Friday, March 28, 2008

Vacation Sketching







Here are some sketches that I've beeing doing during my vacation. Mainly cafe sketches and life drawing. There's also a page where I was analyzing a telephone pole and an apartment building. Often times, I'm asked why a video game company would need a concept artist when the game takes place in a modern day setting. I mean, couldn't you just have the 3-D artists look up reference photos and model a building as is? A concept artist is more than a copy-ist. Otherwise we'd be called copy artists :) Concept artists can be a useful tool for an art director to communicate a unified vision to the 10 in-house and 30 out-source 3-D artists. As a concept artist, I also bring an attention to detail to the table. For example, if told by an art director, build a telephone pole. At first glance, "telephone pole" is a word that we all have a point of reference to, which in our imaginations look like a 1st grade cartoon from the flash card labeled "telephone pole". This is sufficient for us to go through life with a passive picture in our head to recognize a telephone pole, but not necessarily to create a telephone pole. To create a telephone pole, you must answer several key questions such as," How tall is the average telephone pole? How many telephone wires do we want attached to our telephone pole? How is the structure planted into the ground? Are there ancillary attachment pieces such as street signs, street lights, and garage sale posters? Is the telephone pole located in a rural countryside or in a metropolitan city (such will determine style and period)? Do these telephone poles act as cover objects in our world (in which case, the base should match cover dimensions for the game)? All of the questions above lead to answers which will give a prop character. We've all seen boring looking props without a whole lot of thought put into them, but sufficient to communicate what the object is supposed to represent in a virtual environment. But as "Next-Gen" games (which by now should be labeled "Current-Gen"), we need to pay closer attention to such details. And in order to save art directors from sitting in further meetings than he should, concept artists can provide 3-d artists with enough information to build from without worrying if the tone of the object created is correct.

4 comments:

Garrett Shikuma said...

That's some fancy face work Mr. Cheng! I like the cut of your jib!

Anonymous said...

Love the face sketches, Dan! Hope all's well!

Unknown said...

beautiful sketches!

AJK said...

Very AWESOME stuff Daniel! Keep it up!