Setting

At the start of 2024, the internet was actively churning with topics like "neural networks are killing artists," "machines will soon replace humans," and so on.

There exists an institution of concept art—whether for film or games, every idea requires wrapping in some sort of package to then pass the images to production. Before sets and props are created, they pass through several hands, starting from the art director's or creative director's brief and ultimately to the executor. It's been more or less like this always: an artist drew visuals, they were transmitted further. Whether it's Giger or Mike Hill—each artist had a certain vision that found its point of realization in film or games. Sometimes they set the tone for an entire franchise, sometimes the artist combined the role of art director as well, as in the case of Disco Elysium and Rostov. Sometimes the artist's work was so complete in itself that it got adapted—as with graphic novels or Stålenhag's work.

Concept art isn't about pretty pictures. In the vast majority of cases, it's about the idea, design, the "feel," if you will. Whether an image is drawn "beautifully," in a general sense, doesn't bring any substantial benefit to further production, but of course, the more appealing the work, the easier it is to "sell" it. This is a significant difference from, say, illustration, where the characteristic of "beauty" is important, the artist's "style" is valued, and the artist themselves is the main protagonist. When creating a commissioned illustration, the artist must also hit the brief, but the work's value isn't primarily in the idea-design.

Most of a concept artist's work consists of faceless sketches, top-front-side views, doodles, diagrams. No matter how much ArtStation wants to convince us otherwise, in reality we draw "digital canvases" and key art rarely—maybe 5% of the total workload if we're lucky.

We solve practical tasks: what the room layout will look like, where objects will be placed, what those objects are, what the character will wear, etc. Atmosphere is certainly part of this consideration too, and sometimes you need to push a certain mood for the hero, emphasize the direction, give space for other parts of production to work.

Conflict

The main thing that's changed over 30-40 years in this field: speed and volume.

Two important points to keep in mind when comparing yourself to masters of the past. Yes, I already said "concept art isn't about pretty pictures," but why?

Every show, game, film has become significantly larger. Cinema can no longer make do with one room and give it 30-40 minutes of screen time. Modern games have dozens of full locations broken down into hundreds of small stories, where this or that part of the environment immerses the player in lore.

It's hard to compare games like the first Doom or Wolfenstein with modern shooters. In the nineties, you showed the player was "in a new place" by tint-recoloring a texture or adding new monsters. The entire volume could be covered by one or two artists, and storytelling was handled by a single illustration from a professional—the game's cover art printed on the box.

Even with tight development deadlines, there was no problem. One illustration for the cover vs dozens of atmospheric key arts. One recolored texture vs hundreds of detailed locations. But everything changed, games became more complex and interesting, requiring significantly more content.

Entire concept art departments appeared on staff, separate people for props, separate for environments, separate for characters. Two artists (surprise!) stopped being able to handle such volume. The speed at which new content needed to be delivered also increased, not least thanks to technical progress.

If you look at how Syd Mead worked—whether on major projects of the 80s or in the early 2010s—not much changed there. Mead came from engineering, though he possessed excellent technique and a recognizable style, but worked for many years as an artist within industrial design. He used Photoshop, yes, but still remained a proponent of technically simple solutions: gouache, liners, markers, rulers and compasses. Given that at the start of the technical leap he was already famous and, I assume, quite wealthy, he didn't need to "keep up," increase speed or output volume. People didn't come to him for a hundred locations 🙂

In contrast to Mead: the ability to lay out paints, draw sketches, figure out how forms and volumes will work better, work out color on a "small" A3 format, and then move to a "full" format and paint a 50×70 cm picture—modern concept artists simply don't have that. And Mead worked exactly like that.

And the main thing that evaporates when we change medium and transition to a fully digital version, and besides that add speed and set larger volumes—isn't the "beauty" of the work. No, what evaporates is the ability to think properly. The original Blade Runner looks naive compared to its modern sequel, it was filmed long ago, productions were smaller. But it's alive, you believe in it, it's a cult work.

Remember the joke about "counterfeit Christmas ornaments"? Same situation. Modern stuff—does it shine? It shines. But it doesn't bring joy at all.

In terms of technical equipment, the profession has received what Giger and Mead couldn't even dream of—3D blockouts, photobashing, tons of free models, textures, 3D scans, the ability to correct work digitally, neural networks, after all. But none of this matters if you don't have time to think about what exactly you want to show, what design will work effectively.

Until you can live a life inside your work—it won't be convincing.

Resolution

I don't have a recipe for "how to do it right."

I'm not afraid of technical progress and what will happen to the profession next. Neural network options will certainly spoil someone's life, but the beauty of pictures isn't the end goal of concept art, and it's precisely "beauty" that neural nets push.

I believe that the main enemies for us aren't progress and new tools, but the constant production race, the demand to deliver more in tight deadlines, and the shift in focus to "beautiful and sellable."

[UPD] Two months later, at the end of April 2024, a couple of important videos came out from Mr. Feng, founder of FZD School. They address exactly these questions, here are the links: