Concept Artists

Donovan Valdes

Donovan Valdes is a concept painter that specializes in visual development and design. He studied fine art and animation at the university of central Florida where he received his well earned BA in motion picture technology. After finishing his degree he produced storyboards and different animations for print and film until moving to Raleigh-Durham to follow his career in the games industry. Between the period of 2002 to 2012 he has helped create concept art for games ranging from Robotech: Battlecry too Rainbow Six: Patriots.

Concept Art: Assassin creed brotherhood

 The image on the left is concept art that Donovan Valdes drew for Ubisoft for the fourth instalment of the assassin creed francize, Assassin's creed: Brotherhood. I like this image a lot because it gives a clear indication of the environment, lighting and feel that the Mr Valdes obviously wanted to incorporate into the game. The only thing that I don't like about this image is that it is all slightly blurred making it difficult to see the finer detail.





Character design for Prince of Persia.

This was a character design that Donovan Valdes created for another of Ubisoft's projects named Prince of Persia: The forgotten Sands. This is one of Mr Valdes works that I don't really like because it continues with his blurred style of drawing but the main thing that I dislike is that the background is way to eye catching for someone to just quickly glance and get a good feel for the actual character.

Donovan Valdes Concept art for Rainbow Six

Out of all the concept art that I was able to found, this is by far my favourite one of his works for the simple reason that it lacks his usual slightly blurred style, which I think makes the image look poor and rushed. This image seems to be the opposite of anything else he has drawn because he hasn't followed his usual style. My favourite part of this picture is the goggled that the character is wearing because he has managed to make them appear to be reflective.

Amy Beth Christenson

The second concept art that I am going to look at is Amy Beth Christen, who is currently a senior Concept Designer at Lucasfilm Animation, Before this very impressive role she worked for LucaArts as Senior/Lead Concept Artist for 2000 till 2011 where she moved to Lucasfilm animation where she has remained till the present date.  While doing some research on this certain concept artist i came across a long list of achievements ranging from being on speakers panels to being one of twelve artists chosen to create an Empire Strikes Back 30th anniversary limited edition painting. This was an amazing achieve that she earned for her services at Lucasfilms for over a decade.
She has worked on a large number of projects for the company creating a number of different concept art pieces for a number of different games that Lucasarts produced. Her current work is based around Lucasarts latest production Star Wars: Rebels which is planned for realise some time in 2014.

Several Characters from the Force Unleashed

This is personally my favourite piece of work by Amy Beth Christenson. The reason I like this so much is because it is from Star Wars The Force Unleashed the artwork is of three of the signature characters. I like the rough style of the characters and how it was eventually reflected into the in-game characters.

The Concept Art Report

What is Concept Art

Concept Art is the name given to an image created in order to give a visual representation of a product before it is realised. For example in games concept art is used to show character, environments and objects that would later be created and added to the product. In the case of the car industry the designs are drawn to give an idea and a feel about how the car would look. Concept art gives everyone involved with animating or creating an idea of what they are trying to achieve.

Game comparison

The two games I am going to compare are Star Wars The Old Republic and Left for Dead 2. The reason I have chosen these games is because they are completely different from each other so that I will be able to get a wide range of different concept art.

Left for Dead is a first person shooter based with the objective of completing each level while fighting off large numbers of zombies and "special" infected each with a strange skill and moveset. While Star Wars The Old Republic is an RPG free roam game involving levels, upgrades and skill sets based several thousand years before the movies and 300 hundred years after the games Knights of the Old Republic.


The landscapes of Left for Dead is normally towns and cities shortly after an infection has taken over and forced everyone to either escape or become some form of flesh eating zombie. On the other hand Star Wars the Old Republic's landscapes are often huge cities with thousands of rooms to explore, large open plains,forests for combat with multiple enemies.

Left For Dead - Concept Art

To the right is one of the original drawings of Left for Dead's Tank, One of the most feared creatures of the game standing 8 feet tall and capable of drawing cars, rocks and other large objects great distances to try and break up the remaining players.  This image of the tank shows its brute size allong with given a good example of what its skin is going to look like once it has been animated, This is done by the textures around its hands and back because of its slightly red hands and large humps on its back. One way that this drawing is trying to show that the tank is a force not to be messed with is the perspective that it is drawn at due to it showing its large upper body and the shadowing added to add depth to really show its muscles.



One of the concepts Arts of the characters after the original demo was realised. The man on the right was changed because the original character looks to perfect for a zombie world, while the current one slightly out of place but slightly adapted to his environment.

 

 

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a recently made MMORPG based in the star war universe, several thousand years before the events of the movies. Keeping this in my the concept artists had a rather hard job when it came to designing this game because of george lucas giving a clear idea to what the old would have looked like before that time, so the concept artists had to draw the same models with a twist to make them newer than they did in the movie but at the same so that they don't look familar.  This was clearly a huge challenge to them but while playing the game you are able to get a good feel too what they were trying to achieve and get a great feel to the Star Wars universe.
The most obvious feel of the universe in the spaceships (image above), I think this because you can clearly see that it looks like the modern version of this star fighter but with a few key differences. Another thing that is drawn with the concept art is the outfits for the character because of the wide range of characters that you can become then there must also be a large number of different outfits that a player is able to wear. Each character is given an incredible number different styles to chose from given them a unique look for each possible character.