What is it like to work as a concept artist?

This post is aimed at everybody interested in what the work of a concept artist is like and how to become one as well.

I've been working as a professional concept artist and storyboarder since 1994 after scoring a three-year apprenticeship at a Berlin film studio called Hahn Film. At the time I was 24 years old, pretty full of myself and I just finished six years of a fine-art school in Munich. The art school helped a lot to score the job, but to be honest, the true skills of a pro production artist I learned at this studio from people who were directing movies like Roger Rabbit, The Beauty and the Beast by Disney, and other top-notch geniuses from studios like Warner Brothers, Hannah Barbera and most other big name places all around the world. 

After the initial shock of learning that I wasn't even half as good as I thought I was, I realized what a great chance I was given and so I put my whole heart into working as much as possible. I was especially lucky that my training started at the same time as they were producing a feature film called "Asterix in America", based on a comic book series by "Uderzo" called "Asterix & Obelix". The very man, Uderzo himself, was at the studio during production, too and it's needless to say that it was plain magic for a young artist like me to be working and learning from such hugely talented people day in and day out.

It's probably worth mentioning that the way I got to sign what was called a "sorcerer's apprentice contract", followed my four-week internship at this very studio. Work experience I only got because of a newspaper article I luckily read, about two weeks before I started there when I was still living in Munich. 

Besides the Asterix movie, the studio also produced a show called "Wermer - Beinhart" at the time, and they urgently needed artists who were able to draw Werner, the main character of the comic that was made into a feature film. The next thing I did after I read this news article was to sit down at my drawing desk and started to work on my job application.

And so it happened, as a hardcore fan of Werner myself, that I sent my hand-drawn job application to Hahn Film in Berlin. Well, it was hardly a standard job application at all. Instead, it was two penciled comic pages in the requested style of the Werner comic. It featured me reading the newspaper, jumping on my chopper motorcycle (which I never owned in real-life), and heading up to Berlin to work on the show. To my surprise, even though I didn't write a single serious word except for the text that was within the speech bubbles, I got invited to a job interview with Gerd Hahn himself two weeks later. 

So, the internship was how I started in the film industry. I wouldn't have minded a real job contract as a standard artist either, of course, but since I wasn't a pro production artist at the time, I was more than happy that I got my foot in the door of Germany's biggest film studio at the time.

It all hit me even more when the first person I spoke to was the former director of the Disney film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", Robert Zemeckis. I remember meeting him like it happened just yesterday. And beside him is the most humble person ever, he was also the most skilled artist I ever met until that point. Btw, he didn't even tell me who he was, instead, my roommate who sat next to me told me who I just spoke to.

I also quite vividly remember the image he was working on when I first walked into his office. It was a sheet of paper about the size of a standard room door, laid out flat in front of him, featuring a bird's eye view, or a down shot, of an Egypt city in the middle of a desert with each house being about the size of a cigarette lighter. It was the establishing shot of the show he was working at at the time. It was insanely detailed and it had at least 200 buildings, little streets, palm trees, market stands, and all sorts of things one would find in a city like that.

Hahn film studios were huge at that point. It consisted of two five-floor buildings and it housed about 150 artists in all departments a movie production needs. It was plain amazing, to say the least. It was also during those initial weeks when I realized that it was most likely the best decision I ever made to start this apprenticeship thing at a hands-on studio instead of going to university and studying visual arts there. I never regretted anything and I so never looked back. 

Now let's jump 15 years ahead to the year 2008 and talk about what it is like to work as an experienced concept artist. Which is of course all about the look and the feel, the visual side of stuff in any given film or game project, and how to put it all together.

The images I am about to show you are all done by me, from several shows I was working on since 1993.

Let's start with the artwork I created for a Nintendo Wii game. From characters to props, from level design to color schemes, since I was fortunate enough to be the head of arts for this great project. 

My initial job was to create the main character. The briefing from the client was rather limited, which meant they gave me full freedom on everything. They did give me a bunch of cornerstones to work with, though. Such as the main character had to be female, futuristic looking, smart, and suitable for all audiences. It started off by giving them a few sheets of brainstormed, scribbled-up characters that popped into my mind.

The client went with the right most, double-horned design on the sheet called "Explorations 4". 

The next step was to work some more on the chosen design to finalize the details and colors of it.

After I added more detail I decided on a blue and grey color setup the client liked as well. Then I gave the character a white, a 50% grey, and a black background. It's a common practice to use the 50% grey BG color to see if the colors work on any other possible background. It's also good practice to design color versions of your designs on a grey BG to make sure things look good from the start.

After the above was signed off by the client I started to create a few sheets of so-called turnarounds which the 3D artist use to model the actual game characters from. It also helps to make these designs in a high enough resolution so they can use the texture as it is to place it on the final 3D models. 

All the design work you saw so far and will see further down was made with a standard Wacom Intuos tablet and Photoshop.

The final step for the main character was a large, A2 sizer design which was also used as a product poster. It too was entirely made in Photoshop from the initial sketch to hand-selected paths that give the nice and sharp borders of the character which make it almost look like it is made with a 3D app.

The second most important thing was the main characters' side-kick, or pet bot if you like. It too went through the same design process. Here the evolution of it right to the turn-around.

They went with the big, egg-shaped design on "Robot Explorations 12". It also shows the size comparison to the main character.

The next step was to develop all the enemy characters as well as the props, or extra things that are part of the game world. Here is a small collection of the most memorable things I developed.

And last but not least a few sheets of level design which nicely go along with what we've got so far. 

The whole project I pulled off in less than two months and it was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and maybe got something useful out of it. Let me know what you think in the comments. 

Feel free to let me know what you would like me to talk about next if you like. I'm always happy and grateful for any pointers to make this blog more valuable to you.

Thank you for spending your time on my blog and reading my post. 

I wish you all the best and happy creating :)

You want the truth about art skills?

It takes a lot of time to learn and it's not easy, but it is possible and everybody can do it!

Before I started my training at the film studio I was studying fine arts for six years in Munich. Yes, I was lucky enough to get my art school paid for by my parents. 

When I started at Han Film they just began production on "Asterix in America", hosting about 150 artists at their place from all over the world, as well as the Asterix & Obelix creator Uderzo himself. 

Because I spent several months in every department of our studio I learned everything there is to know about creating animations, feature films, TV productions, and

games, from script to final product. I scored the apprenticeship after a four-week work experience back then. They offered me what was called a "sorcerer's apprentice contract", which lasted for three years.

Working with top artists from Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, and alike made me learn the craft of filmmaking from a different angle than, let's say a more artistic approach one gets taught at university. I had the choice back then as a young man to pursue either way and after six years of basic fine art training, I decided to go for the three-year apprenticeship at Hahn Film. And I never looked back. 

Now that I'm 52 years old and have a lot of experience in the traditional as well as the digital creation of visual arts I decided to give this blog thing a go and combine what I learned with my love for teaching. I very much hope you will find some useful information here and I would also be very happy if you would drop me a comment or mail with your feedback and maybe even some requests on what you'd like me to write/teach about. 

One of my main mantras is, I believe every person can learn how to draw and paint, no matter how 'skilled' or 'talented' one may be.

Because in my humble opinion talent is nothing but perseverance. The ability to keep on keeping on even if what you produce is not satisfying to your standards. I have seen this many times. And most people who give up are people who don't even try properly. And this counts even more nowadays in the age of apps and computers doing all the handcrafting for you and neglecting the old hand-eye coordination and the time it takes for the brain to create the necessary muscle memory to do 'simple' things like drawing a perfect circle or even a straight line with a pencil on a sheet of paper. Nowadays those things are functions of most drawing apps, which are responsible for most newcomers being lost without their graphics tablet or iPad. This is also the reason why so many young artists are rather confused when they think all they need to do is a "Learn how to draw in 15 minutes" tutorial on youtube, but it ain't quite happening that fast after all and they get frustrated soon after and stop trying.

That's where my blog comes in handy and it will make you appreciate using the old-school way of art creation as a rock-solid foundation for your digital endeavors. 

Let's dive into it and have fun, shall we? :)