Task 2

Research File



Feng Zhu

I think the artist that relates best to the field I would like to get into would have to be Feng Zhu.
Feng is a well known concept artist in the entertainment industry who has done work for various Hollywood studios and game developers, Including Electronic Arts, Disney, Sierra, Universal, and the Skywalker Ranch where he worked on Star Wars Episode 3. He has also worked closely with top film directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielburg, James Cameron, and Michael Bay.

Excluding his professional work, he has also been teaching at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena and making DVD tutorials for Gnomon Workshop: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/125/The-Techniques-of-Feng-Zhu-1#.UXEJBcXA_ng

Also Feng opened a school in Singapore called FZD School which teaches concept art for the entertainment industry with Feng himself as a teacher. The school was founded in 2009. The school cover various topics such as video games, feature films, theme parks, consumer products, toys, and set designs.
http://www.fzdschool.com/index.html

Here is a Interview with Feng Zhu where he talks about a game called Planet Arkadia and inspiration he looked into for the project, also which creation excites him the most.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhkfPiZfMMc

Feng also has a YouTube Channel where he posts regular lengthy video tutorials of his processes whether is be black and white studies, or RPG landscapes for games or creature sketching. After several episodes he will occasionally post a Q and A video where he answers questions from all of fans that watch his videos.
In his videos he talks about things in the entertainment industry and what things to practice on if you want to get into the industry, things like good time management.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL?feature=watch



I find Feng Zhu really inspiring because he has so much experience in the field and he's always willing to try and teach people and help them out. The technique I'm interested in the most though is the way he uses photos and textures so much. He places photos over his paintings in almost every painting he does. He has massive folders on his computer full of photos he has taken which he can use in his paintings. I think if I was to use this method into my paintings it will give them a much more realistic feel to it and give much more detail.

Trying to paint in the same style as Jorge Jacinto using the same brushes.




Here is another piece done in the style of Blink using his brushes.




Elder Scrolls Online

Artwork from here: http://conceptartworld.com/?p=17004

I was going to look into the artwork for the game Skyrim in the elder scrolls series but I couldnt actually find to much artwork for the game. So I decided to do the Elder Scrolls Online because there is currently a lot of hype and media attention about this game at the moment as its still in development and the release date is near approaching. Plus there was lots of artwork to use.



I really like the cold and dark feel to the artwork, it reminds me a lot of the Iron Age with a dark and gritty touch to it. I think when it comes down to creating ideas for my landscape I'm going to try and use elements from the artwork and the world this game is set in because when your playing the game it really feels like your in a fantasy world so I want to try and figure out what elements give it that feel and include them in my painting.








Robin Olausson http://robinolausson.portfoliolounge.com/work/546


Again I couldnt find much information about this artist, but here is what I managed to find out:
Robin works as a concept artist at Gameloft Madrid. He previously worked as a freelance concept artist, working with clients such as Square Enix, Sony, and Darksidegames. Robin studied at the School of Future Entertainment Sweden.

The reason I wanted to look at Robin's work was because this image really caught my eye while flicking through.



Deciding on Game or Film Concept Art for my Project

I've been looking into game and film concept art and have noticed slight differences between the two....

Game concept art tends to have a more 'painted' feel and look to it compared to film concept art. Games have a more creative look and are not highly detailed because they are only concepts. For landscapes they mainly block out the forms and simple lighting, once that is achieved they through on some textures to give it a little more detail because its less time consuming than painting everything, time management is critical in concept art because you don't want to waste time making something heavily detailed when the client might not even like it.

Film concept art goes for a more Matte Painting style which is basically making artwork by putting photo's together and making things to a near realism level.

I looked into a bit of how Rivendel from the Lord of the Rings was created.



For Rivendel the team actually created a model to use for the film which would be placed on a green screen.
Here is the model they used for the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHJN61AdHe8 Link showing some models and ways they created the sets.

in this image you can see the techniques used really well. The red area indicates where the real set is which they actually built. The blue area is where the model of rivendel was used and behind that in the green area is a matte painting done. The blue and green areas would have been a green screen.




I think I'm going to go with game concept for my project because I mainly specialize in painting and haven't delved into the matte painting side of things yet, although I do use a few textures here and there. Also I think the process for game concept is a lot more fun painting from scratch.





Questionnaire Results

Before I made my questionnaire I decided to do a little mind up of possible things to include in my game environment. The race, setting, time of day/ year etc. I thought this would be a good way to generate possible questions to use in my questionnaire.

Se here is the results I got back.

It looks like from votes that elves received the highest vote. Mountains and forest both scored the same along with spring autumn and winter scoring the same also. I think what Ill do now is combine the ones that got the same scores into my artwork, for example using a riverside in a forest with mountains in the background.

I think doing the questionnaire was really good method to generate ideas and give myself some sort of brief to work from. Because before I new I wanted to do some kind of landscape concept art for a game or film, but usually for this sort of thing you would be given a brief to work from, so I had nothing to really go on at first. Now from the results I have something I can work from to take me to the next stage of finding architecture styles and reference images to then going onto thumbnails for the final piece.





What program will I be using?

For digital painting most professionals would recommend Adobe Photoshop because, as well as being able tp paint in the program you also have so many different effects and filters to use, because photoshop was originally a photo editing program. There is of course other painting programs to use like Coral Painter which has been around for nearly just as long as Photoshop. Coral painter specializes in painting and nothing else whereas Photoshop can do many different things, even 3D. I do think using a painting specific program could be beneficial but I have more experience using Photoshop as I've been using it for several years now to do my own drawings and photo manipulations.


Different media, materials and techniques

Here is a sketch I did using a 2H pencil, I done this keeping my questionnaire in mind. I find using pencils for your first sketches is a great way to get your ideas down because you can quickly scribble in things that come to your head. Afterwards you can then take your image into Photoshop and start to refine it and then begin your painting over the top.



Thumbnails

Here is a few thumbnails I've been working on bearing in mind the results I got back from my questionnaire.

Each image only took around half an hour, I don't want to spend ages on these as they only thumbnails. I'll probably produce a few more of these because they are a great way to produce different ideas. Once I have enough thumbnails I'll then pick one of them and refine that painting into a high quality image.

Evaluation of Research

I'm really happy with the research Ive been able to gather. I looked into several things and explored different techniques. The thing I was most happy with was my questionnaire. When I started the project I knew I wanted to dome some form of landscape concept art but this kind of thing requires a brief to work from else it wouldn't really be 'concept art'. So the results from my questionnaire gave me a rough brief to work from which I'm really happy about. After that was sorted I started looking into reference images of architecture and the kind of paintings I'm looking to achieve, to give some sort of image in my head of what I would like to produce. For my final painting I'm going to try and use the same style as Blinck, I've produced similar paintings in his sort of style and I'm confident I'll be able to do it. 

Task 1

For my FMP I'm looking to do some kind of concept art because its what I would like to do in the future as a job, and I really enjoy doing landscape concept art. I'm thinking of trying to create a world, or several worlds by producing a variety of images and thumbnails all different from one another. The worlds will either be fantasy or sci fi based.



Brief
To build a brief for myself to work from for my project I'm going to create a questionnaire asking people what they like to see in a fantasy game like Elvish Ruins, Huge Castles, Towns set in massive trees etc. Then another question asking what style of buildings, so like European, Asian, Middle Eastern that sort of thing. After that ill then ask about the setting, is it set in a forest? mountains? floating mountains? underwater? and then continue on to things like time of day. Once I've collected all of the results I'll then have a brief on what to base my concept on.








Jorge Jacinto (Blinck)

Jorge works as a freelance concept artist living in Portugal  He's been my favourite landscape concept artist now for some time. The reason I like his work so much is because it so heavily fantasy with a nice gentle and peaceful touch to it.

I really like his techniques used in his paintings and the way he paints his rocks and trees, he also posted the brush pack he uses on one of his videos which is free to download. The videos on his youtube channel consist of his work in progress of his paintings. Here you can see all of his techniques and how he does things and comes over problems he encounters. some of his techniques include using the lasso tool to get a nice fine edge on his paintings.

Tyler Edlin




Tyler specializes in enviroment art creating vast worlds for video games. He is a freelance concept artist residing in the boston area.

Tyler also has a youtube account where he does lengthy tutorials on some of his artwork explaining techniques and the processes he uses. The main reason I've chosen work from Tyler was because I really like his cartoony fantasy style and some of the really interesting and inspiring techniques he uses in some of his paintings.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MHJ1LvPQ7s
I really like the cartoony look to this image and all of tylers image. Even though its cartoony it has a realistic feel and look to it. Things like the light coming through the trees and hitting the ground give it a realistic feel to the image.

Here is an example of some the light holes in the trees letting light through and hitting the ground. Tyler explains this really well in his tutorial and shows you how to achieve the same effect in your paintings.
He also explains how he does his vegetation and trees, also how he adds details to things. He uses a lot of the election tool so that he can get a nice fine edge to things. All of the techniques tyler explains I'm trying to incorporate into my paintings and my project.



I really like the scale and distance this image pulls off with the castle. Placing the people in the image gives it a much greater scale making it more realistic. It has a really dull and gritty feel to it as well which works really nicely with the time period.


I really like the lighting and colour in this image. I like the way he even included shadows from the clouds and water vapour from the massive waterfalls. He creates a great scale of distance in this image by give the  castle a more blue tone to it which creates atmosphere to make it seem further away. Tyler explained to do this you had to create a new layer and place a light blue gradient over from top to bottom. Then lower the opacity and slightly rub out the objects as they get closer. You could also use a layer mask to do this. But I think this is a really nice technique which I never knew of until watching his tutorial.

He also placed his brush pack on his website which is free to download so you can use all of the same brushes as he does. I currently use his brush pack along with Blincks one.





Here is a before and after image of some of his paintings so that you can see a work in progress.

















Kalen Chock



Kalen Chock works for Industrial Light and Magic as a concept artist and also as an instructor at the Art Institution of California. He's also taken part in several freelance matte paintings.

Kalen also has a blog which he updates very often with pieces of his work, posts, and live streams of his work so other people can see how he works and learn his techniques and processes.
http://kalenart.blogspot.co.uk/