Concept art

Borderlands 2

Media used

The piece was created using digital media. However the digital aspect has been used to create the look that it has been painted using a strong water colour with inked outline and detail

What is it trying to communicate?

This piece of concept art is communicating the design and feel of a landscape. It’s been designed in such a way that it shows all the features of a whole landscape with just a very small view, for instance The piece conveys a feeling of space that stretches beyond the image. The colour pallet communicates the feel of the landscape by showing the cold colours to give an idea of the climate in which the piece is set.

Look & feel

The look this concept has used is a comic book style. This is achieved with the style of painting described above. The water colour paint style was used to give the look of a hand painted image, the ink was used to give a strong feel that makes the objects in the image stand out against the back ground, also enabling the colour pallet to vary very little due to the black neutral colours picking out the tones and colours.

As for the feel of the piece, the colours were used to give the feeling of a cold environment or a cold morning with the tops of the hills and rocks being warmed up by a low sun. This is achieved by using dark greens and blues for the majority of the environment to give the cold feel with a warm bright green on the tops of the grassy hills to give the feeling of a warm spot of sunlight.

Colour palette

The colour palette used for this piece, as described above, is a mixture of cold greens, blues, warmer green colours and neutral black and brown colours. The cold colours are used in the lower section of the piece for shadows and some of the reflections on the rocks. The warm colours are at the very top right where the light hits the ground.

Composition

As shown in the image above this piece of concept art follows the rule of thirds for its composition. The rule of thirds is that when viewing an image your eye is draw in to the 4 points were the lines intercept, these lines mark the different thirds of the image. From here you will them move about the image along the third lines.

Looking at the image with the third lines you see that the horizon is lined up with the bottom line, this helps to give the correct feeling of perspective. Also the arch, one of the main focal points, is exactly centred on one of the intersections making sure that the viewer’s eye is drawn to that part of the image first. Looking more at the image it becomes apparent that the main blocks of colour are all inside one of the 9 rectangles, for example  the river occupies the middle bottom box and the sun lit grass the middle right.

Would I be happy receiving this concept to model from?

If I was modelling this landscape from this image I would be fairly happy. The scene is detailed enough to show the details of the scene and also the shading and tone used gives a very good feeling of depth that helps with scale. The way the landscape is portrayed also helps as it give a lot of scope for my own ideas as the concept provide some good building blocks to create a more expansive scene. Another thing about it is that the colours give a very good idea of the lighting needed for the scene to keep it looking how it was designed. For example I know that from the lighting I need to place a low warm coloured light.


Insanely twisted shadow planet

Media used

The piece has used digital media, just like borderlands 2, however it has been used to create a block effect instead of imitating another Media.

What is it trying to communicate?
This piece of concept art has been designed to show how a creature/screen will look within the game environment. It shows the feel of the game by giving a very distinct art style, however it doesn’t give the same feeling of space that the last piece did and instead this shows the style of art that should be carried on within the game.

Look & feel

The look this concept has gone for is a highly stylised design using block neutral colours. Mostly black with cold detail for the background and warm for the creatures. This really helps to make the objects in the concept stand out against the cold background.

As for the feeling of the piece the cold colours in the background create a feeling of emptiness when coupled by the fading details and empty areas behind the main focus of the image. Also the red in the creatures give an instant feeling that they are organic or that they are some sort of evil presence making them stick out from their surroundings.

Colour palette

This image has a very limited colour palette and is unusual in that the main colour used is a neutral colour, black. The black is used the make very striking objects that stand out against the light blue back ground, this blue made a cold colour for this very reason as cold colours are used to sink areas of colour into the back of an image. The red on the creatures is used for the same reason as the warm colour helps to drawn the details away from the back ground.

Composition

The piece uses a different composition from the last one as it doesn't use the rule of thirds, instead it uses a Central focal point that runs through the middle of the image from up to down. This means that your eye is drawn to the two main objects in the centre of the image.

Would I be happy receiving this concept to model from?

This concept is primarily for a 2D game so there wouldn't need to be any modelling. However from the images you can get a very good idea of how the assets need to look. Also as this concept is very close to the final look it could almost be copied exactly and then animated making the process very simple.