have no money and in general are more focused on design over environment or rendered paintings, the amount of indue studios that dont even have an art department is pretty shocking tbh,
valcaron what you call “tumblr/Calarts” is just you struggling to realize that there are more women and minorities in the industry than before, and they don’t make everything with the same old bland, grim, gritty shit style that straight men keep making in AAA games.
@@Blueberrygoat92 Lol nop. I am actually listening the first 5 minutes of each GDC talk and then I decide if I will listen all of it because I am watching a lot. Sorry I can not tell you more.
Cheating means something different in the context of relationships. Chance of completing a successful relationship isn't improved by infidelity. Completing good concept art on a deadline on the other hand...
I'd phrase it differently: Get the basics down as fast+good as possible by whichever means necessary! Then spend the time saved on "Juice". (and concealing your tracks)
I think there's a difference in perspective between artists doing art for the sake of the craft, and concept artists who need to make a reference on a deadline that can be iterated on quickly and easily. It's not about doing every last piece yourself to prove how awesome you are, it's about creating an idea quickly and easily to send off to the team so it can be adjusted and iterated on and refined. There's a useful phrase to consider that is very relevant for concept art: Fail faster. The faster you can get an idea out that conveys everything needed, the faster the final idea can be refined from it.
Yeah the ego is really hard to separate from the craft, and everyone has a different baseline for what they consider cheating I guess, but people who are searching for jobs where they can just straight up purely draw all day are gonna be disappointed in this day and age, the worlds changing and traditionalists shouldn't shame newer artists for evolving with the times just because they don't want to
I'd say that the fundamentals are super important. Even if you're working on top of a 3d-model with perfect perspective and anatomy, you would mess it up pretty fast if you don't know perspective and anatomy. I can work super fast on top of photo ref and models, but my basic drawing skills are friggin critical to making it look great.
Yeah, I guess you could do great designs with just 3d and photo bashing and such. But the kind of concept art shown in this talk are definitely done by people who can paint and draw. And if you paint on top of a model that has a lot of perspective cues it helps a lot if you understand perspective. Same goes for anatomy.
I feel like the ideal is to learn traditional skills, AND the cheating methods he’s showing us. If you combine them both, you’ll make faster and better art than ever, more so than artists who only stick to one side.
Good talk, very informative and the results look professional, but I think there are not a lot of interesting ideas, most of the characters, creatures, robots and environments look really boring and generic to me, a soldier look like any other soldier, zombie abominations also look like you would expect them to, everything look too standard and uninspiring to me, and I think many of the 'triple A' big games look really stale and generic nowadays.
they take on clients because the clients give them money. they pour as much talent as they can on top of that, so they are worth the money. as he very clearly stated towards the end, it's a garbage-in-garbage-out scenario. if shallow blockbusters didn't sell, there wouldn't be hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into them. getting too hung up on that just makes you bitter. best to just go enjoy something else instead :)
@stupid and useless The classic Lara Croft is instantly recognizable character anywhere you go. Meanwhile, there is no difference between the new Lara and that girl from The Last of Us. They are basically the same design.
@@boitahaki Not only are you are comparing a stylized jumble of triangular polygons with realistic interpretations of human women, but you're just flat out wrong about the last part. Laura doesn't look anything like Ellie, her girlfriend, or Abbie. They have different facial features, body structure, hair colors, eye colors, and clothing. In a way you are right though, Laura croft's original design is more visually striking than her new design, but that's like comparing a stylized animated character to an actor in a film.
There were/are matt painters, but the companies back then, combined generic style with artists who have strong voices. Now days most AAA games look the same...and concepts artists are becoming factory workers...
I think this is really important to remember, whatever you think about this mainstream AAA ca style. The David Hockney book “Secret Knowledge” is a cool exploration of the history of artistic aids
Wow after watching the first half of the video i finally understand why concepts for AAA games and movies get so incredibly generic. What he is basically doing and saying is to just copy paste from recent commercial succesfull projects. "Why do it when its already done?" This is literally killing artistry and creativity. It is true that you can get to a professionell level quick by doing it but you will have 0 originality and will just be a corporat slave. There are thousand different ways to design props and each way is more plausible and usefull for a specific setting. This is what makes stuff original and unique. The way his studio works. Everything will look generic and forgetfull. I actually hate this way of approach. However in terms of upping your visual quality there are alot of good tips in this video. This should however only be used for technical quality to bring it to the next level. Helping youself out with 3d for perspective or lighting or posing will only benefit you in terms of work speed, will however not further you skill.
blockbusters aren't for artistry. they are for selling. quit being a hipster, and go enjoy some real art instead of shitting on popular art. it just makes you bitter. FYI: GDC is for professionals, not consumers. Best to stop watching how the sausage gets made if you don't want to get jaded
i think you're missing the problem entirely, the reason that happens is because they all use the same few concept artists. games and movies require concept artists to concept in 3D these days. they do lots of back and forth with the concept artist to try to find out what works and what doesn't before using these as a basis to create assets.
agreeing with the sentiment that if this is what passes as incisive in a conference then it's no wonder 99% of characters, enemies and environments have taken on the overlit overtextured generic AAA style. the amount you can do with shaders, mutation and physics in-engine means that art like this dates itself and limits its potential. Everything this guy likes fears color, shape, motion and texture; it's constantly obfuscated by effects and "baddassery" (the idea of which comes from the type of nerds nobody can stand who shit up your slack channel)...I swear after a few years people who work in larger games industry turn into shells of themselves for the sake of production rooted solely in capital.
@@2_B_B what do you expect? it's a reflection on the capitalism itself. all of it is camp art anyway, used for commercial promos, deal enticers, and visual guidelines for soulless outsourcing sweatshops. besides their goal is not to produce a better art -- or art in general -- but to produce a wow effect in less than 20 minutes. wow effect from whom? from the AAA consumer mediocrity. essentially it's a pop art scheme that lifts swathes of dollars for doing a good-enough-illusion of art. it's not good enough for me, but it's good enough for kickstarter or some publishing account. I'm not really trying to defend this school of thought, don't get me wrong (I hate all of it), but this guy -- much like JJ Abrams or Justin Bieber -- is exactly what the industry wants. and you got to respect him for being so fully immersed in this crap. at the very least, he doesn't pretend to love what he does, he actually loves it. I got to respect that. you know, the art will change, everything will change, but that kind of inner fire, that you have to find within yourself, that will always be a constant. this fire, alone, is what actually sells. or they're all just high on coke. or both.
Why "concept arts" needs to be so detailed and perfect? Until it's promotial art, doesn't it need be enough good just to schow idea, concept of character?
qnaman I think the "concept arts" you are talking about is for pitching ideas & the "concept arts" he is talking about is for production, there's a huge difference.
@@peternguyen1106 Concept art starts as an idea, but the idea isn't just the literal design to how to build it - it has to convey everything the real worl would - emotion - narrative etc. yes its fundimentally an idea, but it ends up a more realized ideation of a particularly subject/object.
In the modern production pipeline, the closer the concept artist gets to the final product that the 3D artists will model, the more hireable he'll be. It's simple. These techniques help you get a more complete result, in less time. It minimizes the amount of questions and back and forth that you receive from there 3D artists, because the details are very clear, rather than seeing just an impressionistic mess of brush strokes instead of details. In short: The easier you make the job of the modelers that will produce the final product, the more the companies will like you.
@@DesignInNature Of course they will, because you wil be a voluntary sucker doing more, producing more product for less pay. If idiotic logics like the one promoted by this guy that newer artists buy into and end up working for peanuts on IPs that have returns to investment in the billions. Some poor schmucks gonna jizz in his pants over the idea of working on these IPs to accept crap hours, shit pay and slave contracts.
I do not necessarily refute in part what Shaddy Saffadi argues in his lecture, and with understanding that is an excerpt from the video description, but "...concept designers with a refined sensibility for storytelling, shape design and cinematic lighting" is essentially a "concept artist", which has the greatest range and can adapt, creatively speaking The difference, as I understand it, is that reference photo are used not just as such (which is fine) , but also that photo may be used within the composition itself. Whereas there is no argument from me that using photos within composition expedites that design process to visually communicate, potentially rendering exceptional composition. However, these are not "concept designs" in the literal sense as they are, or can be, more so concept collages, crutching the software as such rather than skill, with the greatest potential of over-saturation; creatively sterile, if not restrictive -- another brick on the wall if you wall. da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Mucha, Dali, Parrish, Rockwell and others may have traced (or for the sake of argument infer that), but they certainly did not cut & paste from others, inspired by others, but not cut and paste.
It's sad to see how people cling on to the idea that you need blood sweat and tears for a concept image. A freaking concept image.... a thing you present to your director for inspiration... People are so fixated on making things their own, that they forget the purpose of art itself. Are you doing it to impress someone through your efforts? What are you after? Seriously... why do you do art? The truth for most of you here in the comment section is that you do it for yourself, to be proud and to comfort yourself with the idea that you're capable. Lots of people are capable of anything with enough effort put in, so why make it all about "your effort and YOUR imagination" constantly? Ego based, selfish reasons, nothing more. An artist's purpose is to "move" people, to inspire, play with ideas and tell stories. It's about others, you're suppose to create art for other people, not yourself. Does that mean you shouldn't learn the fundamentals? Absolutely not, you should definitely learn, otherwise you won't be able to do anything in the first place. But if you're stuck in the "learning" phase, constantly chasing your own tail, insisting that EVERYTHING has to come from YOUR imagination, then I'm sorry, you're missing the point of art. TL;DR - I agree 100% with the guy, but it's not all black and white. Sometimes you need the experience but other times you just have to get the damn thing done. Fixating on doing everything from scratch is egotistical nonsense.
Your definition of how an artist should be, and make art for others, damn man.. Is so good, and really you seem to be the only one who understand in this comment section
ive been scrolling down this comment section, ive posted replies to about 2 posts so far basically saying the same thing, art is all about what the audience feels when experiencing it, its not about you having a big wang cause you did something technically difficult. ive posted it twice and skipped over about 50 posts that also deserved that response. its crazy how many deluded 'artists' there are in these comment sections who dont understand the difference between their hobby that makes them feel good and commercial art that other people pay money to experience.
Replying super late to this comment but its so bang on, I think most people angry at this video aren't concept artists and don't understand that its not a drawing competition, no one is gonna pat you on the back because you spent 10 hours rendering the perfect rock instead of focusing on the important parts of the job, I did a course a while back for concept art and there was so much ego involved and so much confusion as to what we were actually there to do, constant back and forths that using a photo is cheating, how much 3D is cheating, that guy sucks because he doesn't draw enough etc, such a mess in hindsight, this video really does knock the sense into what the industry is all about
I was doing paint overs of 3D since 2000ish after moving from 2D into 3D . Photoref, photo bashing. At the time it felt like cheating, but the fact was, its efficient for pipelines - makes shorter step for the game asset or at least be helpful to your team. If you're modelling something you need to know different angles, so often a modeller would only have one perspective. I was into more than a 2d image, I'm into to the full mechanics and functionally for best plausibility and immersion, so you quickly discover potential animation issues or mesh clipping in a design and then form follows function - which will make a design even more plausible. Concept in 3D and painting over a render, means if that concept is approved you can provide the 3D model too. Same for animation of things (as part of the proof of concept) especially getting around the practicality and functionally of things. Modelling and doing one nice render can also be quicker than five turn around 2d renders. Including a simple animation brings it to life. It's also a huge part of your vision being carried through. You can contribute to the final thing with more of your ideas which is a kick too. You can also use blocks outs or rough meshes (if constructed and prepped cleanly enough) in game as a placeholder static model for level designers and pass it on to cinematics, storyboard artists, lighting artists and if you simply subdivide it enough to the target count of the final model, also a poly count placeholder in scenes for frame rate testing. The team will get pumped up seeing the in game progress is more noticeable, the vision and experience is more available to everyone sooner and whilst the final asset is still in production. I now do the same thing with World Machine and Substance Designer - especially for small teams where you are concepting and making the asset yourself - it just makes sense. makes the next guy's job easier too if they have more to springboard from and closer to a WYSIWYG for Art directors and other managers, marketing and general vision.
All the high paying jobs for concept design are most probably companies like EA, Activison, Ubisoft. Who do not necessarily rely on their creative teams to come up with new and creative ideas. Look at the previous games they have released for the last idk 8 years. They all have the same concepts design. There is little to no variation in the style they use, which is generally aimed providing the most realistic environments possible. At the detrement to creativity. It is easier to get people to believe in what they are interacting with if it feels grounded in reality. ( Im talking about the majority who have come to expect a certain product) Like the speaker said. You have real life visual aids to work from. Millions of references to work from. It saves time as majority of publishers want to push out games quickly. Funny how majority of triple A publishers always have buggy code, but their visuals are solid.. Huh. Not saying this style is a bad thing. It appeals to the majority, but if you are someone with more nuanced taste. It just doesn’t satisfy. And i think pursuing a career in concept art seems a little rinse and repeat. If you want to make money, i guess this is what it takes. (Unless you work for a great indie company, but yeahh they are a fringe market though.) So yeah is it a good direction for concept art. Ehhh. Its up to personal opinion, and which style of video games or other concept art driven media you enjoy. Does it place restrictions on creativity? Perhaps. People just like games that look as close to reality as possible. So until that changes i doubt that this shift it the creative field will. All consumer driven.
I've expected someone much more cringy after reading that comment...honestly he seems like just an actually funny guy, you tend to forget these exist aswell.
this is the type of concept work that's making everyone sick of AAA games and "blockbuster" movies, there's no artistry or even design, just derivative crap
The point of concept art is portraying a reality in someone's head in the real world. Not putting as much work as possible into it for a result equal to or worse than what you would get from "cheating". The art is in the idea. Not the technique necessarily.
No, you have no clue what you are on about. This isn't how the final thing will look in the game. It's a CONCEPT. This is a short cut for concept artists. And it's a great short cut.
Some digital artists quickly improve because they were already traditional artists who just didn't understand digital color theory. Tbh the difference between bad realistic digital hand painting and good realistic digital hand painting is just a couple of slow and persistent mental breakdowns for me.
There’s plenty of spaces. Many studios are also turning back to the more stylized look. Other companies such as Nintendo clearly has no intention of going realistic/photobashy with their games.
@@R_A120 It really depends upon the purpose of their product. The industry as a whole is not moving in that direction. It’s only the studios that benefit from an approach like that, usually those with a more realistic art firection in mind.
actually, indie company should be the one that "cheat" a lot if they want to limit their cost and increase effectiveness, but it depends on how you approach your product. Some really want to deliver an artistic experience some just want to make a quick and effective fun experience
using reference for your professional work and studying reference to grow as an artist is fundamental. On the other hand this approach to art to rely yourself on shortcuts can be very damaging for people starting out. Do your fundamentals first.
I'm only 13 minutes in and I have to say that this guy uses the term "photo reference" when he means "photo bombing". If you're grabbing a photo and using it directly in your image it's not reference anymore. And it's acceptible for concept art I'd say, where you're trying to do pre-production stuff and not a final product. Yet he has an issue with quality. Your work as a concept artist ought to be to come up with concepts, ideas and visualize them in a basic manner, how the hell does a fully crafted scene serve a team unless you're trying to double it as promo material? Yet you have these kind of guys who squeeze out every ounce of life-blood from these even dumber artists, turning them into mechanical art production machines for a measily buck. The problem with this stuff and this guy talking about getting good and being an art god and what not are a) as a concept artist it's not necessary because what's important is the concept and speed, not the quality and b) no one ever took up a pencil idolizing a concept artist, especially a digital concept artist. And herein lies the problem. Most people who take up art want to emulate other artists, from classical old masters to modern master illustrators, no one wants to be some machine that produces 200 variants of a character and get burnt out after 5 years (which is the average time concept artists work in the video games industry). But the need to be an individual is meshed with the demand to be a machine, and unfortunately most take the bait.
Hadoken man this is probably the best comment on here! you got it man, that's why I dig Artist like Simon Bisley_ Giger_ Joe Jusko_ and Alex Ross and Bernie wrightson_ Masters!
The contradiction is evident when you see what the guy in the talk is facing. He's trying to compromise people's need to be individual artists who want to follow their passions with the need industry has for concept production. This is the root of the problem which he tries to disguise by pandering to artist's sensitivities to be better and then bullshitting them about how to get there which ultimately just produces a more efficient concept art producing machine for his business, not another Leonardo or Frazetta. Are there people who are inclined to work this way? You bet. Was there anyone who picked up a pencil with a passion to get into it for it's own sake? Never, just like there's never been one person who ever looked at a Minimalist painting and was inspired to be a painter by it, ever. It's almost guaranteed that every single one has been inspired to persue a career in art by either a great classical artist, illustrator, comic artist or has some other motive like eventually directing an animation studio etc. And because you have to compromise the two, you have to let concept artists think they are doing what they set out to. But ultimately this is also why it's hard to have any respect for the famous concept artists of this era like say Craig Mullins. So what if he's the grandaddy of digital concept art, that's just accident of birth. The man has killer skills but he's just become and efficient machine that's producing concepts and concept artists. I don't think anyone can name or even desribe the last great piece he did that would make you look at it for hours, which begs the question, what's the use of them being so refined? I mean, it's like the man spends half his time coming up with ways to produce something as fast a possible, and when he does he eventually kicks himself and everyone coming after him in the nuts because once a concept piece can be produced in half the time with half the skill, you can bet your life that it will have less than half the value, so to finalize the economic side of the argument Craig Mullins and other's efficiency is leading people into starvation and giving guys like the one in the video larger profit margins, which is his goal, that's why he's there. For the life of me, I've never understood why anyone would ever want to be a concept artist just like I never got why one would want to be some, I dunno, post-modernist political commentary artist.
For every photobasher, there are also guys like jamie jones. His recent start wars concept art were entirely handpainted. Photobashing isn't the end all and be all of concept. Its just a tool you can use optionally to speed up your workflow.
hepzibah, we agree with this. Trouble is that the company is always going to strive to efficiency and speed because they have a product to ship and sell to make cash before the other guys do. It's understandable that photobashing has to be used, no question about it. The questions to be risen tho are a) is this type of work satisfying for most people who do b) is it the reason they put pencil to paper in the first place and c) does this affect quality in the long run? If you take a look at the making of Jurassic Park you will see that the effects were the combination of a bunch of artists from different disciplines. You have traditional puppet and stop motion animators animating the dinosaurs with special puppets that represented the virtual bones (since these guys weren't Softimage 3D users). You have the lighting, texturing, shading etc of each shot being studied versus paintings and illustrations where stuff like color temperature of the shadows and the lights are studied to adhere to the light on the scene. We're talking about an insanely excruciating amount of detailed work to make the visual effects look as lifelike as possible, a level of effort and sophistication that to my knowledge has never been exhibited in a movie since. You've got to wonder how in a time when renderers and 3d packages had 1/100th the tools they have today to autotrack camera movement, use the global illumination of a scene to sort of match the lighting in the virtual scene, use effects like radiosity, sub surface scattering etc to match the work done by all those artists automatically, how it is that Jurassic Park for the most part looks so life-like that the only thing keeping you from thinking it's an effect is the fact that you know dinosaurs are extinct and the latest blockbuster's effects look so cartoonily false despite the help of automation? Or why is it that the further back you go, with exception to films that are cheap knockoffs (and even there a debate can be had), films that involve concepting of any sort display a variety of ideas, photography, palettes and creations that make them totally distinct from each other whereas today, totally different films or games look and feel identical for the most part? I'd blame photobashing. The fact that it can be so economical that it's the only viable option and thus studios rely on it totally. Artists are gonna use, more or less, the same references because when looking for reference they will use Google, and more or less no one's gonna look through 1000 pages of photos, most will scour the 10-20 first pages and be done with it. Also you have the exact same tools and algorithms which produce exactly the same look outputting all the imagery in everything you create. When you have everything being drawn in Photoshop, using the same techniques to the effect of it seeming like it was all done by the same hand why wouldn't it all look similar? Also, most of these artists are being worked to death that they've no time to be artists, whatever individuality they may have is eventually burnt up in the concept farms. A case can be made that selectively the best techniques, software and tools for the job evolved and came on top, kinda like natural selection. But now we've got a product and a user of said product that so specialized that it creates a slightly different version of itself, unevolved like a shark.
Hadoken So much of this conversation is so dumb. There’s soooo many artists that pick up the pencil to become concept artists. I never wanted to be like an old master, and never wanted to do art for self expression, not every artist does, and tons of artists that do think they’re some special gem because they’re so personally connected to everything they do and they’re useless when it comes to creating a vision for a movie or game. If you’re comparing concept art to traditional masters you’re being ridiculous and you should never watch movies or play games again because the only reason for concept art is to create designs to inspire the people building the game. The concept art can be thrown out after the game is released and it wouldn’t matter. Obviously people enjoy looking at concept art, but it’s about creating a world or a vision for somebody’s idea, and it’s not about expressing only your ideas. It’s not a selfish art form like traditional art, it’s about inspiring others with your ideas, using any way you can to communicate those ideas. Also you literally said that using photoshop and photos from google is gonna make everything look the same. But you wouldn’t say that about traditional painting? Drawing with a pencil is a pencil. It’s gonna look the same as every other pencil drawing. Painting in oils is never gonna look like drawing in pencil, it’s gonna look like painting in oils. Do you say every oil painter looks the exact same? Every persons work that’s drawn with a pencil looks the exact same? Photoshop is a tool where you can literally render realistically as if using marker, you can use a brush that looks like pencil, you can make it look like oil paints, like acrylic, watercolour, pen, and pretty much everything else. Just using one program. It’s the least limiting art method ever invented, and if you think all photoshop work looks the same you haven’t even begun to expose yourself to the tip of the iceberg of digital artists. Nobody cares about you guys thinking photobashing isn’t real art. Open photoshop, grab the exact photos you see in a piece of concept art from this guy, and try to recreate it and watch yourself fail miserably. Using photobashing effectively is its own art form and isn’t something you can do beautifully quickly. And this guy is just telling people interested to do these things to get to a level where you’re working on AAA games and then you can spend your spare time learning any fundamentals you want and most concept artists do that. There’s so many closed minded people here who think they’re such valuable artists, and if you wanna only do traditional art and try to work in video games that’s great, Goodluck with that. But for the people who wanna work on AAA games and films and help fuel one of the worlds biggest industries by using any method they can that looks good and applying their own taste and ideas to it, they are gonna do it whether or not you think it’s “real art” or not. Get over yourselves and let people do what they want
"Faster" this is the word that are destroying the industry in general. We are getting to a point that an AI can create concept art. AI is faster, why do I need use human, is not cheating right? Why? Why do I need to paint if I can't make 3d? Because some people want to paint. That's the point of being alive, enjoy doing things. What's the point of using the maximum of technology if in the end a lot of people aren't enjoying. It's all about produce faster and having the money bag.
All art is being boiled down to an endless stream of "content" where the specific virtues of individual forms are replaced with flashy, unchallenging slop.
the industry and consumer don't care how you did your work, as long its quick enough and effective, if you want to the "old ways" treat it as a hobby and not a job
No I get why most AAA games look pretty much the same to the point you need to compare the UI to tell them apart if you've never played them. I get that it's what the industry demands but it's 2018 right now and nobody remembers Oblivion for it's... well nobody remembers Oblivion at all. No compare it to the Alien franchise and how unique everything looked in those movies. I agree with the title. Concept art is dead indeed
Exactly. You turn your artist into some "Concept artist" printer and just ask him to create iteration after iteration, thats what you will get. Bland designs. Aliens work because they hired an actual artist not a game artist to do the designs.
I know I'm way late, but I was in the unit that the commemorative painting was for when we shut it down in 2015. I had a print of it. I just stumbled across this video and happened to recognize it. Small world!
Okay. I'm not an artist, or concept artist or anything related. But I just watched the whole hour and feel like I gained something here. I made a playlist just for it called inspiration. Props to that guy.
I want to be a concept artist, solely because I want to make a living out of what I enjoy doing. If I just cared about advancing in the Job while not caring about that, why even do it
14:20 so thats why every game / texture / face (beside the main charas) looks the same nowadays... - yes it would take you longer to not hand draw it but copy pasting some pictures into your work and or use the textures from other stuff will only lead to recombination not creation . (imo) you will always find things you already saw in the picture / game / whatever . you may trick your perception at first but your brain always compares everything with everything which will lead to overstimulation which leads to no "emotional reaction". just think of the electro / chart music nowadays . only recombined beats / song texts / riffs & etc . for me , every third song feels like you already heared it before or like its just a slightly different remix of smth . so boring . every third chart lyric is about "baby" , "love" , " feel (...)" , and some sporadic "la laaaa la laaa " singing :"D . just sad . - creation (from scratch) will always form smth that was initially made by you (gives it a whole other value imo) and might actually create smth so much better than what you even thought of , just because "shit happens" :D . if you always use references all the cracks in the rock , all the colors , all the cloth textures , the "dry bottom textures" will look the same and my brain at least does definitely recognize them . it looks cheap and unnatural (also it looks flat for most of the time and till you get some actual mech in it , you might as well draw it yourself) + the different lighting and the semi transparent layers that overlap are hard to get rid off . - there might be situations where its reasonable to copy paste photo references but it will ruin your own style and stagnate your progress in creation (imo)
Kliersheed people dont get that, no matter how the tech develops. You can never take the quality of translating an idea into pen and paper. Its raw and fluid. And its something that tech can never replace.
I like the movie oblivion too. Although most of the talk was " I like this type of art and it's badass. I have sick artists worldwide and they are badass." As far as "cheating" goes I would call it something else like saving time and being realistic about the workload and quality you want to achieve. Good talk.
Really fascinating talk. As a purist, I can't respect this method of art, cutting an pasting material that isn't your own, then painting over it. (doing it from your own photos and models isn't so bad) But then I can't deny the beauty of the end result, which is ultimately what really matters.
That financially disastrous piece seems so obviously bad. The forms are fine, line work looks good on the characters, but only one character is lit in a room that is mostly dark. the eye doesn't know where to go because the forms are obscured (though the forms track a couple of very obvious lines through the piece), and there's not a lot to see when you find it. maybe this was an artistic choice to represent the atmosphere of the game (I know nothing of it, but maybe it's a really dark dungeon crawler?), but as a piece it just looks tired. there's magic lights and fire and they barely affect the lighting. they did all the composition work with daz and just like checked out for the rest of it. what's the point in taking a short cut if you don't use the extra time to work on the juicy parts of a piece? who wants a medal for fastest produced mediocre art?
Yeah it's really poor, jesus can you imagine being the client, paying 10K and receiving that jpeg through the mail a week later? /r/instantregret all the way. And he has the nerve to say they're the best in the world.
Im ready to agree. As an environment/lighting artist I realize how easy it is theese days to build up the concept and mode in a level editor like Unreal instead of having a painting in photoshop. You can basically build a scene in a couple of hours and it will serve as a a proof of concept, both from a gameplay and 3d point of view.
Damn dude I can't believe you do that instead of just using a pencil and ruler on an A3 sheet of paper, do you have no shame?! I"m joking in case that wasn't clear lol
Using photos and Frankenstein them together is not only creatively bankrupt but also incredibly lazy and explains why you can't tell concept art from one game from another can't tell who drew what.
It looks better, saves time and actually it means you can spend more time on creating original designs. Or are you being creative spending 3 hours pixel painting a background landscape just so you can say you did? Everything is based on something, where you take those influences is what makes you creative
I mean...isn't that the same for every IP in the entertainment industry. Honestly art direction should not matter too much. It is only a visual guide for the creation of characters and world. The main focus should be one's ability to grasp your audience with great characters and story. Art style or aesthetics is only "a cherry on top"
Most of the comments are so toxic and naive. Those who say that using photos in paintings is photo bashing, and photo bashing is a dirty thing to use in concept art, should grow up. Concept art is not regular art. It's goal is to get to the fucking point with maximum efficiency. That is how the industry works. If you do not believe me, look at "The art of Game of Thrones". Adam Duff has a good video about that book
Yeah, I remember watching Oblivion... I remember how it was just a bunch of shots and ideas mangled together from other, much better, sci fi properties. And... Most concept art feels that way too. Nothing new. Noone daring to break out. Most of it seems to be done by the same artist. The same guy who pends his time obsessing over the details of Stick Salesman.
Bro, I realized even I put him in one of my paintings. Didn't like how the overall painting looked, but I did actually put him in there. It's pretty funny.
It's nothing new. There was a time when "Rock and Roll is Dead" and "Disco is Dead" where the hippest things to say. Though, Disco did actually die, so it's not always wrong. This guy on the other hand, is pretty wrong and jaded. He's been ruined by inartistic AAA companies that are terrifies of originality and real art.
This just feels like i'm being told over and over again that he knows the best artists and that his studio is amazing, i expected more from a GDC talk. Yes the little things matter as it helps to create images with story but from my understanding all he showed me was illustrations, the breakdown of design, the iterative process and what makes it different from being a concept artist to a designer was nowhere to be seen.
Thx for the talk. I always thought people cheat in every way possible and this just helps me confirm that. I'm so stubborn not taking shortcuts and that sets me back so much. I don't dislike is per say but when people cheat and claim the end product as something made by them by skill or w/e makes me sick.
There are many of us who work in the industry who are good enough and fast enough at the foundational aspects of drawing to not drop photos directly into our work, which is why our work has life and appeal. When I look at his PBY plane painting, it shows you how little he knows about drawing foundation, which is why he needs to drop in photos. He is good at research and assembly, not really the technical or creative aspects of the craft. And, truth be told, they are not asking his company to concept, they are asking his company to “visualize” the already existing concept created by the company’s narrative and content people. I don’t fault him for his ability to find a way to survive in the market, but viewing others as ignorant for not pursuing that narrow minded path is irrelevant and he should remove it.
do you use a computer to do art? or do you go out, source pigment, grind it and mix it with oils urself then use the brush you made, by hand, to paint on a canvas you also made by hand? people who paint by hand will tell you using a computer is cheating, people who paint in photoshop will tell you photobashing is cheating... a job is where you produce something required by someone in a time efficient manner. if you want to impose your own conjured up restrictions on yourself because it gives you a sense of self justification in your hobby then go for it, power to you man, because a hobby is about doing the thing you love to do that makes you feel good. virtually no one gets paid to do their hobby, and the very few who do most of them find their hobby becomes a job. so do you want to do that job or you want to go be an estate agent or a line manager in a call centre? they call it a job because its work and you get paid to do it by someone else who wants what they want, not what you want, what you want is your hobby.
What? Artists have been taking photos of themselves to act as models for their characters since photography was invented. Why is he acting like this is some revolutionary crazy idea his artists are special for?
Because uninformed idiots will still often look at someone basing a character illustration off of a photograph of a model making a pose they liked as "cheating" and being devoid of talent. The way the games industry works has a HUGE influence on young artists, because every kid wants to grow up and make video games. People like this guy making it clear that photobashing is a viable and legitimate way to create worthwhile art is how you crush that false perception.
Honestly, as a VFX student I don't see how any experienced artist could need these concepts for anything else than layout, as in "where do I place this fence or this fat tumor on that zombie?". Everything looks so normal and un conceptual, don't give me a concept art to pitch me the idea of a snowy mountain.
@kogepanm Might be a misunderstanding here, I was arguing that concept arts are useful in that regard : "Where the tumor is placed", but not when it comes to pitching extremely normal ideas like soldiers with a backpack or snowy mountains. In any way, my views about it changed since I posted the comment, I got to see Jad Saber talk about concepts and it all makes sense now, it's not so much about pitching unique ideas but rather to give a guide to the rest of the production. I found them useless because I was viewing them exclusively as there to imagine unique designs.
go try getting a job in an actual factory doing an assembly line. i give you about 2 days before you wish you were back being able to sit at a computer doing 3d modelling of anything and getting paid for it.
@@aliasmcdoe if youre an artist then youre not employed by anyone, you sit at home and make whatever art inspires you and then you can attempt to find someone willing to buy it from you. 0.000001% of 'artists' can manage to make a living from that because virtually everyone can draw or paint or play an instrument or dance or act and virtually no one can make a living doing those things without being forced to do them in a way someone else wants them to. if you go out and get a job, employed by someone else, youre no longer an artist fulfilling your grand creative vision, you are part of an assembly line. this is where 99.999999% of artistic jobs exist because if you want someone to pay you to do something in almost all cases the reason they have to pay you is because they want you to do something you wouldnt otherwise be doing, they want you to do what they want you to do, not what you want you to do, thats called a job and its what people do to make a living. ive worked driving forklifts in a warehouse the size of 5 football pitches for years and ive worked as a graphic designer for years. the amount of jnr graphic designers fresh out of uni ive heard complain about some corporate piece of design work not fulfilling their artistic dreams is as extensive as it is facepalm inducing. if you want to go on to unemployment benefits and paint dragons in your parents basement because it makes you feel like an artist expressing yourself then go ahead, if you want a job in a creative field be prepared to do a 9 to 5 as part of an assembly line that involves many people with many different skills and ends up in a consumer product. welcome to capitalism, and if those people had ever done a real job where their place in an assembly line is doing some actual manual labour they would jump at the chance to find a place in a line where they can kick back and use some artistic skill to add a piece of commercial art to an assembly line instead. if sitting in 3Dmax or adobe or cubase making a mouse around feels to you like sitting on an assembly line in a factor theres 100% chance youve never worked on an actual assembly line in an actual factory.
@@necaacen Damn dude you went hard lol, this whole comment section has been mostly people moaning about an industry that allows you to actually make a living out of being creative, because its not 'pure' enough in their eyes, its so bizarre, and as you said I'm pretty sure theres millions of people who would love to do it rather than whatever job they've landed, and probably wouldn't have such a stick up their ass about the ethics of using 3D/using a photo or whatever
Well this is the gaming industry, most big budget aaa games look like boring trash. So this is what you'll have to create if you want to work on those titles. They dont need artistic visionary concepts for the next installment of Battlefield or FIFA.
@@Samirxkhan yes. because there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. they sell like crazy, and you have to continue to sell the lifestyle and somehow try to keep it fresh to keep people interested and buying a new sequel every year.
I quite like this style, it could be slightly more stylized and have more contrast. Other than that I like it. The people in this comment section are so cancerous it's incredible, you people need to grow the fuck up and stop complaining about people's art online. There is plenty I could say about art I don't like, but I don't. Some parts of the art community is overly toxic. I like saturated, I like desaturated, I like realistic, I like stylized (not picasso level stylized though). TL;DR: People like what they like. Get over it, and stop complaining.
10:46 TBH I don't think that guy had improved his skill after that few weeks/months, more like he altered his art style to what you like, plus having learned a few new tricks.
@Absolutely DreadfulNot in those couple of weeks as the guy claims, no he didn't. Art skill doesn't improve that way. It won't suddenly improve just because you've been taught a few tricks, I wish it was that easy.
@@jeremyron8793 Different people have different ways of thinking and learning. What may take you many years to understand may take the next person moments. So long as you have the will, drive and understanding, you can achieve most of anything in a short amount of time.
jeremy ron not exactly do you not use drawing and painting in photo-bashing do you really think it’s all 3D models It’s still painting but painting on photos Do they not judge scale ? Do they not judges lighting and colors? It’s as if people can’t improve my looking at nature
You can definitely improve that quickly. It depends on the quality of feedback you're getting (he surrounded himself with experts who pointed out weaknesses) and the effort that goes into implementing that feedback. If you're doing this seriously for 8 to 10 hours a day, that level of improvement is *expected* in a professional setting.
I think he objectively improved a lot, you can see cleaner edges, more defined brushwork, and better readability in the newer piece compared to the old one. Through mentoring, artists can definitely improve that fast.
Something I rarely think about is how much 3D modelling can help with understanding perspective. Whenever I think of making a painting, I imagine just starting with some lines, colors, basic shapes, lighting, etc. But starting off with 3D modelling the scene can help so much in enhancing the "feel" you get when looking at the final image.
mainly why I as an artist who was pursuing this industry, left and went back to the Japanese style designs I love. Every western game is literally "regular looking white dude in jeans and a baseball cap" or "Military guy from Afghanistan" or "Robot arm dude in a bomber jacket" and theyre heralded as amazing revolutionary designs. Anyone could come up with that shit. Its all just preference of the art director and networking at some point. Meanwhile any run of the mill mangaka could design circles around them because they havent watered down their imagination into a game dev pipeline.
Big companies cut costs including creativity to sell. It's hard to be truly creative if the industry is going in a different direction. Did you move to Japan to work in manga? I didn't understand that part.
I’m not a concept artist but I go through this so much when developing my music videos: the interesting ideas are always the ones that arise from the limitations we find along the way.
Do you know what he means though? For real, as a designer and artist though, there are so many fantastically useful concepts in this talk and its so engaging! I can't believe six years later, it still all rings true.
Oh so thats why every AAA title looks the same, people responsible for the looks are uninspired talentless hacks that only can ape the reality without any creativity or actual art involved, AND they cant actually paint. Thanks for the clarification. I actually chuckled out loud a bit when he brought up some dude that photobashes generic fantasy skeletons and naked chicks with guns as his "art god".
Shadi can definitely paint really well, but for games like Uncharted, it doesn't make sense not to use photobashing. This applies for most big game companies and movies.
@Danny Pavlov I've looked through that guys portfolio and everythings either photobashed crap or some dull landscape. Where you getting the idea that this guy can paint from?
Photobashing will make sense to you if you actually experienced working on a AAA game, or if you dare to produce one yourself. No matter what you say against it, the method is TIME efficient which makes the producers who pays the artists happy. It is what it is mate. We gotta move forward with it.
Ripping off someones photos from the internet and stitching them together is not art, so as long as people doing that dont claim theyre artists its fine. Every process, even the most scummy one, has its place when theres people willing to pay you for it. The other matter of course is the legality of what these people are doing, using someones photos for commercial project is very obviously a copyright infringement, unfortunately photographers rarely bother with protecting their property and suing the ones that use their creations without permission, so they go on without getting caught.
The unfortunate reality is that with the advent of digital painting you have the same 200 top people (who were the first 200 people who started this stuff by the way) teaching the exact same thing to everying who came afterwards, which is why all games and movies look exactly the same. This is also why the first Jurassic Park's effects still hold up incredibly well and last summer's blockbuster's look fake, because speed. Concept art for movies and games before 2000 didn't look nearly as finished or good as it does today yet the concepts aren't any better. Of course in concept art the idea is what's important it's quality isn't unless you're gonna produce an art book to make more money, so photobashing's OK. But yes, it's dubious that they use other people's work without compensating them.
Ummmm..... that's a thing that's been going on since Photoshop's easy accessibility (torrents) to 12 year olds. They bypass the fundamentals and go straight to digital painting. Some who actually try to learn the fundamentals, just get familiar enough just to get a job. Okay understanding of light and form, color, composition and anatomy equates to shit art to me.
Art is not a race.... is a Marathon, the problem of looking up is that you cant see the rocks on the road, walk at your own pace, and never camp and have fun enjoy the view, enjoy the journey not the finishing line.
Ayan Choudhury that’s... not how anything works. Machines can perform tasks that we design them to and command them to. An ARTIST still has to be there, being creative and choosing what specific tasks to tell the machine to perform.,
@@Fantallana Thats the point though, with this kind of art you can just make a program that does art and not need an artist. One might say that this art has no soul. Although all art might be replaced with neural net generated art at some point, there is no reason why a neural net couldn't be "creative"
@@Fantallana damn bro just dropping in to say he was right… I mean look at Dalle 2 soon they’ll hire 1 or 3 dudes to do everything shown in this video if it far evolves from what it can do now which is crazy 😂
There was so little preparation involved in this talk. Just a dude searching Windows Explorer for cool photos that support what he feels like saying in the moment.
It’s really funny how many comments there are saying essentially “now I get why everything AAA and Big budget Hollywood looks the same and lacks originality.” Followed by the same rant about the death of the artistry. This is my second time watching this video and honestly coming back to it after my first viewing I find myself feeling a little stupid I don’t put more of these techniques into practice. What he offers in this video is just more tools to improve your art
yeah, people think concept Art is making beautiful paintings out of nothing when that's not the case. It's a CONCEPT, you have to take ideas from the real world, concepts, and delivering these ideas in the shortest time possible, there's no ''wrong way'' to do this
Honestly, I am fucking mindblown by this video and Mr. Saffadi in general. I have a decent amount of experience in visual design and art direction so while I expected this to be an advanced talk, certain concepts like the "detail control" just completely blew me away. It's so next level, it's the kind of thing that sets a great image apart from a good one and it's impossible to pinpoint until you know what to look for. Thank you so much for this content.
About this, I think like Leonardo did, your art won't be good if you depend only on "quick technical methods" but if you develop your art eye by actually being an real artist you will make all that 3d modeling an photobashing work awesome. Art is an idea, drawing teaches you design, the essence never change. Technology is good, but art fundamentals make it work for any form of art.
As a concept artist in America working with an entirely non American team aside from myself, I can't agree more. I seriously have no idea how anyone gets famous in this country, as being vapid, boring, unremarkable, and talent-less seems to be what's "In" these days. Luckily, only in the land of America.
Feng Zhu seems to teach the opposite of what this guy is saying, drawing and especially perspective seem incredibly important when he talks about concept art.
@@anima94 Thats because when you can actually draw like Fheng you can shit out art much faster, than the people who need to do 1 to 2 hours of prep work before they can actually start drawing.
I don't know, this goes against mostly everything most artists believe in, photo-bashing I see as a dirty and cheating practice. I can always spot when something has been photo-bashed, even in Kuciera's work. He does it so well, so I think there is a place for it. But you cannot disregard the digital illustrator masters of today and their craft. People like Sergey Kolesov, or Even Amundsen or Bayard Wu.
We need to remind our selves that today’s environment isn’t about artistry it’s about time and money I get that photo bashing is cheating for you But think about how long it would take for someone to repaint and paint all of those things with out photo bashing Not only do you have to spend a large amount of time to get skin and textures right It’s insane and especially in today’s competitive field where people don’t really pay artist that much money
@@cherokeehernandez9748 yep. artistry in terms of skill is over rated anyway. the result is what matters. its like sampling in music. a guy plays acustic guitar, he thinks electric guitar is dirty cheating, electric guy thinks synths are cheating, synth guy thinks software synths are cheating, that guy says sampling is cheating... you know what matters? when you press play on a track and you feel something. all that other stuff is just jerkoff bullshit that really isnt about art, its about some sort of technical skill. the art is the final piece that you see or hear. like ur saying, its a job and a job is time vs money vs product, and none of that is about "oh look at me im so great i can do the same thing the hard way". and art isnt about that either, art is about the feeling the audience has experiencing the art. im a graphic designer, i play instruments, paint canvases, paint models, paint digital, make computer music, theres a lot of artists i really enjoy in all fields and say hey, look at this guy hes so great he can do that hard thing really well. i get it, thats cool, but it is what it is, its not a job and its not art, its technical jerking off for people who like a bit of technical jerk off. whos your favourite guitarist? is it the guy that can play the most complicated passage of notes the fastest? or is it the guy that played the solo that almost brought a tear to your eye with the feelings those notes conveyed? thats art, the other one is a guy who can move his fingers really fast in a precise manner.
Absolutely fantastic talk. Entertaining, motivating, informative, confident and to the point as always Shaddy. Do not pay any attention to the criticism addressed in the comments. Honestly it seems like no matter how often you repeat that the talk is supposed to be viewed in context of REALISTIC, MODERN, AAA concept art and for other people who share your taste the audience will still get defensive about you attacking what "real concept art" is to them. The absolute majority of those people have never worked a day as a concept artist in their lives and most likely never will but I don't need to tell you that, I'm sure you know it yourself. Keep it coming man, loving the increased online content output of OPB recently. Looking forward to seeing more from OPB and working with you in the future!
It's not that I disagree with some of what he's trying to say. I just think this guy's being rather absolute about something rather relative. Yes, a sense of "designer" is more emphasis on the general idea conveyed as timely as possible than, say, someone spending hours on rendering one picture. Still, this idea of streamlining the design process, and not over-sweating concept designs like a "work of art" is nothing new. Also, concept art isn't dead in AAA game industry. It's just streamlined. People still find use for the "work of art" type stuff.
Oh, and some AAA studios, like Nintendo, use both. I've never seen one _Legend of Zelda_ game that didn't feature both "concept design" and "concept art."
Good points. I didn't find his points disagreeable either. It sounds exciting for people who like to explore different ways of complimentary efficient methodologies in a big pipeline. Pretty positive in a sense of a macro view. Micro viewed details within different specializations are still where plenty of designers are needed, and even in the subjective details in aesthetic impact for concept illustrators. A little rough in his pitch, but to be fair artists can feel or be the same way at times when it comes to adapting into a broader work environment with multiple co-workers.
The title alone is worth an instant dislike though... On top of that, the distinction between 'concept artist' and 'concept designer' makes basically no sense anyway. A good concept artist will already tackle the problem of cinematic lighting, assuming that is part of what is asked from them (as one could also design items, weapons etc. without that for sake of clarity for 3D modellers). It still always takes a good level designer to then actually put it in a videogame. This part of translation from concept to final level assets and design often gets lost and it's not the fault of concept artists. Exact same applies to storytelling. And you know something truly ironic? The Last of Us concept art is 10x better than what actually ended up being in the game. It's also a severely overrated game when it comes to storytelling from a visual point of view. So no, the trash talk on concept artists makes no sense. Yeah, I know portfolios from people just graduated from art college tend to be somewhat to very poor, but seeing the very games Saffadi worked on he's not making much sense in terms of the whole 'concept designers'.
Also, it might be just me, but The Last of Us has some of the most generic designs I've ever come across in a videogame and people acted as if they'd never seen such a thing before. Total cringe!
In GDC's defence, it was Shaddy who gave the session such a 'clickbait' title. We've ended up on the receiving end of the piece now, but it was a good talk overall. Could complain, but instead I'll be thankful, the title helped gain views and get this talk to appear in my recommended. It's not like I'm sat here feeling like I wasted my time.
I don't see any problem with using most of the techniques he was talking about, but his studio even with those "cheats" in place on most pictures he's shown managed to fuck up composition and lighting. And the design was nor grounded and realistic, nor that interesting. I guess you just have to do at least passably well without crutches to get to the "other level" with them. And if you're shit without them - nothing's gonna change whatever tricks you employ.
Yeap, even with all the Shortcuts you can Still make Crap. it Proves How hard Art is. You need to have a Good Trained Eye For it. But again Learning These Shortcuts can Problably Help you Saved time at some Point. But Don't Let the Picture Talk 4 You. its a Good Starting Point not a Good End Point. and thats the Path he Choose.
I'm not watching this for an hour to get the full picture of what he's saying, but I'm going off of the video description. Concept art is always a good thing, IMO. I've always enjoyed looking at concept art and the such to see how the development process evolved because it's interesting. Scenery concept art especially can be downright beautiful. At least some indie developers still release concept art and I appreciate it.
Cinematic lightning is the worse type of kind. No wonder nowaday all movies and games looks like frikking photoshop filter. How people can immerse themself with instagram filter and fake lightning?
Nobody likes it, but HE likes it in the sense that his clients are paying big bucks for that shit, so he likes to sell that shit to those companies. He's just a businessman.
So the audience won't be confused about the visual interest?...it's not bad because it all comes down to the mood, importance, atmosphere of the scene. If it didn't have said filters...then you would have bad staging. Are you saying that A L L movies do that crap? No, there's comedy and drama and even video games that keep it grounded to realism.
Your opinion is not a universal reality. In my opinion, you leach off the creativity of others, and try to express a creative spark by a reductive, uninspiring dismissal.
This is why you have to have nothing but respect for old school veterans like Mcquarrie, Mead, Johnston and Cobb. Grafted the hard way and ended up influencing the next few generations. Even the likes of Feng and Scott Robertson should be up there as they bridged the gap between the past and present combining traditional with digital. They do photobash and use photoshop to speed up work flow but have reached a level where most of us won't reach traditionally, unless we put in the hard work and mileage even with all these 3d programmes to aid us. If you're young you still should learn how to draw because time is on your side but if you're a late starter without that strong art background, you're gonna have to learn every trick in the book because unfortunately, time is money.
These arguments are misleading. Even if it helps to build 3d models you still need to know how to draw before you start the modelling in the first place. Drawing is the fastest connection we have between imagination and reality!
@@Constantinesisusualy when I model without making some concept beforehand I just change it overtime, you allways make a "concept" mesh, with only the base shape and continue to work on it, making lot of simple shape don't take much time, I usualy even do it in Zbrush
a small bit of criticism... "you can't be Kobe and Phil Jackson..." not true at all, see; Bill Russell: NBA player who won 11 championships in 13 years, 2 of them as a player AND the head coach simultaneously. NBA hall of fame, College Hall of fame, Olympic gold medalist (and Captain of the team), and is the guy the NBA finals trophy is named after. So.... NO, you can do both and be great at both at the same time. A bit ironic since the analogy he used was a basketball reference.
You don't need to be both, being either of those guys is being great at an advanced level and this guy will just churn out more mediocrity and not greatness.
@@diadokhoi5722 dude chill!! Go to Facebook find a club where you can play cricket and free your mind You seem like if someone even watched this video summarized it yet didnt understand a single bit Will turn into anti thanos and passive aggressively ignore them If you are this DENSE then maybe you should study humans trust me a quick youtube search will be good
He was dead wrong here. The treatment of artists in this industry is disgusting. They turned us into slaves, we were supposed to be a creative source, now we're just hands with drawing instruments. Too many artists I know are leaving Universal, Activision, Marvel, Disney, etc., in order to launch a Patreon and create good content. With the indie scene booming, it's only matter of time before the best stuff is not coming out of these studios, but out of the hearts and minds of passionate artists.
I'm a junior concept artist, i did some intern (then got promoted as a freelance) at some indie game studio, the art director told me to use any technique (including "cheats") as long it's suitable with their briefs. Surprisingly, they provided me with 3D models (flat) & asked me to re-paint it. But sometimes i when there's no 3d stuffs, i mostly drew couple sketches with pencil then did the rest on photoshop ofc (not going to lie, seamless textures helped my ass back then). So yeah 50:50 for me, also photobashing is actually harder on some occasions imo
I honestly don't see it as cheating, just using references. Since when were references cheating? This does make me feel a bit better about all those concept pieces I see though. It would take me months just to produce the same result lol
I'm not pursuing a concept artist career, but as a digital artist who wants to rocket up some skills, this cheat sheet he shows has the tricks that a lot of other artists dont like to share a good majority of the time. Say what you want, but these definitely seem like they'd propel you further, even if it is a lot of image captures.
For you artitst that are interested: He is using fastStone image viewer (free) instead of the regular windows photo app. You can select and copy parts when going through your pictures so it ups efficienty :)
He basically telling us that its all about business and making more money and not waste time with artsyfartsy bullshit, if u can deliver it the cheap and fast way. What he doesnt tell is that this mindset is leading to the very game industry we have today. The thing is that no one cares about storytelling or dialogues anymore. Its all dumbed down to boobs n big guns n muscles and shitty sentences like "I'm too old for this shit" paired with hyperreal visuals.
Like he said at the beginning of the presentation, this is from his personal perspective and taste. If you look at Feng Zhu, his perspective is the complete opposite where draftsmanship and knowledge of your subject is important. I prefer his philosophy over Shaddy's.
I absolutely agree. I learned 2 important things from Feng Zhu: Learn to understand the thing you're creating so you can create it 2-dimensionally from any angle. Every step of the creation process should be excellent all the way from the pencil sketch to the finished painting. The only way to do that is to have a healthy understanding of art fundamentals, primarily dealing with the principles of perspective and composition. I appreciate his way of approaching the subject because he encourages understanding rather than "just do this and you're good." His goal is to teach you so you don't have to "just do this." The point is actually to learn about the processes and stuff behind what you're doing. He also encourages you to read a lot because it helps you to imagine new things when you're already given the abstract. If I was about 15 years younger, I'd probably move to Singapore and enroll in his classes. I'd do it for no other reason than to finally get some detailed teaching on perspective, frankly. I can't find reliable information on it anywhere. I have tried for years to "understand" it. And I do. But the minute I try to apply it into a landscape painting, it's like I have no idea what I'm doing.
One of my lecturers was commisioned by Blizzard to do environment art. He always taught us how to "cheat". So I decided to see how far I can take it. Everytime I "cheated", he'd always show me a more bold way of cheating. And he'd always tell me the same thing over again "It's not cheating! There's just not enough time for you to paint everything!"
Just remember this AAA stuff, not gaming as a whole. I can see AAA developers wanting a specific style of a specific quality and that's fine, Indie is here to appease those who want a more unique approach and that's equally as fine
Dragon's Breath exactly, this type companies offer their work for triple A games that need a very strict budget and time for concepts and the best quality they can get.
the techniques discussed can be applied to a wide variety of styles.
not true, indies have no money and in general are more focused on design over environment or rendered paintings, the amount of indue studios that dont even have an art department is pretty shocking tbh,
valcaron what you call “tumblr/Calarts” is just you struggling to realize that there are more women and minorities in the industry than before, and they don’t make everything with the same old bland, grim, gritty shit style that straight men keep making in AAA games.
@@Fantallana Found the feminist !
clickbait is real for this title
Clickbait is Dead, Here's Why
Maybe its how the video's poster feels about it, who knows
So what is it talking about ? I do not want to waste an hour ..
@@limageur did you find out
@@Blueberrygoat92 Lol nop. I am actually listening the first 5 minutes of each GDC talk and then I decide if I will listen all of it because I am watching a lot. Sorry I can not tell you more.
Base line: If you're good at cheating, do it. It's worth it and you can focus on other things. (...please don't apply this to relationships)
Cheating means something different in the context of relationships. Chance of completing a successful relationship isn't improved by infidelity. Completing good concept art on a deadline on the other hand...
I'd phrase it differently: Get the basics down as fast+good as possible by whichever means necessary! Then spend the time saved on "Juice". (and concealing your tracks)
I know, I just wanted to make a bad joke. I'm sorry ;) But 16 people seem to be at the same low level of humor xD
More power to you :D
Lugmillord Challenge accepted.
I think there's a difference in perspective between artists doing art for the sake of the craft, and concept artists who need to make a reference on a deadline that can be iterated on quickly and easily. It's not about doing every last piece yourself to prove how awesome you are, it's about creating an idea quickly and easily to send off to the team so it can be adjusted and iterated on and refined. There's a useful phrase to consider that is very relevant for concept art: Fail faster.
The faster you can get an idea out that conveys everything needed, the faster the final idea can be refined from it.
Yeah the ego is really hard to separate from the craft, and everyone has a different baseline for what they consider cheating I guess, but people who are searching for jobs where they can just straight up purely draw all day are gonna be disappointed in this day and age, the worlds changing and traditionalists shouldn't shame newer artists for evolving with the times just because they don't want to
I'd say that the fundamentals are super important. Even if you're working on top of a 3d-model with perfect perspective and anatomy, you would mess it up pretty fast if you don't know perspective and anatomy. I can work super fast on top of photo ref and models, but my basic drawing skills are friggin critical to making it look great.
There are many concept artists who can't paint or draw.
Yeah, I guess you could do great designs with just 3d and photo bashing and such. But the kind of concept art shown in this talk are definitely done by people who can paint and draw. And if you paint on top of a model that has a lot of perspective cues it helps a lot if you understand perspective. Same goes for anatomy.
Yeah, just look at Hiroya Oku (author of Gantz, Inuyashiki)
@@dannypavlov913 that's the problem.
I feel like the ideal is to learn traditional skills, AND the cheating methods he’s showing us. If you combine them both, you’ll make faster and better art than ever, more so than artists who only stick to one side.
This talk makes me realize how much I appreciate being my own boss.
What do you do?
What do you do?
What do you do?
What do you do?
What do you do?
Good talk, very informative and the results look professional, but I think there are not a lot of interesting ideas, most of the characters, creatures, robots and environments look really boring and generic to me, a soldier look like any other soldier, zombie abominations also look like you would expect them to, everything look too standard and uninspiring to me, and I think many of the 'triple A' big games look really stale and generic nowadays.
Agree. I find the art from memory/imagination more interesting and memorable vs the photo reference.
SMH I was just saying that. There are a few exceptions to your rule but I agree with the statement.
they take on clients because the clients give them money. they pour as much talent as they can on top of that, so they are worth the money. as he very clearly stated towards the end, it's a garbage-in-garbage-out scenario.
if shallow blockbusters didn't sell, there wouldn't be hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into them.
getting too hung up on that just makes you bitter. best to just go enjoy something else instead :)
@stupid and useless The classic Lara Croft is instantly recognizable character anywhere you go. Meanwhile, there is no difference between the new Lara and that girl from The Last of Us. They are basically the same design.
@@boitahaki Not only are you are comparing a stylized jumble of triangular polygons with realistic interpretations of human women, but you're just flat out wrong about the last part. Laura doesn't look anything like Ellie, her girlfriend, or Abbie. They have different facial features, body structure, hair colors, eye colors, and clothing. In a way you are right though, Laura croft's original design is more visually striking than her new design, but that's like comparing a stylized animated character to an actor in a film.
Artists were 'cheating' long before digital even came along.
So chill.
Not like this. Never like this lol.
There were/are matt painters, but the companies back then, combined generic style with artists who have strong voices. Now days most AAA games look the same...and concepts artists are becoming factory workers...
I think this is really important to remember, whatever you think about this mainstream AAA ca style. The David Hockney book “Secret Knowledge” is a cool exploration of the history of artistic aids
@@jodyroane4219 Camera obscura was exactly like this and more.
G P no, with camera obscure you still have to paint over - with photobashing you can just leave bits of the photo there, it’s worse than tracing
Wow after watching the first half of the video i finally understand why concepts for AAA games and movies get so incredibly generic.
What he is basically doing and saying is to just copy paste from recent commercial succesfull projects. "Why do it when its already done?" This is literally killing artistry and creativity. It is true that you can get to a professionell level quick by doing it but you will have 0 originality and will just be a corporat slave. There are thousand different ways to design props and each way is more plausible and usefull for a specific setting. This is what makes stuff original and unique. The way his studio works. Everything will look generic and forgetfull. I actually hate this way of approach.
However in terms of upping your visual quality there are alot of good tips in this video. This should however only be used for technical quality to bring it to the next level. Helping youself out with 3d for perspective or lighting or posing will only benefit you in terms of work speed, will however not further you skill.
Throughout the video he pretty much points out what you've posted here. It's all about what you want to achieve working in the industry.
blockbusters aren't for artistry. they are for selling. quit being a hipster, and go enjoy some real art instead of shitting on popular art. it just makes you bitter.
FYI: GDC is for professionals, not consumers. Best to stop watching how the sausage gets made if you don't want to get jaded
i think you're missing the problem entirely, the reason that happens is because they all use the same few concept artists. games and movies require concept artists to concept in 3D these days. they do lots of back and forth with the concept artist to try to find out what works and what doesn't before using these as a basis to create assets.
He means copy/paste. You missed his point if you didn't get that. Totally generic, but if people keep consuming it regardless, it gets the job done.
@@blarghblargh So basically pander to the masses with garbage? Good to know AAA gaming is a soulless corporate husk.
agreeing with the sentiment that if this is what passes as incisive in a conference then it's no wonder 99% of characters, enemies and environments have taken on the overlit overtextured generic AAA style. the amount you can do with shaders, mutation and physics in-engine means that art like this dates itself and limits its potential. Everything this guy likes fears color, shape, motion and texture; it's constantly obfuscated by effects and "baddassery" (the idea of which comes from the type of nerds nobody can stand who shit up your slack channel)...I swear after a few years people who work in larger games industry turn into shells of themselves for the sake of production rooted solely in capital.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. A lot of what was shown seemed soulless as well
@@2_B_B what do you expect? it's a reflection on the capitalism itself.
all of it is camp art anyway, used for commercial promos, deal enticers, and visual guidelines for soulless outsourcing sweatshops. besides their goal is not to produce a better art -- or art in general -- but to produce a wow effect in less than 20 minutes.
wow effect from whom? from the AAA consumer mediocrity. essentially it's a pop art scheme that lifts swathes of dollars for doing a good-enough-illusion of art. it's not good enough for me, but it's good enough for kickstarter or some publishing account.
I'm not really trying to defend this school of thought, don't get me wrong (I hate all of it), but this guy -- much like JJ Abrams or Justin Bieber -- is exactly what the industry wants. and you got to respect him for being so fully immersed in this crap. at the very least, he doesn't pretend to love what he does, he actually loves it. I got to respect that.
you know, the art will change, everything will change, but that kind of inner fire, that you have to find within yourself, that will always be a constant.
this fire, alone, is what actually sells. or they're all just high on coke. or both.
Why "concept arts" needs to be so detailed and perfect? Until it's promotial art, doesn't it need be enough good just to schow idea, concept of character?
qnaman I think the "concept arts" you are talking about is for pitching ideas & the "concept arts" he is talking about is for production, there's a huge difference.
@@peternguyen1106
Concept art starts as an idea, but the idea isn't just the literal design to how to build it - it has to convey everything the real worl would - emotion - narrative etc. yes its fundimentally an idea, but it ends up a more realized ideation of a particularly subject/object.
Yes there is a difference between concept art and illustrations.
In the modern production pipeline, the closer the concept artist gets to the final product that the 3D artists will model, the more hireable he'll be. It's simple. These techniques help you get a more complete result, in less time. It minimizes the amount of questions and back and forth that you receive from there 3D artists, because the details are very clear, rather than seeing just an impressionistic mess of brush strokes instead of details. In short: The easier you make the job of the modelers that will produce the final product, the more the companies will like you.
@@DesignInNature Of course they will, because you wil be a voluntary sucker doing more, producing more product for less pay.
If idiotic logics like the one promoted by this guy that newer artists buy into and end up working for peanuts on IPs that have returns to investment in the billions. Some poor schmucks gonna jizz in his pants over the idea of working on these IPs to accept crap hours, shit pay and slave contracts.
I do not necessarily refute in part what Shaddy Saffadi argues in his lecture, and with understanding that is an excerpt from the video description, but "...concept designers with a refined sensibility for storytelling, shape design and cinematic lighting" is essentially a "concept artist", which has the greatest range and can adapt, creatively speaking
The difference, as I understand it, is that reference photo are used not just as such (which is fine) , but also that photo may be used within the composition itself. Whereas there is no argument from me that using photos within composition expedites that design process to visually communicate, potentially rendering exceptional composition. However, these are not "concept designs" in the literal sense as they are, or can be, more so concept collages, crutching the software as such rather than skill, with the greatest potential of over-saturation; creatively sterile, if not restrictive -- another brick on the wall if you wall.
da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Mucha, Dali, Parrish, Rockwell and others may have traced (or for the sake of argument infer that), but they certainly did not cut & paste from others, inspired by others, but not cut and paste.
It's sad to see how people cling on to the idea that you need blood sweat and tears for a concept image. A freaking concept image.... a thing you present to your director for inspiration...
People are so fixated on making things their own, that they forget the purpose of art itself. Are you doing it to impress someone through your efforts? What are you after? Seriously... why do you do art?
The truth for most of you here in the comment section is that you do it for yourself, to be proud and to comfort yourself with the idea that you're capable. Lots of people are capable of anything with enough effort put in, so why make it all about "your effort and YOUR imagination" constantly? Ego based, selfish reasons, nothing more. An artist's purpose is to "move" people, to inspire, play with ideas and tell stories. It's about others, you're suppose to create art for other people, not yourself.
Does that mean you shouldn't learn the fundamentals? Absolutely not, you should definitely learn, otherwise you won't be able to do anything in the first place. But if you're stuck in the "learning" phase, constantly chasing your own tail, insisting that EVERYTHING has to come from YOUR imagination, then I'm sorry, you're missing the point of art.
TL;DR - I agree 100% with the guy, but it's not all black and white. Sometimes you need the experience but other times you just have to get the damn thing done. Fixating on doing everything from scratch is egotistical nonsense.
Finally someone sensical in this comment section. I'm suprised about the amount of hate and negativity people spread. You're a gem among the rough.
Your definition of how an artist should be, and make art for others, damn man.. Is so good, and really you seem to be the only one who understand in this comment section
ive been scrolling down this comment section, ive posted replies to about 2 posts so far basically saying the same thing, art is all about what the audience feels when experiencing it, its not about you having a big wang cause you did something technically difficult. ive posted it twice and skipped over about 50 posts that also deserved that response. its crazy how many deluded 'artists' there are in these comment sections who dont understand the difference between their hobby that makes them feel good and commercial art that other people pay money to experience.
Replying super late to this comment but its so bang on, I think most people angry at this video aren't concept artists and don't understand that its not a drawing competition, no one is gonna pat you on the back because you spent 10 hours rendering the perfect rock instead of focusing on the important parts of the job, I did a course a while back for concept art and there was so much ego involved and so much confusion as to what we were actually there to do, constant back and forths that using a photo is cheating, how much 3D is cheating, that guy sucks because he doesn't draw enough etc, such a mess in hindsight, this video really does knock the sense into what the industry is all about
Thx for your words
I was doing paint overs of 3D since 2000ish after moving from 2D into 3D . Photoref, photo bashing. At the time it felt like cheating, but the fact was, its efficient for pipelines - makes shorter step for the game asset or at least be helpful to your team.
If you're modelling something you need to know different angles, so often a modeller would only have one perspective. I was into more than a 2d image, I'm into to the full mechanics and functionally for best plausibility and immersion, so you quickly discover potential animation issues or mesh clipping in a design and then form follows function - which will make a design even more plausible.
Concept in 3D and painting over a render, means if that concept is approved you can provide the 3D model too. Same for animation of things (as part of the proof of concept) especially getting around the practicality and functionally of things. Modelling and doing one nice render can also be quicker than five turn around 2d renders. Including a simple animation brings it to life. It's also a huge part of your vision being carried through. You can contribute to the final thing with more of your ideas which is a kick too.
You can also use blocks outs or rough meshes (if constructed and prepped cleanly enough) in game as a placeholder static model for level designers and pass it on to cinematics, storyboard artists, lighting artists and if you simply subdivide it enough to the target count of the final model, also a poly count placeholder in scenes for frame rate testing. The team will get pumped up seeing the in game progress is more noticeable, the vision and experience is more available to everyone sooner and whilst the final asset is still in production.
I now do the same thing with World Machine and Substance Designer - especially for small teams where you are concepting and making the asset yourself - it just makes sense. makes the next guy's job easier too if they have more to springboard from and closer to a WYSIWYG for Art directors and other managers, marketing and general vision.
All the high paying jobs for concept design are most probably companies like EA, Activison, Ubisoft. Who do not necessarily rely on their creative teams to come up with new and creative ideas. Look at the previous games they have released for the last idk 8 years. They all have the same concepts design. There is little to no variation in the style they use, which is generally aimed providing the most realistic environments possible. At the detrement to creativity.
It is easier to get people to believe in what they are interacting with if it feels grounded in reality. ( Im talking about the majority who have come to expect a certain product) Like the speaker said. You have real life visual aids to work from. Millions of references to work from. It saves time as majority of publishers want to push out games quickly. Funny how majority of triple A publishers always have buggy code, but their visuals are solid.. Huh.
Not saying this style is a bad thing. It appeals to the majority, but if you are someone with more nuanced taste. It just doesn’t satisfy. And i think pursuing a career in concept art seems a little rinse and repeat. If you want to make money, i guess this is what it takes. (Unless you work for a great indie company, but yeahh they are a fringe market though.)
So yeah is it a good direction for concept art. Ehhh. Its up to personal opinion, and which style of video games or other concept art driven media you enjoy.
Does it place restrictions on creativity? Perhaps.
People just like games that look as close to reality as possible. So until that changes i doubt that this shift it the creative field will. All consumer driven.
同質化
He seems like the type of boss that will crack a thousand jokes and and everyone has to awkwardly smile back
I would not laugh. Humor is earned.
I've expected someone much more cringy after reading that comment...honestly he seems like just an actually funny guy, you tend to forget these exist aswell.
Michael Scott
he's okay. I actually thought he was funny.
David Brent
I think he likes oblivion, anyone noticed It?
Yeah, but I got the distinct impression that he thought Pacific Rim was more fun.
"We collaborated in that I said stuff and he did all the work."
How to find the manager 101.
And according to the artist the first draft he showed would be the final piece.
ie..."that guy would look wicked cool with a sword" ...no bigger....now make it blue.....no he should have an axe!!!
this is the type of concept work that's making everyone sick of AAA games and "blockbuster" movies, there's no artistry or even design, just derivative crap
all art is derivative
yeah, specially when it's made by copy/pasting
I don’t know...games like last of us are beautiful to look at
The point of concept art is portraying a reality in someone's head in the real world. Not putting as much work as possible into it for a result equal to or worse than what you would get from "cheating". The art is in the idea. Not the technique necessarily.
No, you have no clue what you are on about. This isn't how the final thing will look in the game. It's a CONCEPT. This is a short cut for concept artists. And it's a great short cut.
Some digital artists quickly improve because they were already traditional artists who just didn't understand digital color theory. Tbh the difference between bad realistic digital hand painting and good realistic digital hand painting is just a couple of slow and persistent mental breakdowns for me.
Very informative, well, I hope there are still places like indie games or animation where the real artists are appreciated
Why are the other artists not "real artists?" They also had to learn all the fundamentals etc.
There’s plenty of spaces. Many studios are also turning back to the more stylized look. Other companies such as Nintendo clearly has no intention of going realistic/photobashy with their games.
@@R_A120 It really depends upon the purpose of their product. The industry as a whole is not moving in that direction. It’s only the studios that benefit from an approach like that, usually those with a more realistic art firection in mind.
actually, indie company should be the one that "cheat" a lot if they want to limit their cost and increase effectiveness, but it depends on how you approach your product. Some really want to deliver an artistic experience some just want to make a quick and effective fun experience
using reference for your professional work and studying reference to grow as an artist is fundamental. On the other hand this approach to art to rely yourself on shortcuts can be very damaging for people starting out. Do your fundamentals first.
I'm only 13 minutes in and I have to say that this guy uses the term "photo reference" when he means "photo bombing". If you're grabbing a photo and using it directly in your image it's not reference anymore. And it's acceptible for concept art I'd say, where you're trying to do pre-production stuff and not a final product. Yet he has an issue with quality. Your work as a concept artist ought to be to come up with concepts, ideas and visualize them in a basic manner, how the hell does a fully crafted scene serve a team unless you're trying to double it as promo material? Yet you have these kind of guys who squeeze out every ounce of life-blood from these even dumber artists, turning them into mechanical art production machines for a measily buck.
The problem with this stuff and this guy talking about getting good and being an art god and what not are a) as a concept artist it's not necessary because what's important is the concept and speed, not the quality and b) no one ever took up a pencil idolizing a concept artist, especially a digital concept artist. And herein lies the problem. Most people who take up art want to emulate other artists, from classical old masters to modern master illustrators, no one wants to be some machine that produces 200 variants of a character and get burnt out after 5 years (which is the average time concept artists work in the video games industry). But the need to be an individual is meshed with the demand to be a machine, and unfortunately most take the bait.
Hadoken man this is probably the best comment on here! you got it man, that's why I dig Artist like Simon Bisley_ Giger_ Joe Jusko_ and Alex Ross and Bernie wrightson_ Masters!
The contradiction is evident when you see what the guy in the talk is facing. He's trying to compromise people's need to be individual artists who want to follow their passions with the need industry has for concept production. This is the root of the problem which he tries to disguise by pandering to artist's sensitivities to be better and then bullshitting them about how to get there which ultimately just produces a more efficient concept art producing machine for his business, not another Leonardo or Frazetta.
Are there people who are inclined to work this way? You bet. Was there anyone who picked up a pencil with a passion to get into it for it's own sake? Never, just like there's never been one person who ever looked at a Minimalist painting and was inspired to be a painter by it, ever. It's almost guaranteed that every single one has been inspired to persue a career in art by either a great classical artist, illustrator, comic artist or has some other motive like eventually directing an animation studio etc.
And because you have to compromise the two, you have to let concept artists think they are doing what they set out to. But ultimately this is also why it's hard to have any respect for the famous concept artists of this era like say Craig Mullins. So what if he's the grandaddy of digital concept art, that's just accident of birth. The man has killer skills but he's just become and efficient machine that's producing concepts and concept artists. I don't think anyone can name or even desribe the last great piece he did that would make you look at it for hours, which begs the question, what's the use of them being so refined? I mean, it's like the man spends half his time coming up with ways to produce something as fast a possible, and when he does he eventually kicks himself and everyone coming after him in the nuts because once a concept piece can be produced in half the time with half the skill, you can bet your life that it will have less than half the value, so to finalize the economic side of the argument Craig Mullins and other's efficiency is leading people into starvation and giving guys like the one in the video larger profit margins, which is his goal, that's why he's there.
For the life of me, I've never understood why anyone would ever want to be a concept artist just like I never got why one would want to be some, I dunno, post-modernist political commentary artist.
For every photobasher, there are also guys like jamie jones. His recent start wars concept art were entirely handpainted. Photobashing isn't the end all and be all of concept. Its just a tool you can use optionally to speed up your workflow.
hepzibah, we agree with this. Trouble is that the company is always going to strive to efficiency and speed because they have a product to ship and sell to make cash before the other guys do. It's understandable that photobashing has to be used, no question about it. The questions to be risen tho are a) is this type of work satisfying for most people who do b) is it the reason they put pencil to paper in the first place and c) does this affect quality in the long run?
If you take a look at the making of Jurassic Park you will see that the effects were the combination of a bunch of artists from different disciplines. You have traditional puppet and stop motion animators animating the dinosaurs with special puppets that represented the virtual bones (since these guys weren't Softimage 3D users). You have the lighting, texturing, shading etc of each shot being studied versus paintings and illustrations where stuff like color temperature of the shadows and the lights are studied to adhere to the light on the scene.
We're talking about an insanely excruciating amount of detailed work to make the visual effects look as lifelike as possible, a level of effort and sophistication that to my knowledge has never been exhibited in a movie since. You've got to wonder how in a time when renderers and 3d packages had 1/100th the tools they have today to autotrack camera movement, use the global illumination of a scene to sort of match the lighting in the virtual scene, use effects like radiosity, sub surface scattering etc to match the work done by all those artists automatically, how it is that Jurassic Park for the most part looks so life-like that the only thing keeping you from thinking it's an effect is the fact that you know dinosaurs are extinct and the latest blockbuster's effects look so cartoonily false despite the help of automation? Or why is it that the further back you go, with exception to films that are cheap knockoffs (and even there a debate can be had), films that involve concepting of any sort display a variety of ideas, photography, palettes and creations that make them totally distinct from each other whereas today, totally different films or games look and feel identical for the most part?
I'd blame photobashing. The fact that it can be so economical that it's the only viable option and thus studios rely on it totally. Artists are gonna use, more or less, the same references because when looking for reference they will use Google, and more or less no one's gonna look through 1000 pages of photos, most will scour the 10-20 first pages and be done with it. Also you have the exact same tools and algorithms which produce exactly the same look outputting all the imagery in everything you create. When you have everything being drawn in Photoshop, using the same techniques to the effect of it seeming like it was all done by the same hand why wouldn't it all look similar? Also, most of these artists are being worked to death that they've no time to be artists, whatever individuality they may have is eventually burnt up in the concept farms.
A case can be made that selectively the best techniques, software and tools for the job evolved and came on top, kinda like natural selection. But now we've got a product and a user of said product that so specialized that it creates a slightly different version of itself, unevolved like a shark.
Hadoken So much of this conversation is so dumb. There’s soooo many artists that pick up the pencil to become concept artists. I never wanted to be like an old master, and never wanted to do art for self expression, not every artist does, and tons of artists that do think they’re some special gem because they’re so personally connected to everything they do and they’re useless when it comes to creating a vision for a movie or game. If you’re comparing concept art to traditional masters you’re being ridiculous and you should never watch movies or play games again because the only reason for concept art is to create designs to inspire the people building the game. The concept art can be thrown out after the game is released and it wouldn’t matter. Obviously people enjoy looking at concept art, but it’s about creating a world or a vision for somebody’s idea, and it’s not about expressing only your ideas. It’s not a selfish art form like traditional art, it’s about inspiring others with your ideas, using any way you can to communicate those ideas.
Also you literally said that using photoshop and photos from google is gonna make everything look the same. But you wouldn’t say that about traditional painting? Drawing with a pencil is a pencil. It’s gonna look the same as every other pencil drawing. Painting in oils is never gonna look like drawing in pencil, it’s gonna look like painting in oils. Do you say every oil painter looks the exact same? Every persons work that’s drawn with a pencil looks the exact same? Photoshop is a tool where you can literally render realistically as if using marker, you can use a brush that looks like pencil, you can make it look like oil paints, like acrylic, watercolour, pen, and pretty much everything else. Just using one program. It’s the least limiting art method ever invented, and if you think all photoshop work looks the same you haven’t even begun to expose yourself to the tip of the iceberg of digital artists.
Nobody cares about you guys thinking photobashing isn’t real art. Open photoshop, grab the exact photos you see in a piece of concept art from this guy, and try to recreate it and watch yourself fail miserably. Using photobashing effectively is its own art form and isn’t something you can do beautifully quickly. And this guy is just telling people interested to do these things to get to a level where you’re working on AAA games and then you can spend your spare time learning any fundamentals you want and most concept artists do that. There’s so many closed minded people here who think they’re such valuable artists, and if you wanna only do traditional art and try to work in video games that’s great, Goodluck with that. But for the people who wanna work on AAA games and films and help fuel one of the worlds biggest industries by using any method they can that looks good and applying their own taste and ideas to it, they are gonna do it whether or not you think it’s “real art” or not. Get over yourselves and let people do what they want
"Faster" this is the word that are destroying the industry in general.
We are getting to a point that an AI can create concept art. AI is faster, why do I need use human, is not cheating right?
Why? Why do I need to paint if I can't make 3d?
Because some people want to paint. That's the point of being alive, enjoy doing things.
What's the point of using the maximum of technology if in the end a lot of people aren't enjoying. It's all about produce faster and having the money bag.
All art is being boiled down to an endless stream of "content" where the specific virtues of individual forms are replaced with flashy, unchallenging slop.
the industry and consumer don't care how you did your work, as long its quick enough and effective, if you want to the "old ways" treat it as a hobby and not a job
No I get why most AAA games look pretty much the same to the point you need to compare the UI to tell them apart if you've never played them. I get that it's what the industry demands but it's 2018 right now and nobody remembers Oblivion for it's... well nobody remembers Oblivion at all. No compare it to the Alien franchise and how unique everything looked in those movies.
I agree with the title. Concept art is dead indeed
Exactly. You turn your artist into some "Concept artist" printer and just ask him to create iteration after iteration, thats what you will get. Bland designs. Aliens work because they hired an actual artist not a game artist to do the designs.
Nobody remembers Oblivion? Are you ironic?
I know I'm way late, but I was in the unit that the commemorative painting was for when we shut it down in 2015. I had a print of it. I just stumbled across this video and happened to recognize it. Small world!
Okay. I'm not an artist, or concept artist or anything related. But I just watched the whole hour and feel like I gained something here. I made a playlist just for it called inspiration. Props to that guy.
I want to be a concept artist, solely because I want to make a living out of what I enjoy doing. If I just cared about advancing in the Job while not caring about that, why even do it
dude i literally share the same idea as you. i want ot become a concept artist becuase i want to make a living out of what i like to do too
14:20 so thats why every game / texture / face (beside the main charas) looks the same nowadays...
- yes it would take you longer to not hand draw it but copy pasting some pictures into your work and or use the textures from other stuff will only lead to recombination not creation . (imo) you will always find things you already saw in the picture / game / whatever . you may trick your perception at first but your brain always compares everything with everything which will lead to overstimulation which leads to no "emotional reaction". just think of the electro / chart music nowadays . only recombined beats / song texts / riffs & etc . for me , every third song feels like you already heared it before or like its just a slightly different remix of smth . so boring . every third chart lyric is about "baby" , "love" , " feel (...)" , and some sporadic "la laaaa la laaa " singing :"D . just sad .
- creation (from scratch) will always form smth that was initially made by you (gives it a whole other value imo) and might actually create smth so much better than what you even thought of , just because "shit happens" :D . if you always use references all the cracks in the rock , all the colors , all the cloth textures , the "dry bottom textures" will look the same and my brain at least does definitely recognize them . it looks cheap and unnatural (also it looks flat for most of the time and till you get some actual mech in it , you might as well draw it yourself) + the different lighting and the semi transparent layers that overlap are hard to get rid off .
- there might be situations where its reasonable to copy paste photo references but it will ruin your own style and stagnate your progress in creation (imo)
Kliersheed people dont get that, no matter how the tech develops. You can never take the quality of translating an idea into pen and paper. Its raw and fluid. And its something that tech can never replace.
Up next, Vince Vaughn as Shaddy Saffadi in "How to be a Cheater, the life of an artist".
I like the movie oblivion too. Although most of the talk was " I like this type of art and it's badass. I have sick artists worldwide and they are badass."
As far as "cheating" goes I would call it something else like saving time and being realistic about the workload and quality you want to achieve.
Good talk.
Really fascinating talk. As a purist, I can't respect this method of art, cutting an pasting material that isn't your own, then painting over it. (doing it from your own photos and models isn't so bad) But then I can't deny the beauty of the end result, which is ultimately what really matters.
That financially disastrous piece seems so obviously bad. The forms are fine, line work looks good on the characters, but only one character is lit in a room that is mostly dark. the eye doesn't know where to go because the forms are obscured (though the forms track a couple of very obvious lines through the piece), and there's not a lot to see when you find it. maybe this was an artistic choice to represent the atmosphere of the game (I know nothing of it, but maybe it's a really dark dungeon crawler?), but as a piece it just looks tired. there's magic lights and fire and they barely affect the lighting. they did all the composition work with daz and just like checked out for the rest of it. what's the point in taking a short cut if you don't use the extra time to work on the juicy parts of a piece? who wants a medal for fastest produced mediocre art?
Yeah it's really poor, jesus can you imagine being the client, paying 10K and receiving that jpeg through the mail a week later? /r/instantregret all the way. And he has the nerve to say they're the best in the world.
is it a coincidence that the game that the piece was meant for ended up being dogshit?
Im ready to agree. As an environment/lighting artist I realize how easy it is theese days to build up the concept and mode in a level editor like Unreal instead of having a painting in photoshop.
You can basically build a scene in a couple of hours and it will serve as a a proof of concept, both from a gameplay and 3d point of view.
Damn dude I can't believe you do that instead of just using a pencil and ruler on an A3 sheet of paper, do you have no shame?!
I"m joking in case that wasn't clear lol
A painting can also take just a couple of hours
polarizing title doesnt distract from the fact that this video is very helpful and interesting.
The panel was called the same thing, not his fault.
Using photos and Frankenstein them together is not only creatively bankrupt but also incredibly lazy and explains why you can't tell concept art from one game from another can't tell who drew what.
C. Alexandros I agree, but on the other hand it's cost effective since time is money.
It looks better, saves time and actually it means you can spend more time on creating original designs. Or are you being creative spending 3 hours pixel painting a background landscape just so you can say you did? Everything is based on something, where you take those influences is what makes you creative
I mean...isn't that the same for every IP in the entertainment industry. Honestly art direction should not matter too much. It is only a visual guide for the creation of characters and world. The main focus should be one's ability to grasp your audience with great characters and story. Art style or aesthetics is only "a cherry on top"
@@BBSHOCKZ quality takes time and creativity, not cutting corners to save time and money.
If you squint your ears he's Vince Vaughn
Squint your ears :))))))))))))))))
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH
no that hurts
LOL
I'm so mad that you're right LMBO!
Most of the comments are so toxic and naive. Those who say that using photos in paintings is photo bashing, and photo bashing is a dirty thing to use in concept art, should grow up. Concept art is not regular art. It's goal is to get to the fucking point with maximum efficiency. That is how the industry works. If you do not believe me, look at "The art of Game of Thrones". Adam Duff has a good video about that book
Yeah, I remember watching Oblivion... I remember how it was just a bunch of shots and ideas mangled together from other, much better, sci fi properties.
And... Most concept art feels that way too. Nothing new. Noone daring to break out. Most of it seems to be done by the same artist. The same guy who pends his time obsessing over the details of Stick Salesman.
id never heard that stick salesman joke before and holy shit he really is in everything
And he IS a good salesman of the pics he is in
Bro, I realized even I put him in one of my paintings. Didn't like how the overall painting looked, but I did actually put him in there. It's pretty funny.
I recommend checking out Yoji Shinkawa's concept arts for Metal Gear Solid.
lmao same thinking. But apparently his concept art to modeling is a little not so good.
Shinkawa barely designs these days , it’s outdated
is dead
The newest fashion, with great titles such as and the list goes on
It's nothing new. There was a time when "Rock and Roll is Dead" and "Disco is Dead" where the hippest things to say. Though, Disco did actually die, so it's not always wrong. This guy on the other hand, is pretty wrong and jaded. He's been ruined by inartistic AAA companies that are terrifies of originality and real art.
This just feels like i'm being told over and over again that he knows the best artists and that his studio is amazing, i expected more from a GDC talk. Yes the little things matter as it helps to create images with story but from my understanding all he showed me was illustrations, the breakdown of design, the iterative process and what makes it different from being a concept artist to a designer was nowhere to be seen.
Thx for the talk. I always thought people cheat in every way possible and this just helps me confirm that. I'm so stubborn not taking shortcuts and that sets me back so much. I don't dislike is per say but when people cheat and claim the end product as something made by them by skill or w/e makes me sick.
Tbf, it does take different skills to cheat well too ;P
There are many of us who work in the industry who are good enough and fast enough at the foundational aspects of drawing to not drop photos directly into our work, which is why our work has life and appeal. When I look at his PBY plane painting, it shows you how little he knows about drawing foundation, which is why he needs to drop in photos. He is good at research and assembly, not really the technical or creative aspects of the craft. And, truth be told, they are not asking his company to concept, they are asking his company to “visualize” the already existing concept created by the company’s narrative and content people. I don’t fault him for his ability to find a way to survive in the market, but viewing others as ignorant for not pursuing that narrow minded path is irrelevant and he should remove it.
You're comment deserves to be featured in the talk.
do you use a computer to do art? or do you go out, source pigment, grind it and mix it with oils urself then use the brush you made, by hand, to paint on a canvas you also made by hand? people who paint by hand will tell you using a computer is cheating, people who paint in photoshop will tell you photobashing is cheating...
a job is where you produce something required by someone in a time efficient manner. if you want to impose your own conjured up restrictions on yourself because it gives you a sense of self justification in your hobby then go for it, power to you man, because a hobby is about doing the thing you love to do that makes you feel good. virtually no one gets paid to do their hobby, and the very few who do most of them find their hobby becomes a job.
so do you want to do that job or you want to go be an estate agent or a line manager in a call centre? they call it a job because its work and you get paid to do it by someone else who wants what they want, not what you want, what you want is your hobby.
What? Artists have been taking photos of themselves to act as models for their characters since photography was invented. Why is he acting like this is some revolutionary crazy idea his artists are special for?
To clear up the public misconceptions on how art works.
Because uninformed idiots will still often look at someone basing a character illustration off of a photograph of a model making a pose they liked as "cheating" and being devoid of talent. The way the games industry works has a HUGE influence on young artists, because every kid wants to grow up and make video games. People like this guy making it clear that photobashing is a viable and legitimate way to create worthwhile art is how you crush that false perception.
the problem is that you traded quantity over quality
"you know what I'm saying?"
Honestly, as a VFX student I don't see how any experienced artist could need these concepts for anything else than layout, as in "where do I place this fence or this fat tumor on that zombie?". Everything looks so normal and un conceptual, don't give me a concept art to pitch me the idea of a snowy mountain.
@kogepanm Might be a misunderstanding here, I was arguing that concept arts are useful in that regard : "Where the tumor is placed", but not when it comes to pitching extremely normal ideas like soldiers with a backpack or snowy mountains. In any way, my views about it changed since I posted the comment, I got to see Jad Saber talk about concepts and it all makes sense now, it's not so much about pitching unique ideas but rather to give a guide to the rest of the production. I found them useless because I was viewing them exclusively as there to imagine unique designs.
Summary : How to sell your soul for mediocre results
That's basically every job in a big company
I'm just a 3D modeler in a vast line of production...an assembly/fatory worker feels like.
Do you do sculpting or hard surface modeling
go try getting a job in an actual factory doing an assembly line. i give you about 2 days before you wish you were back being able to sit at a computer doing 3d modelling of anything and getting paid for it.
@@aliasmcdoe if youre an artist then youre not employed by anyone, you sit at home and make whatever art inspires you and then you can attempt to find someone willing to buy it from you. 0.000001% of 'artists' can manage to make a living from that because virtually everyone can draw or paint or play an instrument or dance or act and virtually no one can make a living doing those things without being forced to do them in a way someone else wants them to.
if you go out and get a job, employed by someone else, youre no longer an artist fulfilling your grand creative vision, you are part of an assembly line. this is where 99.999999% of artistic jobs exist because if you want someone to pay you to do something in almost all cases the reason they have to pay you is because they want you to do something you wouldnt otherwise be doing, they want you to do what they want you to do, not what you want you to do, thats called a job and its what people do to make a living.
ive worked driving forklifts in a warehouse the size of 5 football pitches for years and ive worked as a graphic designer for years. the amount of jnr graphic designers fresh out of uni ive heard complain about some corporate piece of design work not fulfilling their artistic dreams is as extensive as it is facepalm inducing.
if you want to go on to unemployment benefits and paint dragons in your parents basement because it makes you feel like an artist expressing yourself then go ahead, if you want a job in a creative field be prepared to do a 9 to 5 as part of an assembly line that involves many people with many different skills and ends up in a consumer product. welcome to capitalism, and if those people had ever done a real job where their place in an assembly line is doing some actual manual labour they would jump at the chance to find a place in a line where they can kick back and use some artistic skill to add a piece of commercial art to an assembly line instead. if sitting in 3Dmax or adobe or cubase making a mouse around feels to you like sitting on an assembly line in a factor theres 100% chance youve never worked on an actual assembly line in an actual factory.
@@necaacen Damn dude you went hard lol, this whole comment section has been mostly people moaning about an industry that allows you to actually make a living out of being creative, because its not 'pure' enough in their eyes, its so bizarre, and as you said I'm pretty sure theres millions of people who would love to do it rather than whatever job they've landed, and probably wouldn't have such a stick up their ass about the ethics of using 3D/using a photo or whatever
Tom Cruise's holster is of Magpul design. My brother works there. Actual gun accessory company, not a concept artist thing
At least he had a disclaimer about what he likes at the beginning, because I thought all of that stuff looked like boring trash.
Well this is the gaming industry, most big budget aaa games look like boring trash. So this is what you'll have to create if you want to work on those titles. They dont need artistic visionary concepts for the next installment of Battlefield or FIFA.
@@vrc7net Wait a minute... There's concept art for FIFA? Why?
@@Samirxkhan yes. because there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. they sell like crazy, and you have to continue to sell the lifestyle and somehow try to keep it fresh to keep people interested and buying a new sequel every year.
I quite like this style, it could be slightly more stylized and have more contrast. Other than that I like it.
The people in this comment section are so cancerous it's incredible, you people need to grow the fuck up and stop complaining about people's art online. There is plenty I could say about art I don't like, but I don't.
Some parts of the art community is overly toxic.
I like saturated, I like desaturated, I like realistic, I like stylized (not picasso level stylized though).
TL;DR: People like what they like. Get over it, and stop complaining.
This guy makes me feel good and bad at the same time. Amazing.
10:46 TBH I don't think that guy had improved his skill after that few weeks/months, more like he altered his art style to what you like, plus having learned a few new tricks.
@Absolutely DreadfulNot in those couple of weeks as the guy claims, no he didn't. Art skill doesn't improve that way. It won't suddenly improve just because you've been taught a few tricks, I wish it was that easy.
@@jeremyron8793 Different people have different ways of thinking and learning. What may take you many years to understand may take the next person moments. So long as you have the will, drive and understanding, you can achieve most of anything in a short amount of time.
jeremy ron not exactly do you not use drawing and painting in photo-bashing do you really think it’s all 3D models
It’s still painting but painting on photos
Do they not judge scale ?
Do they not judges lighting and colors?
It’s as if people can’t improve my looking at nature
You can definitely improve that quickly. It depends on the quality of feedback you're getting (he surrounded himself with experts who pointed out weaknesses) and the effort that goes into implementing that feedback. If you're doing this seriously for 8 to 10 hours a day, that level of improvement is *expected* in a professional setting.
I think he objectively improved a lot, you can see cleaner edges, more defined brushwork, and better readability in the newer piece compared to the old one. Through mentoring, artists can definitely improve that fast.
Something I rarely think about is how much 3D modelling can help with understanding perspective. Whenever I think of making a painting, I imagine just starting with some lines, colors, basic shapes, lighting, etc. But starting off with 3D modelling the scene can help so much in enhancing the "feel" you get when looking at the final image.
This goes some way to explaining to me why I’ve always thought so much western concept art is bland and characterless
Yeah, he basically describes how to remove originality for the sake of efficiency. I didn't think most of this stuff looked that great.
Agree, this guy represent the aide of the industry that views games more like products to consume and dispose :(
mainly why I as an artist who was pursuing this industry, left and went back to the Japanese style designs I love. Every western game is literally "regular looking white dude in jeans and a baseball cap" or "Military guy from Afghanistan" or "Robot arm dude in a bomber jacket" and theyre heralded as amazing revolutionary designs. Anyone could come up with that shit. Its all just preference of the art director and networking at some point. Meanwhile any run of the mill mangaka could design circles around them because they havent watered down their imagination into a game dev pipeline.
Big companies cut costs including creativity to sell. It's hard to be truly creative if the industry is going in a different direction. Did you move to Japan to work in manga? I didn't understand that part.
I’m not a concept artist but I go through this so much when developing my music videos: the interesting ideas are always the ones that arise from the limitations we find along the way.
"No one can do it, you can't draw these it's gotta be found online"
Every art student is laughing
Do you know what he means though?
For real, as a designer and artist though, there are so many fantastically useful concepts in this talk and its so engaging! I can't believe six years later, it still all rings true.
Such an amazing talk. I completely dislike the visual style he's going for, but for what he does, for what his business does, he is 100% on the money.
this basically taught me that everyone who berated me for "cheating" with references growing up, was wrong
Talks like this make me happy that there is still stuff like From Software.
Yeah, guys a hack
Oh so thats why every AAA title looks the same, people responsible for the looks are uninspired talentless hacks that only can ape the reality without any creativity or actual art involved, AND they cant actually paint. Thanks for the clarification.
I actually chuckled out loud a bit when he brought up some dude that photobashes generic fantasy skeletons and naked chicks with guns as his "art god".
Shadi can definitely paint really well, but for games like Uncharted, it doesn't make sense not to use photobashing. This applies for most big game companies and movies.
@Danny Pavlov
I've looked through that guys portfolio and everythings either photobashed crap or some dull landscape. Where you getting the idea that this guy can paint from?
Photobashing will make sense to you if you actually experienced working on a AAA game, or if you dare to produce one yourself. No matter what you say against it, the method is TIME efficient which makes the producers who pays the artists happy. It is what it is mate. We gotta move forward with it.
Ripping off someones photos from the internet and stitching them together is not art, so as long as people doing that dont claim theyre artists its fine. Every process, even the most scummy one, has its place when theres people willing to pay you for it.
The other matter of course is the legality of what these people are doing, using someones photos for commercial project is very obviously a copyright infringement, unfortunately photographers rarely bother with protecting their property and suing the ones that use their creations without permission, so they go on without getting caught.
The unfortunate reality is that with the advent of digital painting you have the same 200 top people (who were the first 200 people who started this stuff by the way) teaching the exact same thing to everying who came afterwards, which is why all games and movies look exactly the same. This is also why the first Jurassic Park's effects still hold up incredibly well and last summer's blockbuster's look fake, because speed. Concept art for movies and games before 2000 didn't look nearly as finished or good as it does today yet the concepts aren't any better. Of course in concept art the idea is what's important it's quality isn't unless you're gonna produce an art book to make more money, so photobashing's OK. But yes, it's dubious that they use other people's work without compensating them.
Eventually this is going to lead to concept artists than can't actually draw.
In this particular presentation clearly it's already the case XD
I've already met a few ;)
Concept art is not about creativity, is about presenting ideas
Ummmm..... that's a thing that's been going on since Photoshop's easy accessibility (torrents) to 12 year olds. They bypass the fundamentals and go straight to digital painting. Some who actually try to learn the fundamentals, just get familiar enough just to get a job. Okay understanding of light and form, color, composition and anatomy equates to shit art to me.
Lazy
Art is not a race.... is a Marathon, the problem of looking up is that you cant see the rocks on the road, walk at your own pace, and never camp and have fun enjoy the view, enjoy the journey not the finishing line.
If people actually started to go by his taste, machines would replace artists real damn soon
Ayan Choudhury that’s... not how anything works. Machines can perform tasks that we design them to and command them to. An ARTIST still has to be there, being creative and choosing what specific tasks to tell the machine to perform.,
@@Fantallana Thats the point though, with this kind of art you can just make a program that does art and not need an artist. One might say that this art has no soul.
Although all art might be replaced with neural net generated art at some point, there is no reason why a neural net couldn't be "creative"
@@Fantallana damn bro just dropping in to say he was right… I mean look at Dalle 2 soon they’ll hire 1 or 3 dudes to do everything shown in this video if it far evolves from what it can do now which is crazy 😂
There was so little preparation involved in this talk. Just a dude searching Windows Explorer for cool photos that support what he feels like saying in the moment.
... Dude has half assed jokes for days. I'm so glad I don't have to be his employee and reinforce him in his comedic delusions.
It’s really funny how many comments there are saying essentially “now I get why everything AAA and Big budget Hollywood looks the same and lacks originality.” Followed by the same rant about the death of the artistry. This is my second time watching this video and honestly coming back to it after my first viewing I find myself feeling a little stupid I don’t put more of these techniques into practice. What he offers in this video is just more tools to improve your art
yeah, people think concept Art is making beautiful paintings out of nothing when that's not the case. It's a CONCEPT, you have to take ideas from the real world, concepts, and delivering these ideas in the shortest time possible, there's no ''wrong way'' to do this
Honestly, I am fucking mindblown by this video and Mr. Saffadi in general. I have a decent amount of experience in visual design and art direction so while I expected this to be an advanced talk, certain concepts like the "detail control" just completely blew me away. It's so next level, it's the kind of thing that sets a great image apart from a good one and it's impossible to pinpoint until you know what to look for.
Thank you so much for this content.
About this, I think like Leonardo did, your art won't be good if you depend only on "quick technical methods" but if you develop your art eye by actually being an real artist you will make all that 3d modeling an photobashing work awesome.
Art is an idea, drawing teaches you design, the essence never
change.
Technology is good, but art fundamentals make it work for any form of art.
That s exactly why most of the best talents all around the world are NOT coming from the US.
LOL
lol that's pretty true
As a concept artist in America working with an entirely non American team aside from myself, I can't agree more. I seriously have no idea how anyone gets famous in this country, as being vapid, boring, unremarkable, and talent-less seems to be what's "In" these days. Luckily, only in the land of America.
Feng Zhu seems to teach the opposite of what this guy is saying, drawing and especially perspective seem incredibly important when he talks about concept art.
@@anima94 Thats because when you can actually draw like Fheng you can shit out art much faster, than the people who need to do 1 to 2 hours of prep work before they can actually start drawing.
"There is no photo references, I probably had some photos to look from, to draw in there...but no photo in there."
In other words...what photo reference actually is. What he is doing is photo bashing not photo referencing.
I don't know, this goes against mostly everything most artists believe in, photo-bashing I see as a dirty and cheating practice. I can always spot when something has been photo-bashed, even in Kuciera's work. He does it so well, so I think there is a place for it.
But you cannot disregard the digital illustrator masters of today and their craft. People like Sergey Kolesov, or Even Amundsen or Bayard Wu.
We need to remind our selves that today’s environment isn’t about artistry it’s about time and money
I get that photo bashing is cheating for you
But think about how long it would take for someone to repaint and paint all of those things with out photo bashing
Not only do you have to spend a large amount of time to get skin and textures right
It’s insane and especially in today’s competitive field where people don’t really pay artist that much money
@@cherokeehernandez9748 yep.
artistry in terms of skill is over rated anyway. the result is what matters. its like sampling in music. a guy plays acustic guitar, he thinks electric guitar is dirty cheating, electric guy thinks synths are cheating, synth guy thinks software synths are cheating, that guy says sampling is cheating... you know what matters? when you press play on a track and you feel something. all that other stuff is just jerkoff bullshit that really isnt about art, its about some sort of technical skill. the art is the final piece that you see or hear.
like ur saying, its a job and a job is time vs money vs product, and none of that is about "oh look at me im so great i can do the same thing the hard way". and art isnt about that either, art is about the feeling the audience has experiencing the art.
im a graphic designer, i play instruments, paint canvases, paint models, paint digital, make computer music, theres a lot of artists i really enjoy in all fields and say hey, look at this guy hes so great he can do that hard thing really well. i get it, thats cool, but it is what it is, its not a job and its not art, its technical jerking off for people who like a bit of technical jerk off. whos your favourite guitarist? is it the guy that can play the most complicated passage of notes the fastest? or is it the guy that played the solo that almost brought a tear to your eye with the feelings those notes conveyed? thats art, the other one is a guy who can move his fingers really fast in a precise manner.
@@necaacen Very good comment, your music analogies are spot on, its really hard for people to separate ego from art and this comment section is proof
Absolutely fantastic talk. Entertaining, motivating, informative, confident and to the point as always Shaddy. Do not pay any attention to the criticism addressed in the comments. Honestly it seems like no matter how often you repeat that the talk is supposed to be viewed in context of REALISTIC, MODERN, AAA concept art and for other people who share your taste the audience will still get defensive about you attacking what "real concept art" is to them. The absolute majority of those people have never worked a day as a concept artist in their lives and most likely never will but I don't need to tell you that, I'm sure you know it yourself.
Keep it coming man, loving the increased online content output of OPB recently.
Looking forward to seeing more from OPB and working with you in the future!
It's not that I disagree with some of what he's trying to say. I just think this guy's being rather absolute about something rather relative.
Yes, a sense of "designer" is more emphasis on the general idea conveyed as timely as possible than, say, someone spending hours on rendering one picture.
Still, this idea of streamlining the design process, and not over-sweating concept designs like a "work of art" is nothing new.
Also, concept art isn't dead in AAA game industry. It's just streamlined. People still find use for the "work of art" type stuff.
Oh, and some AAA studios, like Nintendo, use both. I've never seen one _Legend of Zelda_ game that didn't feature both "concept design" and "concept art."
Good points. I didn't find his points disagreeable either. It sounds exciting for people who like to explore different ways of complimentary efficient methodologies in a big pipeline. Pretty positive in a sense of a macro view. Micro viewed details within different specializations are still where plenty of designers are needed, and even in the subjective details in aesthetic impact for concept illustrators. A little rough in his pitch, but to be fair artists can feel or be the same way at times when it comes to adapting into a broader work environment with multiple co-workers.
its a click baity title but thats how this dumb site works......
watch the video before disliking it .. its pretty good ! :)
It isn't clickbait, it is the title of the talk. The original audience was GDC attendees, not TH-cam.
Let's call it attendbait then :D
The title alone is worth an instant dislike though... On top of that, the distinction between 'concept artist' and 'concept designer' makes basically no sense anyway. A good concept artist will already tackle the problem of cinematic lighting, assuming that is part of what is asked from them (as one could also design items, weapons etc. without that for sake of clarity for 3D modellers). It still always takes a good level designer to then actually put it in a videogame. This part of translation from concept to final level assets and design often gets lost and it's not the fault of concept artists. Exact same applies to storytelling. And you know something truly ironic? The Last of Us concept art is 10x better than what actually ended up being in the game. It's also a severely overrated game when it comes to storytelling from a visual point of view. So no, the trash talk on concept artists makes no sense. Yeah, I know portfolios from people just graduated from art college tend to be somewhat to very poor, but seeing the very games Saffadi worked on he's not making much sense in terms of the whole 'concept designers'.
Also, it might be just me, but The Last of Us has some of the most generic designs I've ever come across in a videogame and people acted as if they'd never seen such a thing before. Total cringe!
In GDC's defence, it was Shaddy who gave the session such a 'clickbait' title. We've ended up on the receiving end of the piece now, but it was a good talk overall. Could complain, but instead I'll be thankful, the title helped gain views and get this talk to appear in my recommended. It's not like I'm sat here feeling like I wasted my time.
I don't see any problem with using most of the techniques he was talking about, but his studio even with those "cheats" in place on most pictures he's shown managed to fuck up composition and lighting. And the design was nor grounded and realistic, nor that interesting. I guess you just have to do at least passably well without crutches to get to the "other level" with them. And if you're shit without them - nothing's gonna change whatever tricks you employ.
Yeap, even with all the Shortcuts you can Still make Crap. it Proves How hard Art is. You need to have a Good Trained Eye For it. But again Learning These Shortcuts can Problably Help you Saved time at some Point. But Don't Let the Picture Talk 4 You. its a Good Starting Point not a Good End Point. and thats the Path he Choose.
I'm not watching this for an hour to get the full picture of what he's saying, but I'm going off of the video description. Concept art is always a good thing, IMO. I've always enjoyed looking at concept art and the such to see how the development process evolved because it's interesting. Scenery concept art especially can be downright beautiful. At least some indie developers still release concept art and I appreciate it.
Cinematic lightning is the worse type of kind. No wonder nowaday all movies and games looks like frikking photoshop filter. How people can immerse themself with instagram filter and fake lightning?
Fake lighting tends to be a cinematic choice - it may not be realistic, but it's more visually interesting.
Nobody likes it, but HE likes it in the sense that his clients are paying big bucks for that shit, so he likes to sell that shit to those companies. He's just a businessman.
Blame Ridley Scott for this.
So the audience won't be confused about the visual interest?...it's not bad because it all comes down to the mood, importance, atmosphere of the scene. If it didn't have said filters...then you would have bad staging. Are you saying that A L L movies do that crap? No, there's comedy and drama and even video games that keep it grounded to realism.
Your opinion is not a universal reality. In my opinion, you leach off the creativity of others, and try to express a creative spark by a reductive, uninspiring dismissal.
This is why you have to have nothing but respect for old school veterans like Mcquarrie, Mead, Johnston and Cobb. Grafted the hard way and ended up influencing the next few generations. Even the likes of Feng and Scott Robertson should be up there as they bridged the gap between the past and present combining traditional with digital. They do photobash and use photoshop to speed up work flow but have reached a level where most of us won't reach traditionally, unless we put in the hard work and mileage even with all these 3d programmes to aid us. If you're young you still should learn how to draw because time is on your side but if you're a late starter without that strong art background, you're gonna have to learn every trick in the book because unfortunately, time is money.
These arguments are misleading. Even if it helps to build 3d models you still need to know how to draw before you start the modelling in the first place. Drawing is the fastest connection we have between imagination and reality!
as someone who started learning 3D modeling WAY before drawing, nope, not necessary, drawing is a good help, but you can do without
@@PlexusDuMenton Yes but how about when you want to create more design versions? You waste time doing the complicated 3D modelling each time..
@@Constantinesisusualy when I model without making some concept beforehand I just change it overtime, you allways make a "concept" mesh, with only the base shape
and continue to work on it, making lot of simple shape don't take much time, I usualy even do it in Zbrush
@@PlexusDuMenton Yes, Zbrush is something different, especially if you are using a pen. It is like real sculpting, or basically you are drawing in 3D.
a small bit of criticism... "you can't be Kobe and Phil Jackson..." not true at all, see; Bill Russell: NBA player who won 11 championships in 13 years, 2 of them as a player AND the head coach simultaneously. NBA hall of fame, College Hall of fame, Olympic gold medalist (and Captain of the team), and is the guy the NBA finals trophy is named after. So.... NO, you can do both and be great at both at the same time. A bit ironic since the analogy he used was a basketball reference.
You don't need to be both, being either of those guys is being great at an advanced level and this guy will just churn out more mediocrity and not greatness.
I have no problem with 3D, however taking others work and taking it as your own bugs me.
That is wrong and artists dont do that most of the time. But artists can take art from different places and kitbash it. Did you not watch the video?
@@diadokhoi5722 dude chill!!
Go to Facebook find a club where you can play cricket and free your mind
You seem like if someone even watched this video summarized it yet didnt understand a single bit
Will turn into anti thanos and passive aggressively ignore them
If you are this DENSE then maybe you should study humans trust me a quick youtube search will be good
Cool to see someone using Daz3d as part of a professional workflow since so many people like to put down consumer software.
Designers are still artists. So, no. Concept art is certainly not dead.
I don't see what was wrong with those earlier drawings.
He was dead wrong here. The treatment of artists in this industry is disgusting. They turned us into slaves, we were supposed to be a creative source, now we're just hands with drawing instruments.
Too many artists I know are leaving Universal, Activision, Marvel, Disney, etc., in order to launch a Patreon and create good content. With the indie scene booming, it's only matter of time before the best stuff is not coming out of these studios, but out of the hearts and minds of passionate artists.
I'm a junior concept artist, i did some intern (then got promoted as a freelance) at some indie game studio, the art director told me to use any technique (including "cheats") as long it's suitable with their briefs. Surprisingly, they provided me with 3D models (flat) & asked me to re-paint it. But sometimes i when there's no 3d stuffs, i mostly drew couple sketches with pencil then did the rest on photoshop ofc (not going to lie, seamless textures helped my ass back then). So yeah 50:50 for me, also photobashing is actually harder on some occasions imo
I honestly don't see it as cheating, just using references. Since when were references cheating?
This does make me feel a bit better about all those concept pieces I see though. It would take me months just to produce the same result lol
I'm not pursuing a concept artist career, but as a digital artist who wants to rocket up some skills, this cheat sheet he shows has the tricks that a lot of other artists dont like to share a good majority of the time. Say what you want, but these definitely seem like they'd propel you further, even if it is a lot of image captures.
damn that vietnam painting is so bad, this guy has mediocre taste
i could not agree more. He thinks he is some kind of god of concept art but actually he makes shit without taste.
It was really disappointing to me:(
Remember it is a commission. As long as the client likes it, there is no good or bad.
@@990426 Also depends on the budget.
concept art is not about polish
For you artitst that are interested: He is using fastStone image viewer (free) instead of the regular windows photo app. You can select and copy parts when going through your pictures so it ups efficienty :)
Not that impressed with any of this stuff.
This guy sounds actually like a really great boss, pushes you professionally yet understands the task and it's demands from the inside out
he's like a smart used car salesman
He basically telling us that its all about business and making more money and not waste time with artsyfartsy bullshit, if u can deliver it the cheap and fast way. What he doesnt tell is that this mindset is leading to the very game industry we have today. The thing is that no one cares about storytelling or dialogues anymore. Its all dumbed down to boobs n big guns n muscles and shitty sentences like "I'm too old for this shit" paired with hyperreal visuals.
Like he said at the beginning of the presentation, this is from his personal perspective and taste.
If you look at Feng Zhu, his perspective is the complete opposite where draftsmanship and knowledge of your subject is important. I prefer his philosophy over Shaddy's.
I absolutely agree.
I learned 2 important things from Feng Zhu:
Learn to understand the thing you're creating so you can create it 2-dimensionally from any angle.
Every step of the creation process should be excellent all the way from the pencil sketch to the finished painting. The only way to do that is to have a healthy understanding of art fundamentals, primarily dealing with the principles of perspective and composition.
I appreciate his way of approaching the subject because he encourages understanding rather than "just do this and you're good." His goal is to teach you so you don't have to "just do this." The point is actually to learn about the processes and stuff behind what you're doing. He also encourages you to read a lot because it helps you to imagine new things when you're already given the abstract.
If I was about 15 years younger, I'd probably move to Singapore and enroll in his classes. I'd do it for no other reason than to finally get some detailed teaching on perspective, frankly. I can't find reliable information on it anywhere. I have tried for years to "understand" it. And I do. But the minute I try to apply it into a landscape painting, it's like I have no idea what I'm doing.
One of my lecturers was commisioned by Blizzard to do environment art. He always taught us how to "cheat". So I decided to see how far I can take it. Everytime I "cheated", he'd always show me a more bold way of cheating. And he'd always tell me the same thing over again "It's not cheating! There's just not enough time for you to paint everything!"