Concept Art

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Concept art is a form of illustration that is intended to visually illustrate a concept before it is implemented in a final product. These visual implementations are used on the one hand in the development of ideas, design ideas or moods in the production of cinema films , video games or comics , on the other hand in the explicit feasibility of assets , props , film sets , items , level elements and characters to be produced .

Concept art is a term taken from American English that has been used by the animation industry for conceptual sketches since the 1930s . These drawn or painted pictures should illustrate the design, the general look, the moods, the colors, etc. of a planned work. The game industry later adopted the term when the increased visual demands on computer games made more careful planning necessary.

Concept art is a preparatory visual description within the entertainment industry. Before characters, game worlds or details are worked out, pictures show what these things could look like , mostly based on the information provided by the scriptwriters (in film production ); In the games industry , the concept of the game designer is usually interpreted by the game artist and worked out into executable work orders for the areas of 3D modeling , texturing and animation . Concept Art thus not only describes the visual implementation and elaboration of ideas, but also defines - usually in connection with the director or game designer in iterative design processes - what is actually to be produced.

An important element in the development of ideas for the illustrators and animation artists is the production of still photos of built models. In this way z. B. the elven swords for the film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings developed from leaf shapes.

Most illustrators have been working digitally since the mid-1990s . Here, 3D modeling is possible as a new form of representation .

history

The development of Concept Art is closely linked to the history of film design.

The publication of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) made a significant contribution to the recognition of film as a separate art form. The extraordinary production design of this film was not only characterized by the fact that it supported the plot in a meaningful way, but at the same time also effectively reflected the expressionist art trend of the time. Robert Wiene's designs served as concept designs for the film architecture . This itself becomes a metaphor and the rooms symbolize screams, fear and fear.

Since then, the concept artists' sketches, paintings and models have attracted greater attention, and technical innovations such as camera movement, cross-fading and assembly pave the way for more creative freedom. Carefully planned set designs often become a central part of the film ( Metropolis , 1927). The real development of the architecture is quickly overtaken and the concept artists serve as a field of experimentation. Visions of the future and their design turn out to be box office magnets ( The Last Man , Asphalt ) - a development that lasted until the 1970s and culminated with Ralph McQuarries Concept Paintings for Star Wars (1977).

A general disappointment with the results of modernism soon turned the artists' enthusiasm for the future into the opposite. Negative utopias came to the fore, and with Blade Runner (1982) cyberpunk was born. Ridley Scott relies on overstimulation as an expression of horror, and his visual futurist Syd Mead impresses with its visual and associative complexity. Reality is exaggerated, but no longer presented in an idealized way.

Further artistic stylistic devices arise through parallel universes and counterfactual visions according to the motto: What if ... New York had developed without building regulations ( Batman , 1989) or if the American economic crisis or the Second World War had not occurred ( Dick Tracy 1990, see also Raymond Loewy , Luigi Colani ).

With this the era of traditional film effects comes to an end, and that of computer-generated effects begins. At the same time, computer games with increasingly complex designs place new demands on the concept artist in artistic and technical terms. In favor of a more effective workflow , the computer is displacing the traditional tools of the trade such as pen and paper.

Well-known illustrators / concept artists

See also

literature

  • Christoph Metzger (ed. And curator): Conceptualisms - in music, art and film. Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrücken 2003, ISBN 3-89727-235-0 . (Exhibition catalog and congress report).
  • Scott Robertson, How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments , USA: Design Studio Press 2013, ISBN 978-1-933492-73-5

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Virginia Woolf: The Movies and Reality . In: The New Rebublic . August 1926, p. 308-310 .
  2. ^ A b Dietrich Neumann, Kaes, Vidler, Webb, Albrecht: Filmarchitektur . Prestel-Verlag , 1996, ISBN 978-3-7913-1605-5 , pp. 7/8 .
  3. ^ Heinrich de Fries : Interior design in film . In: Wasmuths monthly books for architecture 1/2 . January 1921, p. 63-82 .
  4. ^ Interview with Ridley Scott by The Ladd Company , 1982.
  5. ↑ Joaquin Montalvan: Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead (DVD, 107 min), 2006.