concept vs art

[carnalizer]

There has been soo much interesting to read about the art part of concept art. Very little to read about the concept part. Have I missed it or is there nothing to say?

For me it's the most difficult part. If someone asks me to paint something I know I can learn to do it. If someone asks me to come up with new concepts, it's a complete blank.

After seeing the Nth "dwarf in chainmail with axe" I think others too could benefit from any insights. ;)

Please share if you have them!

[The Iconoclast]

I'm in the opposite position. I have all these amazing creature ideas and stuff, but I haven't understood the technical side of drawing as well.

Be cultured.

Read, draw, play games, watch movies, take walks, do whatever you can to get some energy and inspiration. Reading is my #1 recommendation.

I think that buying books like "The Art of Warcraft" really helps get the juices flowing. Creating the concept is like creating a world. Don't give a tribal any metal. Everything is stone for them. Similarly, don't give a year-3000 robot a stone hammer. He's too advanced for that. Maybe he's too advanced for armor, even. Maybe he's just wearing a puny costume and has an electric forcefield. Maybe he has a scyth, too. Maybe he controls people with his mind.

If you're really bogged down, just mindlessly start conjuring up ideas. Do a Google search on "Stream of Consciousness". It's a concept in creative writing where the story is written as the person thinks it up.

When you're creating a character, you're creating life. A life is complex, has unique experiences, and unique traits. Remember that, even if the creature is just dwarf #45292, it is still unique in some way.

I think that most people don't talk about this stuff in the forums too much because it's very difficult to "learn". :) Hope that helped or inspired, man. Good luck.

[carnalizer]

There might be an answer somewhere in what you say. I think my mind is not multitasking enough so when I draw I can't think about other things than the technical aspects of drawing.

So the obvious answer to creative concepting for me should be not to draw. I'll try to write down concepts and then draw them.

Best results have come from brainstorming together with others. Unfortunately those others are hard to come by when you need them.

Any more thought anyone??

[cateaic]

First you have to study the basics of drawing: life drawing!!! anatomy, structure, proportion, lighting ect.
Once youve gained some confidence with your skills you can start to work on a creative process.
Developing character backgrounds is sooo important...You have make a character come to life and give em a little history first before you put pencil to paper. If you dont have a working purpose for a concept it will most likely come out unappealing.
I agree with Iconoclast, watching movies, reading books, looking at other artist work, and observing life around you can inspire some great concepts.
Write stuff down and try to expand on them little by little.
Just know the story behind your concept and it will become alot easier to draw. I dont know if that helped but let me know what you think.

[carnalizer]

See, there's the prob right there. The focus on art. Admittedly this forum is called conceptart.org. Nevertheless, I've read excellent tutorials on such specific and perhaps narrow subjects as drapery without any prerequisites like anatomy. Why couldn't a tutorial focus on concept without touching art? Great men like Asimow and Tolkien came up with great concepts. And they could probably not draw to save their life.

It's not that I don't hear what you're saying. It's just that I watch movies, read books and take walks all the time and it seems to have limited effect on my creativity. Are there more "hands on" things one could do?

Just to stir the pot, which one is the better concept art?
http://members.chello.se/php/cvsa.jpg

[el coro]

okay, i think the first thing you need to realize is that concept artists exist primarily to realize someone elses vision. very rarely does the concept artist have free reign over the concept. if we're lucky we'll get to add our two cents in creatively, but from my experience, its art directed alot of the time. the same could be said about illustration in general. now in order to realize these ideas visually, one must be able to draw. understanding art and the language of visual convention is essential to this. not everyone can do it, i know alot of artists who can draw anything you put in front of them, but assk them to draw from their head, and they dont know where to begin. conceptart would probably not be a viable carreer choice for someone in this category, since the sole purpose of concept art is to draw something that doesnt exist. but in order to draw things that dont exist, one must know how to draw convincingly, yes this means understanding drapery, skintones, lighting, mood, design, ect. the only way to understand this is through intensive study. on the flip side there are alot of people who say "i can see all this crazy shit in my head, but i cant draw it how i see it" and my answer to this is....study art. learn to speak the language, then you can explain your ideas through it. i have all kinds of crazy stuff floating around in my head, but i wouldn't be able to communicate it if i hadn't spent the last 10 to 12 years of my life studying art on a daily basis.. in short, one cannot be a concept artist unless they can draw, paint, or both. art is the vehicle that drives the ideas, and the better the vehicle is, the better the idea can be conveyed. another argument would be that the art end is much much more technical then the concept end, requiring more in depth explaination. there's really no wrong way to conceptualize things. i always lean toward logic and function in my concepts, but even this is by no means necessary. a concept is whatever you want it to be, but if that shit is rendered unconvincingly, or the drapery is wrong or the apple in his hand isnt shiny enough, then it is a weaker concept as communicated to other people. i hope this helps explain my views on the subject.-c36

[Gonzo]

I am definately in the "My Mind is Firing Blanks" group when coming up with stuff by myself.

What I have tried to do recently and with a decent amount of success (and lots of fun!) is to just start with a single line and see what happens. A few abstract shapes can turn into something really amazing. If anything, it gives you some shapes to work with and a form to base the details on.

If you're lucky enough to own or have access to a tablet, start with a white canvas and start painting black shapes; alternating between painting in black and white. The idea is to focus on the silhouette and not the details. You'll start to see details with the silhouettes you put down.

Once you get an interesting silhouette down, you can use that as a framework for building ideas.

Hope this helps somebody or something!

P.S. I read an interesting article not too long ago about how badly a lack of sleep can hinder your creative energy. Speaking from personal experience, the difference is immeasurable if I get a good nights sleep.

Edit: Turning off your brain and letting your pencil do the thinking is a good way to start. Once you've got a rough start, then begin analyzing the composition, details, lighting, etc. The most amazing ideas can pop into your head at any time; be sure to take time to listen! :chug:

[carnalizer]

el coro:
Wow. That was laying down the law or how the saying goes. Now, i agree with everything. Perhaps I gave the impression of dissing traditional art knowledge or trying to get away from the hard work. See that's not the case. I'm still eagerly stydying since my first drawing evening course 20 years ago. But if a concept artist doesn't need to come up with concepts then he is not a concept artist at all, is he? So think about it for a sec. Isn't there a big lack of discussion on the topic on this board? Being the only board i know of that focuses on concept art and all?

And on the subject of what a concept is.. Well there's a nut to crack. But it can't be everything or anything. If it doesn't feel new then it's only a copy, plagiarism or version, right?

Gonzo:
Firing blanks, eh? You can join my club! :chug:
Random shapes are good. There is the risk of missing out on logic and afterthought though.

On lack of sleep; four week old babies doesn't help then?


******
I think we got something going here. If more people can chip in with ideas/methods I'll happily compile that into something more permanent. Anyone remember anything from earlier or from schools or anywhere? Give us!

[el coro]

carnalizer: sorry dude, i get all passionate and shit sometimes.:) again a concept artist is always coming up with concepts, but they arent always his/her own. most of the time they are art directed to some degree, be it good or bad. and conceptualizing is really apples and oranges. what makes a good concept is completely subjective. some people like my design sense, some absolutely hate it. you cant please all the people all the time. and what one person may label a successful concept, another person may hate it. elves with axes arent my cup of tea, and admittedly the idea has been hacked all to hell, but there's still an audience of people who feel that stuff so they will always be legitimate in some arena. now, if the anatomy is off, or the colors are muddy, then its a technical issue, one that lies in the philosophy of art and is critiquable. the point i'm trying to make is that if we did dedicate an area of ca strictly to "concept" what would be in it? i caant imagine, really. discussion on how to be creative? if you need to read a thread on how to be creative, you're missing the point altogether. go outside, look at the veins in a leaf, or butterfly wings, or the spiny scales around a turtles eye, thats where ideas can be found.-c36

[Jaku]

I agree completely with what coro said.
But thinking about and area not dedicated to art here on CA... maybe people that are concept creators could write there some good descriptions for all of us to transform them into concepts.
It´ll be like a continuos thunderdome (without prizes) or like a more art directed Daily Sketch Group... and at the same time it would be more close to what you find in the real industry as coro said.

And i forget to say that i think it´ll help to improve our creativity.

Just an idea, maybe an stupid one....

[Darkstrider]

Hey, this is a great idea for a thread!

Of course, El Coro is right, but there are ways to maximize your creativity. And even though concept art is art directed, you still need to know how to create characters and situations and worlds.

I think to some people it comes naturally. The creativity is just switched on full blast from day one, and they just have to learn how to draw before they start creating comic books/illustrations, or whatever. But the rest of us need a little help. I'm not a professional or anything, far from it, and I'm not great at coming up with concepts (sometimes I am), but here are a few things I've learned over the Years:

First, you need to set up an envirenment that allows you to concentrate. Turn off the tv and the radio. I'm not talking about when the concept is already down and you're drawing or painting or whatever, but while you're trying to fire up the brain and create a world from scratch. Turn off the phone, chase your friends away (unless they're actually helping) and get THINKING.

One of the reasons I came up with my username is because I like to walk at night. The other is because I'm a LOTR geek (from BEFORE the movies came out dammit!). But I find that when I walk around in the dark all there is to do is think. It's different if you're driving or riding a bike (I love to do that too, but it's not so conducive to thought... you have to pay too much attention to what you're doing). And you have to make the effort to guide your thinking to what it's supposed to be about. It's too easy to walk around with nothing but a song playing in your head over and over, or thinking about how hot that chick at the bank was today, or how pissed off you are at your boss. You have to start by thinking about what you already have, whether that's just a vague idea for a character or just the need to come up with something completely fresh, or whatever. I like to sort of set up a dialogue with myself... I'll actually start by saying "ok, so where do I want to go with this?".

And here's a weird little trick that you can play on your brain to stimulate it into creative thought. I call it an imaginal dialogue. You basically think about somebody really smart that you admire, somebody who has a lot of great creative thoughts, and you imagine a conversation with them. It can be a friend, or maybe somebody from tv or a movie or something, or even a historical artist, though that's hard because it doesn't really work unless you KNOW the person and can sort of predict what they might say. This is a focusing trick that helps to knock you out of your ordinary reactive thinking and sets off deeper channels in the brain.

Ok, next trick. Keep a journal. Or just write about your new idea. Simply putting ideas into sentence form can make you think about them more. Plus it helps to focus you... start to make an outline or just some scribbled notes... then you can see where your weak points are and what still needs to be done.

Also, carry your ideas in your head and keep them open... keep thinking about them throughout your daily life, and you'll start to see things that relate.

Read about artists and writers and watch DVDs with the commentary track playing, to hear the filmmakers thoughts. You can never learn too much about how other people approach the creative process.

Oh, and while plagiarism is a big no-no, nobody generates completely original ideas from nothing. You need to start from somewhere. Take an idea that you like, from somebody else's art, (hopefully not something too popular or recent that everybody else is aware of) and start to evolve it. There's no sense re-inventing the wheel with a stone hammer and chisel when other people are driving around in mazdas. Stand on the shoulders of the giants that have gone before. BUT... don't copy from them. Try to whittle their ideas down to the basics and add something else to it, something from another story or painting or movie, or from real life, or from a wildlife documentary, or whatever. Then twist it around and completely change everything, and a month later, add more ideas to it, and then twist it again, and when you're done, extract that first idea that kicked it all off and throw it away. There is a big difference between plagiarism and beginning with somebody else's idea and making it your own.

Oh, and whenever possible, read the classics. Shakespeare, great literature, look at the great paintings and sculptures. It's been said that there are only I think 7 different plots and every story is just a variation on one of them. It's true, the ancient greeks already did it all, and you would do well to study after them. Read philosophy and psychology, the stuff that really makes you think about life in general. Try to get to the basic fundamental truths of life and the human condition and write about this stuff in your journal. Develop yourself as an individual and a thinker, not only as a comic book artist or writer or sculptor or whatever. As my teacher was fond of saying, art is not created in a vacuum. You have to fill your head with knowledge and the thoughts of the great ones who have gone before. Reading Freud or Nietzsche or Jung or Aristotle, even if you only nderstand a little of it at first, can only imnprove your thinking (and yeah, I know, Freud wasn't completely right about everything, but that's not what matters... when you read his words, it does something to your brain... it's like he sets off lighting bolts that rip through the layers of your mind to the very roots of the soul and inspire you with these sudden vivid insights).

Well, ok, I guess that's about all I got. If I think of more I'll be back.

[carnalizer]

no problem, el coro. Dedicating an area would be to overdo it perhaps. I started this thread because I couldn't find anything at all on this. I was thinking more in the line of getting a "tutorial" together to go with the other tuts.

The problems of creativity is something that has been bugging me for a long time. My former boss (whos' concepts I was supposed to visualize) often came along with concepts like gangster-zombie or gothic-hongkongactionflick. I tried to convince him that smacking two genres together wasn't really creative. When I tried to do that myself, the only somewhat fresh idea I could come up with was hockey-vampires. That ain't even funny. Perhaps I'm overdosed on entertainment so nothing feels cool anymore, but every now and then some movie or game appears that really makes you go WOW!

Just imagine if everyone posting here would know how to take their stuff just one step further. Wouldn't that be something? There are some people here with ideas that are really neat but most of the time it's learning art progress pics. I don't mind them and you can get really invaluable feedback here (i have!). But still... mind wanders.. i'm ranting...sorry

Darkstrider: Great article! I knew there were people who knew stuff about this. What you're saying makes a lot of sense to me. About focusing your thought and such. Aimlessly looking at the environment don't do it for me. I guess different thing work for different people. That why this need to be a collection of methods!

[Darkstrider]

Yeah, I like that. A collection of methods. Hopefully more people will write about how they kick their creativity into gear.

[Fipse]

Hi Carnalizer, good topic!

I really like where this discussion is heading. Sometimes I wish some people would share here some thoughts about the ideas behind their art. There´s a lot of art here around but quite a few concepts.
As Coro said a lot of professional work is art directed (I´m an art director myself and I see it often as necessary to guide the direction of creativity due to different reasons). But a lot of stuff here isn´t jobrelated and I think it would be interesting to see more concepts behind them.

There are of course concepts that are overdone. The problem is imho that the conceptart scene is often quite incestuos (sp?) as i see it. A lot of ideas are copied and recycled again. A good example is stuff like the woodelf, the orc and the axe wielding dwarf. The concepts of this figures are basically taken from good ole LOTR (long before the movies - for those who don´t know there´s a book :D) and reworked in RPG´s as D&D that were producing art that spreaded out to the games, movie and whatever. These concepts are so strong anchored that it´s difficult to break out of this trails (as I learned to my regret myself, when I tried to design somewhat different).

It´s a good plan to take an old concept and think how you could do something different with it. Tolkien developed his concepts based on nordic and celtic mythology but if you want to do something different you can always do what he did. Taking ideas and changing them to your own need. I think for creating concepts (that hasn´t necessarily to do with drawing them) you have to look over the rim of the cup that is e.g. the conceptart scene. Try to read (for those who still know how to do it without a monitor) stuff that is more basic than e.g. Fantasy literature. A good thing is always mythology and history - these are the basics of Fantasy but are more convincing with a sound concept behind them. I personally have quite often elaborate concepts behind my drawings (that I fortunately do without commercial interests) and having read a lot of literature of all kind is really helping me.

Darkstride said something right about needing some quiet moments for reflecting. Having a pool of knowledge is really helping too because you develop a vocabulary you can count on. A good example is the conceptart of LOTR. When you look at the first steps in concepting you see a lot of standard Fantasy stuff as shown here on the forum. When John Howe entered the team the stuff (esp. Armour and weapon designs) became immediately much more convincing due to his historical experiences and background.

A good practise is imho taking the DSG-topics and really think about them before you start to draw. This is quite near to professional working. You often will have an AD or CD telling you "I need a concept for a Dragon, must be original and there will be a rider, a human that´s steering him". You can of course take the easy way out and produce a standard dragon or you can let some thoughts fly in. I agree often enough the people don´t want to see something really original - but it´s a good way to fire up you creativity by a sketching brainstorm. An maybe the AD will say "Geez, not what I originally intended but great!" ;).

My 0,2 Eurocent

Fipse

[carnalizer]

Fipse: Great! More material. We're starting to collect a bunch of methods here. This can be a neat little article soon. Couldn't you veterans convince the other professionals to at least check in on this thread and perhaps throw in an idea or two?

[Darkstrider]

Hi Fipse, thanks for the 0,2 Eurocents!

I've been thinking some more about this.

Basically what you need to do is develop your gestalt. That's a term for the thing that lives in your brain and that is responsible for everything you can draw, write, or create. You have to feed it, and it eats ideas. Too many people these days take their gestalt to the fast food drive thru and feed it on popular entertainment, don't give it any real meat, but it needs good nourishment to grow and develop. If you plan to create new worlds, or ancient ones, it helps to know about cultures and civilizations, and global history. It also helps to have a good understanding of the cultural and physical differences between different peoples, and also how individual people relate to each other.

I love to watch shows about sociology, like Desmond Morris' The Human Animal, that looks at people as if they were animals and he's doing this wildlife documentary on them. Things like this can give you real insight into how people act. Also watch Animal Planet for those docos about insect behavior and reptile mating habits. All great stuff.

But I guess what I'm trying to get at with this whole gestalt thing is that you need to begin building a framework to hang all this on. It takes years, hell, it takes a lifetime, but you've got to start putting together your philosophical picture of the world and mankind and its place in it.

One of the most formative things in my development (and I'm still trying to figure out if it was good or bad) was an incredible book by Camille Paglia called Sexual Personnae, in which she goes through art history and dissects the works of different ages to get at the psychology and the philosophy behind the artists and the times. She can be abrasive, and offensive, and that's part of what I love about her. But she's always stimulating and even if you don't always agree with her, she will definitely make you think deeply, She turned me on to Freud and all the other stuff, and I never regretted it. Her writing, that book in particular, will give you a vast framework and a very powerful way of looking at the world and people and the act of creation. It's not for everybody though.

But whether you care to read Paglia or not, it's essential to read something that tackles philosophical/psychological issues and gives you that framework. For god's sake, or for yours, don't only feed it the latest blockbuster rentals and reruns of Buffy. That only leads to the inbreeding Fipse was talking about.

Ok, end of infomercial, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.....

[Bojee]

carnalizer- I agree with all that's being said and to maybe say it in another way, Inspiration for visual art may not always be found in visual art, at least not all the time.

When there is a lot of incestious behavior in the arts, I think it's out of laziness and only looking at the current trends and trying to capitalize on it. Pulling from other sources; life experience, history,philosophy, sociology, psychology, archeology etc etc. starts to give more life to your ideas. It's not just an image of a thing but also the thought behind it,ie. what's the back story, "what's my motivation.":D
I find great inspiration in "good" film, thought process behind it etc. With dvd's now having all the extra material on them it's getting easier to get into that process and understanding the motivation behind what they do.Let alone the storyboards etc. That's what your talking about right? That creative process.
A couple of examples that you might find inspiring;

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6303029183.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
"Vision's of Light" cinematographers from many great films talk about their process.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305963126.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
"Titus" not only is it a visually beautiful movie, it get's into the mind of it's director Julie Taymor who is a favorite of mine right now. I really like her vision, DS you might like it too since her background is in puppetry.

Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth is another great one and touches on Fipse's example of looking into Mythology and Darkstrider's example of there only being 7 great stories in the world.

All I'm saying is that pulling from many sources will make you a more well rounded individual and I think give more depth to your work.

I also believe that El Coro is right too, in the fact that you also need to be working on the "vehicle"
to deliver all those great ideas. :D

Great topic let's keep it going.

[jester]

Great topic and I want to contribute, too. What Darkstrider, Fipse and El Coro said it all true, but for me it's also important to dream up things. This only works when waking up, not when falling asleep.

When the body is at rest, the mind can wander around. Finally, when I can't stay still any more, I get up and put down what I twisted and turned over in my mind - whether it's concepts/ideas for drawing, poems or mailings texts or marketing concepts.

Jester

[fredflickstone]

At work rest or play, its you and you alone. Whether you make art, design art, create someone elses art(vision can be interchanged with art) ITs all you. You are skilled or not. You are passionate or you are not. You admire the works of others and create a forum for these people to merge minds or not...what and why? I cant answer this for all, but for me, it is love of doing it, thinking it, and being it, art that is. I eat the stuff, drink it, crap it out, whatever, its art. My mind is programmed this way now through all that I have experienced to get here.

WHether a forum is a concept forum, or an art forum, or concptual thinking forum, its all revolving around the concept of art. Conceptualizing is an art. There is an art many here is missing in the debate, the art of seeing-seeing truly realized objects, or seeing the future, this art is a creative vision, that truly escapes reality for one split second of a moment, the art is to grasp it and realize what to do with it. The art is assembling in the mind a way to Create this vision...this is the art. Art would not be if noone cared to invent, if no one cared to make something more useful, more beneficial, more beautiful. This vision is the art we are all attracted to here. And we as a community are part and parcel, tools of the craft of visionary exploration; using our hand and eye, we coordinate lines and blobs to become a vision on a surface, or a vision as a surface, an idea on paper, an idea realized.

I will undercut what we do to say that, like a few before me, Nikolai Tesla was a visionary, Henry Ford, Eastman Kodak, etc. These were visionaries, and they helped better technology for man. They may not have been artists in the painterly sense, but they were conceptual in mind and spirit. They could see and assemble their vision.

We dont need to think of ourselves solely as a term, Concept artist- that is a title, and now a name of a place. WHat we need to think of ourselves as, an architype, and anything that can support our cause can and should be included. We are the architype of the creator...not the godhead we think of, but a type of person who can bring more than not to the table, no matter how menial our concept may be in the end. A community such as this one promotes all forms of art, although there are monitors, and rules to the principal channels we filter our work/words through, allowing the concept of this forum to old a certain integrety the original creator held in his mind. Once a concept is released into the world, regardless of origin, it is there for everyone to work with.

This forum has done this very thing, and El Coro put it better than even I have. IT is a concept out of control, once birthed. Similar to birth in fact, we as parents, you rather, I dont have kids...have a concept of a child, the perfect child. Once created, that child takes on a life of its own, no longer the original vision of the creator. Hopefully through proper guidance, that vision blooms into more than the creator imagined, sometimes less-to their misfortune...

I personally dont mind what this "child" has grown into, nor Sijun (another great conceptual forum) either. I think both of these "kids" grew into what they are, and its up to all of us to decide where to take it next as the relay of art continues to pass on. If you are solely into the arts for concepting, this place may not be enough or, "serious" enough for you. But, what this concept art community has is strength through diversity, and there are very few places online, or physical that lack this trait. I for one am proud to be part of something called one thing, and caters to more than that particular. Much like I teach. I want you to learn classic principals, but I will also show you how to do abstract, cubism, conceptual design, etc. Because its all the same thing. And, the more diverse one is as an "artist" the more options one has in life to move about freely as a creator...a lose general term since this particualr artist doesnt need a specific label such as animator, or inker...

anyway, I like this discussion, since in my head, I have asked the same question over and over, why is it called conceptart when its more? Well, everything starts with a title. Or it cannot be trademarked, established, etc. I think the name is very appropriate, since the forum in concept is conceptiually expanding to greater depths for we Conceptual thinkers to expand our knowledge of how to conceive...

Ron

someday I will use spellcheck...heh

[Darkstrider]

Wow, this has really taken off... we got the pros posting in here now! Awesome! Great thoughts Fred... uh, Ron!

Ok, I came up with something a lot more mundane, but as Ron said, it all works together.

One thing that's important unless you only draw lycra-clad superheroes is to learn how to draw clothing. I mean real clothing, not stuff you just make up in your head, not only fantasy armor or futuristic silver bodysuits with no seams, and not only drapery studies (though those are absolutely essential).

I used to have a hard time making my people look right until I realized that I was just trying to invent clothes out of my head, so I stood in front of the mirror and drew my jeans and shirt, actually placing all the seams and pockets just the way they go, and really looking at the wrinkles, not just inventing them. In just about 3 minutes I revolutionized the way my drawings looked, quite literally. In fact, I gotta say, it really changed the way I drew the body. Somehow thinking about the way those seams run and where the pockets go and how the cloth stretches or bulges in places helps to place the forms of the pelvis and the thighs more correctly. It really helped me to understand the anatomy of the pelvis, which is the most mysterious and hard to understand part of the body. Most beginning artists don't even know that the gluteus media exist, much less how to place them properly. But when you know how the seams run on the back of a pair of Levis and how the flesh bulges on each side (on some people anyway) then you know about them, even if you don't know what they're called.

One thing Richard Corben did incredibly well was realistic (if somewhat cartoonish) clothing; you could see every stitch and the puckered cloth along the seams, and the wrinkles really accentuated the forms underneath. Sometimes Kent Williams does it too, and those illos always look extra cool.

Of course, it would also help to study real armor, or the way real barbarian peoples actually dressed, rather than just inventing a loin cloth or something (although sometimes it's cool to just completely invent a totally new style of clothing).

Another thing anyone should do who's into concept art is to look at what's being done, at what's been done in the past, and decide what you think is working and what's not. What do you hate about some of the trends, and why? Try to pinpoint the cliches and avoid them like the plague.

[carnalizer]

geez! I'm building my gestalt just reading the posts here. :)

Great reading all of it. So, i've read my dostojevski, watched citizen kane, plowed through poetry from around the globe and studied masterworks. I've scrutinized all insects, flowers, mammals and watch discovery daily. I guess one can't help building gestalt. Even if it were disney instead of dostojevski one cannot help becoming a person. I believe each person has their uniqueness inside. So what am i doing wrong when all that gets on paper is arbitrarily (sp?) shaped cyborgs?

I'm making this sound worse than it is for the sake of thread continuation. Actually i'm not that creatively handicapped and i'm having a blast with my "cyborg period".

My first reaction to some of the comments (like "study real armor") was that this is just the same "how to draw" stuff i've seen before. But then again, any concept needs believability, and that comes from the relation with wellknown concepts i guess.

Now then, how bout some down to earth tips and tricks? I remembered one thing I did when doing fantasy miniatures. I wrote down a long list of words. Not really limiting myself to it but focusing on clothes and equipment that I thought could go with fantasy characters. Then I picked a couple at "random" and thought about developing it or just throw it in for details.

For myself I'm satisfied because this thread made me rediscover that i need to not draw when coming up with concepts. But I love "how-to's" so give us more more more!

[Darkstrider]

*begins the long spiral back down to earth*

Ok, I'm not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but here's one thing that popped into my head...

F'rinstance, doing cyborgs, you said they came out 'arbitrary'. What does that mean, like smooth, shiny Sorayama type, or something else sort of cliched? I would think one way to break out of that would be to start looking at a lot of different kinds of industrial machinery... tractors and milling machines, turbojets and mixmasters, and actually draw some of the inner workings, meanwhile going all zen and trying to think how it might be incorporated, modified to whatever degree, and used as cyborg parts. You might start to think about different kinds of technologies to incorporate... say Jules Verne era steam engine stuff (ok, kind of ridiculous, but sometimes using humor unleashes the beast of creativity, and leads you to unexpected places).

Ok, somebody else take it.

[carnalizer]

Darkstrider: By arbitrary i meant i draw a human and add random shapes which i try to make look mechanical. Add tubes and bolts and viola; a new freak cyborg is born. One of my selfassigned homeworks was to go out and sketch industrial machines actually. It's spring so the street reconfiguration dudes pop out like dandelions with all kinds of bizarre wheeled and tracked contraptions. :)

[Bojee]

Originally posted by carnalizer
Great reading all of it. So, i've read my dostojevski, watched citizen kane, plowed through poetry from around the globe and studied masterworks. I've scrutinized all insects, flowers, mammals and watch discovery daily. I guess one can't help building gestalt. Even if it were disney instead of dostojevski one cannot help becoming a person. I believe each person has their uniqueness inside.

carnalizer- Your doing all the right stuff,your a well rounded well educated person, So what's your problem??? :D
So you want some practical stuff huh? Everybody was getting all deep and shit. :D
I definitely like word trees,free association, writing down whatever comes to mind when you write down the the key word. Say Cyborg - Slavery-oppresion-working conditions etc etc.
I like Mike's idea;

If your talking "Cyborgs"
I would think one way to break out of that would be to start looking at a lot of different kinds of industrial machinery... tractors and milling machines, turbojets and mixmasters, and actually draw some of the inner workings, meanwhile going all zen and trying to think how it might be incorporated, modified to whatever degree, and used as cyborg parts. You might start to think about different kinds of technologies to incorporate... say Jules Verne era steam engine stuff (ok, kind of ridiculous, but sometimes using humor unleashes the beast of creativity, and leads you to unexpected places).


To add to that I might look at junk yards, wrecking yards, assembly lines, salvage places, industrial districts of your city, and construction sites. For that old look maybe antique stores where you find that one little ( or big, I'm on a budget) object that has the feel of what your going for. Also exploring the organic element, how would the body accept the non organic parts, which could lead into aspects of organ donation and other things as well.

I think first you have to figure out what you are going for, and then that narrows the field immensely.

If your still having trouble after all that, I think you need to find a way to relax. Once you've crammed all that information in and you've focused on the problem, then you gotta figure out a way to relax and let your mind do it's job. If I go to bed thinking about an idea after all that cramming, I'll usually wake with a solution or at least clue to where I need to be. Could also be when you take your shower in the morning. Anytime that you can find to yourself and relax and let the idea float to the surface.

I'd also try to bring a little personal experience into it. Since you just had a baby maybe some aspect of how cyborgs would reproduce, raise a child etc.

There's lots of other exercises like Magnification, minification, multiplcation, substitution,fragmentation etc etc to help knock something loose as well. But I'm going to let someone else talk now.

Tag your it. :D

[Darkstrider]

Damn, I'm it again! :evilbat:

I think I'm getting a pretty good feel now for where you're comin' from Carnalizer. And i think it all goes back to something Mr. Flickstone said earlier... it's all about living, eating, and crapping art. I don't know where you are as an artist, but once you've got the basics down really well, and I mean to the point where thjey're first nature and you don't even need to think about them (I'm not there yet) your mind becomes free to concentrate on other aspects, like very specific things (the sort of things you're after). Year after year, as you keep learning and growing as an artist, you'll mature and evolve, and your ideas will become more sophisitcated. Make sure to be your own worst critic, and be brutally honest with yourself, but recognize your own strengths as well. Keep thinking about what you're drawing and how to get it closer to what you want, and eventually it should start to happen, but it will take a few revelations and sudden epiphanies, which can't happen until you've made substantial progress.

Ok, who's next? :chainsaw:

[carnalizer]

Bojee: No problem really. :) Well, lots of them but this thread won't fix my economy, smoking habits or paper work. Not in short term any way. As I've said, I'm not that creatively handicapped. I didn't mean to make this a thread about "fixing carnalizers screwed up head" but rather hoping for getting together a tutorial or collection of tips or at least a discussion. I was mostly aiming to use myself as example, so i apologize to those who were going to save my poor soul if i misled them. Please explain though, what is a word tree? Or was that your explantion of it?

Personal aspects! Great tip! Thank you!

There's lots of other exercises like Magnification, minification, multiplcation, substitution,fragmentation etc etc to help knock something loose as well. But I'm going to let someone else talk now.

Magnification, minification, substitiution all sounds pretty selfexplanatory but i would need some help on fragmentation and etc etc.

Darkstrider: We really need to get off this "zen-change-your-life-and-elevate-your-essence"-waggon. People are getting scared!! :ep: :D

This will be hell compiling into something understandable but there's almost material for a book in here. Mainly you all seems to be saying that one should think before one draws (except for the selfimprovement stuff). That is fine, but tell most people to think just like that and they'll freeze up and then starts to look for something to do. So the reason we need exercises of a certain kind is to do something which gets us thinking in the right direction. Drawing seems to start many of us thinking in terms of perpective, lightning, form yada yada instead of "OH it would be soo cool if this small cyborg had a huge arm with wheels on it!!".

Sh*t its late. G'night.

[Bojee]

carnalizer- No i didn't take it that way at all, i was just kidding you. I did feel you were egging us on a little bit , but it was generating interesting discussion so that's cool.:)
I'm sure your more than compotent, but careful what you ask for you just might get it.:D

Fragmentation- It was taken from a Book called "Art Synetics" Stimulating Creativity in Art by Nicholas Roukes. It's from an exercise in transformation,transforming something percieved in a certain way into something different.
Here's his definition;
Fragmentation- " splitting or fragmenting objects or images. The subject maybe partially developed, fragmented , or dismembered . Splitting planes as in Cubist Art."

I'm not exactly sure how you'd apply that to your Cyborg idea, maybe an assembly line, replacement parts, maybe a montage of images showing different aspects of your Cyborg. Does that help?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871921510/qid=1083715513/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-3634499-8572003?v=glance&s=books
Here's a link if you want more info about the book.

You also asked about the word tree, do you know what a family tree looks like? It's kind of like that.

You start off with your Main Word- Cyborg, then you start to free associate, what does that word make you think about? and then you write down all those words underneath "Cyborg", drawing lines back up to it ( now your tree is starting to grow :) ).

Now that you have all those words, what do each one of them make you think about?? and you write those down too underneath the other words drawing lines back up to the word that stimulated the other word. Now your tree has grown some more, and on and on. The trick is not to edit yourself too early, or throw out words just because you think they don't fit, write it all down. You can edit later. After you have all that you start to see how you might combine all these different things in different ways.

The first few words will always be the most obvious and then you go deeper.

I'm not sure where I picked it up but i think it's a writing exercise. Hope that helped, sometimes the explanation makes it more confusing.:p

[carnalizer]

I may have been overenthusiastic and pushy... :o Sorry.

Still it's a way interesting topic! Fragmentation makes little sense to me but word trees are neat.

[Bojee]

carnalizer- Nothing to be sorry about, It is a great topic, well worth dicussing let's keep it going. :D

[OptimusDinkus]

if you can sell shit on a stick with confidence, then you can call yourself a sucess. Those who are sucessors in the art world can be crappy artists, but are able to swoo people to buying his art. With that said, at one point in time I drew many portraits very well in highschool, and since I got paid I considered myself done with homing in on my skills. Thats until I came to college to learn 3d which requires a shitload more than what was there allready. So I thought I was 2 steps ahead, when I was 30 steps backward. However, this semester with deap patience Im now able to create great things in record time. So, Im at a mute point. To be creative however, it takes inspiration most of the time, or AKA the human experiance. If your inspired to create something, it will become beutifull, if not, I havent seen one design/art piece that was great because of no inspiration. I mean, if you see a concept that wows you, take elements of it, draw elements of it, disect every (3d) object in the sillouete, and help incorperate what you love into what you do.

[carnalizer]

OptimusDinkus: You are soo right about inspiration. I would add some comments though. It's not necessary so that others feel the same way about what you feel is uninspired. Others might like it very much and hate what you do when you feel inspired. Especially so if you're experienced and developed as artist. And whats more important; inspiration is not magical or elusive. Most of the time it comes from working, not before you start working. Or from forums. ;)

[OptimusDinkus]

that is true, I find my stuff to be a better outcome though if Im inspired from the beggining -=) depends on the person. I see that hate as envy though more so than just preference

[nBT]

wordtrees. are fun to some extend. you can get tangled up in all the branches you create. you get a lot of thought material on paper wich is somehow usefull or not. i usually create the sheet of words in 5 mins. then i go look for the main themes in them. i also have these themes figured out by then but something else might come out. then google for everything. see if theres any myth or psychoanallytical stuff on it. just fill in the 'undefined kid' (ron page 1). thats the long way around. the short way around is to go draw like crazy. you can use words to formulate/shape your idea, also forms/lines. since im still hanging in my abstract period that also gets me nice stuff.

also i 'leech' on other people. when i cant get any ideas in my room i visit other peeps ask if i can stay at their house. gets me different ideas. (bar or train or subway also works) just change environment.

reason for this is something i (and my friend) call autism. i have to be with me alone, feel comfortable. i have to be able to hear what im thinking (meditation) if i can create my environment for me to be in take all the space i want. then i can be open to anything around me. sounds contradictory but it works.

pay attention to your current state of mind. and when your most creative. and what creates the exeption to that rule.

creative strikes. have to have em. its the vision thing ron talked about. pursue it with all of you. the vision is what you are. what you persue. that in a somehow managable form.

get to knwo you. get to knwo what you are good at, and whatnot. personally im of the structure and analasys. i get a kick from highly complex music such as jazz, stravinsky and stereolab. music can be a great background for thinking despite what has been said. just choose it wisely. i woudnt play any metal for instance. i also look in fashion stores see what this years fashion is like and figure out why. see the relations between car design and fasion for instance.

id like to introduce a new thing. borrowing. dont borrow concrete ideas. like a dress style or car design. borrow the underlying design idea. you can see it for instance when you have a chronologic series of bmws next to eachother.

oh undefined. undefined is adventure. you dont know what it will define in.

i play flute and clarinet. id love a piano but no money or space

:) nBT

subject of alteration

[Burton]

Hmm. Dali would force himself to stay awake for days, holding his hand above a candle flame so that he wouldn't fall asleep and burn himself. Eventually he would start hallucinating. Concepts=done! I know a few others that get their concepts while lucid dreaming or through sleep tricks.

I agree that the concept can carry just as much weight as the technical skill. I love a great rendering. But after a few hundred rounds of pirate, pirate, car, mech, hot asian with guns, mech, hot asian with sword, hot asian, pirate, mech, orc, mech, hot asian mech, hot asian pirate, cyber pirate, pirate car, ninja car pirate mech, ninja car pirate mech (underwater), mech, mech, ninja mech, pirate.....

....the great drawing stops being enough to sustain interest.

[carnalizer]

lol! Hey Burton, you forgot dwarf ninja cyberaxe. :D

But seriously, I couldn't agree more. Problem with Dali's method is that it might take to long in todays high speed world..

nBT:Very nice insights. This will really useful. Thank you very much!