Breaking in

[fdcarter]

Hi Forum!

I'm trying to break into the concept art industry, and every bit of guidance that anyone will offer me here will be very much appreciated.

Some background on me: I have a two year degree from The Art Institute of Philadelphia, but no I have no professional work experience related to any branch of the art industry, and I've been out of school for about 2 1/2 yrs now.

My character design skills are strong and I'm working on refining my talents at landscapes right now. I do still have some questions though:

What non-digital mediums do most of today's professional concept artists work in?

Do you think it's a good idea to try and boldly break into the concept art industry by making a submission to a major studio or should I be less ambitious and stick to contacting small studios to get my foot in the door?

Is the arrangement between the concept artist and a studio strictly work-for-hire or does the artist have some rights to his/her final artwork?

Is it a good idea to find the name of a contact person at a film studio and send them a concept art portfolio of my work even if they are not hiring at the time or would that be bad form?

I have many more questions but I'll stop there. Thanks much to all that reply to this thread!

FDC

[Leopoldo]

Hi FDC,

have a look at my posted reply to Chiba about the same issues.

On the subject of approaching large or small studios I would say work them all.

It took me about 6 years as pro until I got up the self assurance and confidence to applied for storyboarding at Disney Feature Animation but it was the best interview I have ever had even though I didn't get the job.

All of the feature film productions I have worked on has been freelance hiring and project time based employment. These days web design companies and computer game companies hire full time employed artists.

Exceptions to rule are out there of course, like Pixar, Blue Sky and Disney and Dreamworks etc but there you go.

On the subject of materials:
Use everyhting that dries fast. There's nothing worse that popping that oil painting into the ovan to get the paint to dry quicker, only to have it start bubbling like pizza... (True story)

I use markers (Copic and Pantone), watercolours, acrylics, superscuplty, pencils, blue pencils red pencils.

Photoshop, Painter, After Effects, Final Draft, Final Cut Pro, Logic Audio, Cinema 4D and a mac have also been known to show up here and there depending if I am doing animatics, story reels or pre-viz sequences.

All these are fast drying, clear and production savy for easy handling for scanning etc.

Hoped this helped,
Leopoldo


Portfolio http://www.fabpics.com/leo

[fdcarter]

Leopoldo,

Thanks for taking the time to give me the very helpful info that you did. It is much appreciated. You have some nice work on your portfolio pages too, nice breakdowns of character musculature. Best of luck to you in the future.

FDC