Although I had a fairly solid idea of what I wanted to produce for BA6, I still hadn't had a opportunity to run my idea past any of my tutors which meant I could essentially be working on something that was completely wrong. So I decided to book a meeting with my Tutor Nigel so I would be able to discuss my project with him and make sure that I was on the right track.
The meeting I had with Nigel wasn't incredibly long but was packed full of really usual feedback and resources for me to take on board and look into. He seemed to be really pleased with the idea I was choosing to focus on and we were able to discuss a large amount of the concepts I was thinking about in a lot of detail due to our common interest in the topic. As well as discussing different inevitable situations that the human race find themselves in, Nigel also recommended two different pieces of media for me to look into if I wanted to do a little more relaxed research on futuristic interpretations of mankind. These were the 1995 sci-fi movie 'Species' and the 2004 Canadian series 'ReGenesis'. Each piece shows a different variation of what the future of mankind could become so these could help to give me a few situational ideas and more inspired designs later on in the process. Although he did warn me not to research too much otherwise I may make the mistake of BA5 and not leave myself enough time to complete the artwork.
Advertisement posters for 'Species' and 'ReGenesis'
Nigel was able to talk to me about how I could possibly go about producing my concept art for this project and gave me loads of useful tips on how I could keep my work and designs following as well as what different techniques I could use to help try and improve my particular style and drawing skills. One example he gave me which I thought was really useful was how I could go about different iterations on a characters face so for example if I was wanting to work on things such as facial expression or details such has hairstyles, I can draw a base head which is of fairly simplistic design and then copy and paste it a few times so I have a good selection of them and then just begin to paint on top of them, adding in different design features on each one. This is a great time saving technique and will allow a lot of different important design iterations in one big chunk. It will also help to stop me from going into too much detail and wasting valuable time when I am in the creative process. An example of this technique can be seen below.
Art by Loston Wallace
Nigel also spoke to me about how much detail I actually needed to go into when I create my design work. He and I both know I have a bad tendency to spend far too long trying to perfect my work and drawings, making them incredibly neat and getting them to a stage where I am pleased with them. He told me that the way I have to look at is that dictionary definition for the 'concept' is 'idea', this means that concept art is actually meant to be fairly rough, not a big polished final piece. Many of the work produced by actual concepts artists is very quick sketches and ideas dotted down into on paper. All the 'concept art' you see in the art books for games or films are just all completed final piece of art that have had a large amount of time spent on them and are produced nearer the end of the production process. They aren't the original concepts that kick started the ideas or designs. Artist in the industry don't have time to make ever single one of their concepts polished to perfection, like the artwork you see in the art books, those types of piece are produced simply so that they can release them to the public and get them excited about the piece of media being released. Most potential buyers wouldn't be impressed or temped to buy the product if all that is released are the rough scrawls and sketches of the original concept art.
I think this is a really important thing that I will need to bare in mind when I get onto the design side of my project and hopefully it will motivate me to be a bit quicker and rougher with my sketch work instead of being extremely anal about my line art. All of the advice I was given by Nigel during this session was really helpful and now I feel a lot more confident about producing the concept art with the ideas I am going with and have more clearer mindset of what work I want to produce now that I know I am on the right track.
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