Concept Art book

[amos_chid]

Hi..

Unlike any games that comes out from Japan, games which comes out from here (US) doesn't have artbook associate with it (well..only a couple like Warcraft, Morrowind, Starwars /FF movie). Where games from japan will comes out with art and concept book (BW sketch, color study etc..etc..) which is very good resource (just look in animebooks.com for example), though mostly done with japanese style.

In here most of artbook is only finish painting (like Brom, Tim Hildebrant, Spectrum, Boris, etc..), no sketch of char/vehicle/monster design. (I know some movie have it..but not from games)

So..does anybody know any good concept/artbook/resource/link which comes from game made in here ??


thank's

[Cannibal80]

Well, except for Blizzard (as you stated) most games I know do not have the art available to the people ("power to the people!").

This, obviously, sucks major eier*.



* 'eier' means 'eggs' in german, but it also means 'balls', I put it in german as to not offend anyone ;)

[nacho]

yeh most western game developers do not show their conceptart to the public. this definately sucks because i'm not interested in the games themselves.. i just wanna see the concepts :)
oh and..
cannibal80, you just offended me by using the word "eier", because i'm german. :D

[Cannibal80]

Scheisse!

[BomberMan]

not true... most of the games have at least a few sketches of concept art on their websites... the goldmine of sketches and concept art are the fantasy/roleplaying games, but you can still find some good stuff on other type of games as well...

Tribes2 had nice action sketches as well as vehicle drawings,
I found quite a few sketches for NeverWinter Nights
Horizons had a few cool ones.
I found a few for Warcraft (already mentioned above)
Robin Hood head a great box cover pencil art.
Found a lot of stand alone artworks from dungeons and dragons rule book :) (even though its not a PC game)
Redguard had the coolest art in its manual, i loved the style, scanned the whole book from my friend :)
Alien vs. Predator had a few nice color ones.
Unreal Tournament (the new one) has the coolest robot/armor designs.
Halo had quite a few cool line art
Anybody remember "Messiah" game? :) hehe, got a few good sketches from it too.
I believe Oni had a few good ones too.
Ghost Recon had a few few environmental pieces as well as the equipment one.

ofcourse all that art was a pain in the ass to find and its not as nice as it would have been in a separate books, but still if you want to find it, you can, its out there. I have two full burned CD's worth of sketches/concept/finished stuff, not only from games but other artists as well. and i have a thick binder of the printouts i liked best....

and the best concept art for the game in my opinion (im in love with his style) is "The Art of metal gear solid" by Yoji Shinkawa... that book is just a pure inspiration in softcover :) for me anyways.

P.S. sorry for a long post

[amos_chid]

thank's a lot Bomberman... and yes Yoji Shinkawa kick a$$... I think they have 3 books for Metal Gear, the 1 & 2 and The making of Metal Gear... that's very nice stuff.

[Madman!]

I have all 3 of those MGS books shinkawa kicks ass. The making of one has little art in it and really isnt worth buying. There is also one for Zone of Enders which I think is all Shinkawa as well havent got that one yet.

[azjohnl]

I might also add from personal experience that some companies do not fully utilize concept art, not realizing how much time it would save them. I have got to see some poor planning personally and it wasn't pretty, if only they had done the concept art they would have known the pitfalls of design and implementation beforehand.

[nil]

from memory, the book that came with Diablo (1) was filled with nice pieces, both finished and more 'sketchy' stuff.

[chris]

theres a new ps2 game called mark of kri that rocks. some of the guys that used to work at disney helped design it... don bluth was one of em i think. anyways, the art is like a very mature disney, its great. also, the 'in-game cinematics' are told through watching an illustration being created and shaded, from a blank piece of paper to a finished sketch. very cool. its a really fun game too.

chris

[amos_chid]

yeah.. My friend has that game too, the style is really good, it's like a bloody disney :D style

crap..why they don't release their concept book, they can get more money from it right ??

cheers

[Madman!]

here is some artwork for the mark of kri game

http://www.allrpg.com/games/markofkri/index.php3?page=artwork

there kinda small.

[tarwater]

One of the best concept books you could ever buy came out a couple months ago. "The art of attack of the clones". I highly recommend checking that one out.:drool:

[jezelf]

Possibly the reason why you don't get a lot of game 'art of books' is generally because there probably isn't enough work to fill a book, but also it's got to be a guaranteed sell. plus you generally have more developer/publisher issues.

Stuff like the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid have a handful of concept artists working on the project, where as on the western side it's usually down to 1 person, or 2 if you're lucky.they are fantastic books, though, if anybody hasnt seen them.

Production times in the west are faster and probably don't allow as much time to create a wealth of detailed art. Of course it would be great to see all the concept art out there from everyone...I guess thats where we have to rely on a site like this :)

It would be more financially sound (and a bigger book too) if publishers of the games complied concept work from all their games in one volume - so you would have coverage of about, say 5-7 games. Another advantage of this would be that you get to see the different ideas contrasting against each other.

if it helps - here's (http://members.fortunecity.com/jezelf/jezelf_art/) some of my stuff I did when working for Acclaim, plus my own stuff. Apologies for the poor presentation. I'm afraid it's a make-shift site just now, with limited stuff on show and 2 years old. (accually just sample work for interviews) if you're interested, I'm putting together a proper site when I get time - most probably in September.

best wishes
jez

[Kortez]

I know this is a VERY old thread but since I just happened to land on this thread I decided to respond.

This is concept art for an icelandic game Eve Online: the second genesis ... these pictures are what made me want to become a concept artist.

you can check it out :

http://www.eve-online.com/conceptart/archive/