Concept Art is Dead 

Cheating means something different in the context of relationships. Chance of completing a successful relationship isn't improved by infidelity. Completing good concept art on a deadline on the other hand...

I'd phrase it differently: Get the basics down as fast+good as possible by whichever means necessary! Then spend the time saved on "Juice". (and concealing your tracks)

I know, I just wanted to make a bad joke. I'm sorry ;) But 16 people seem to be at the same low level of humor xD

More power to you :D

Lugmillord Challenge accepted.

Dragon's Breath exactly, this type companies offer their work for triple A games that need a very strict budget and time for concepts and the best quality they can get.

the techniques discussed can be applied to a wide variety of styles.

not true, indies have no money and in general are more focused on design over environment or rendered paintings, the amount of indue studios that dont even have an art department is pretty shocking tbh,

valcaron what you call “tumblr/Calarts” is just you struggling to realize that there are more women and minorities in the industry than before, and they don’t make everything with the same old bland, grim, gritty shit style that straight men keep making in AAA games.

@@Fantallana Found the feminist !

Yeah the ego is really hard to separate from the craft, and everyone has a different baseline for what they consider cheating I guess, but people who are searching for jobs where they can just straight up purely draw all day are gonna be disappointed in this day and age, the worlds changing and traditionalists shouldn't shame newer artists for evolving with the times just because they don't want to

Clickbait is Dead, Here's Why

Maybe its how the video's poster feels about it, who knows

So what is it talking about ? I do not want to waste an hour ..

@@limageur did you find out

@@Blueberrygoat92 Lol nop. I am actually listening the first 5 minutes of each GDC talk and then I decide if I will listen all of it because I am watching a lot. Sorry I can not tell you more.

There are many concept artists who can't paint or draw.

Yeah, I guess you could do great designs with just 3d and photo bashing and such. But the kind of concept art shown in this talk are definitely done by people who can paint and draw. And if you paint on top of a model that has a lot of perspective cues it helps a lot if you understand perspective. Same goes for anatomy.

Yeah, just look at Hiroya Oku (author of Gantz, Inuyashiki)

@@dannypavlov913 that's the problem.

What do you do?

What do you do?

What do you do?

What do you do?

What do you do?

Not like this. Never like this lol.

There were/are matt painters, but the companies back then, combined generic style with artists who have strong voices. Now days most AAA games look the same...and concepts artists are becoming factory workers...

I think this is really important to remember, whatever you think about this mainstream AAA ca style. The David Hockney book “Secret Knowledge” is a cool exploration of the history of artistic aids

@@jodyroane4219 Camera obscura was exactly like this and more.

G P no, with camera obscure you still have to paint over - with photobashing you can just leave bits of the photo there, it’s worse than tracing

Agree. I find the art from memory/imagination more interesting and memorable vs the photo reference.

SMH I was just saying that. There are a few exceptions to your rule but I agree with the statement.

they take on clients because the clients give them money. they pour as much talent as they can on top of that, so they are worth the money. as he very clearly stated towards the end, it's a garbage-in-garbage-out scenario. if shallow blockbusters didn't sell, there wouldn't be hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into them. getting too hung up on that just makes you bitter. best to just go enjoy something else instead :)

@stupid and useless The classic Lara Croft is instantly recognizable character anywhere you go. Meanwhile, there is no difference between the new Lara and that girl from The Last of Us. They are basically the same design.

@@boitahaki Not only are you are comparing a stylized jumble of triangular polygons with realistic interpretations of human women, but you're just flat out wrong about the last part. Laura doesn't look anything like Ellie, her girlfriend, or Abbie. They have different facial features, body structure, hair colors, eye colors, and clothing. In a way you are right though, Laura croft's original design is more visually striking than her new design, but that's like comparing a stylized animated character to an actor in a film.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. A lot of what was shown seemed soulless as well

@@2_B_B what do you expect? it's a reflection on the capitalism itself. all of it is camp art anyway, used for commercial promos, deal enticers, and visual guidelines for soulless outsourcing sweatshops. besides their goal is not to produce a better art -- or art in general -- but to produce a wow effect in less than 20 minutes. wow effect from whom? from the AAA consumer mediocrity. essentially it's a pop art scheme that lifts swathes of dollars for doing a good-enough-illusion of art. it's not good enough for me, but it's good enough for kickstarter or some publishing account. I'm not really trying to defend this school of thought, don't get me wrong (I hate all of it), but this guy -- much like JJ Abrams or Justin Bieber -- is exactly what the industry wants. and you got to respect him for being so fully immersed in this crap. at the very least, he doesn't pretend to love what he does, he actually loves it. I got to respect that. you know, the art will change, everything will change, but that kind of inner fire, that you have to find within yourself, that will always be a constant. this fire, alone, is what actually sells. or they're all just high on coke. or both.

qnaman I think the "concept arts" you are talking about is for pitching ideas & the "concept arts" he is talking about is for production, there's a huge difference.

@@peternguyen1106 Concept art starts as an idea, but the idea isn't just the literal design to how to build it - it has to convey everything the real worl would - emotion - narrative etc. yes its fundimentally an idea, but it ends up a more realized ideation of a particularly subject/object.

Yes there is a difference between concept art and illustrations.

In the modern production pipeline, the closer the concept artist gets to the final product that the 3D artists will model, the more hireable he'll be. It's simple. These techniques help you get a more complete result, in less time. It minimizes the amount of questions and back and forth that you receive from there 3D artists, because the details are very clear, rather than seeing just an impressionistic mess of brush strokes instead of details. In short: The easier you make the job of the modelers that will produce the final product, the more the companies will like you.

@@DesignInNature Of course they will, because you wil be a voluntary sucker doing more, producing more product for less pay. If idiotic logics like the one promoted by this guy that newer artists buy into and end up working for peanuts on IPs that have returns to investment in the billions. Some poor schmucks gonna jizz in his pants over the idea of working on these IPs to accept crap hours, shit pay and slave contracts.

Throughout the video he pretty much points out what you've posted here. It's all about what you want to achieve working in the industry.

blockbusters aren't for artistry. they are for selling. quit being a hipster, and go enjoy some real art instead of shitting on popular art. it just makes you bitter. FYI: GDC is for professionals, not consumers. Best to stop watching how the sausage gets made if you don't want to get jaded

i think you're missing the problem entirely, the reason that happens is because they all use the same few concept artists. games and movies require concept artists to concept in 3D these days. they do lots of back and forth with the concept artist to try to find out what works and what doesn't before using these as a basis to create assets.

He means copy/paste. You missed his point if you didn't get that. Totally generic, but if people keep consuming it regardless, it gets the job done.

@@blarghblargh So basically pander to the masses with garbage? Good to know AAA gaming is a soulless corporate husk.

And according to the artist the first draft he showed would be the final piece.

ie..."that guy would look wicked cool with a sword" ...no bigger....now make it blue.....no he should have an axe!!!

I would not laugh. Humor is earned.

I've expected someone much more cringy after reading that comment...honestly he seems like just an actually funny guy, you tend to forget these exist aswell.

Michael Scott

he's okay. I actually thought he was funny.

David Brent

all art is derivative

yeah, specially when it's made by copy/pasting

I don’t know...games like last of us are beautiful to look at

The point of concept art is portraying a reality in someone's head in the real world. Not putting as much work as possible into it for a result equal to or worse than what you would get from "cheating". The art is in the idea. Not the technique necessarily.

No, you have no clue what you are on about. This isn't how the final thing will look in the game. It's a CONCEPT. This is a short cut for concept artists. And it's a great short cut.

Finally someone sensical in this comment section. I'm suprised about the amount of hate and negativity people spread. You're a gem among the rough.

Your definition of how an artist should be, and make art for others, damn man.. Is so good, and really you seem to be the only one who understand in this comment section

ive been scrolling down this comment section, ive posted replies to about 2 posts so far basically saying the same thing, art is all about what the audience feels when experiencing it, its not about you having a big wang cause you did something technically difficult. ive posted it twice and skipped over about 50 posts that also deserved that response. its crazy how many deluded 'artists' there are in these comment sections who dont understand the difference between their hobby that makes them feel good and commercial art that other people pay money to experience.

Replying super late to this comment but its so bang on, I think most people angry at this video aren't concept artists and don't understand that its not a drawing competition, no one is gonna pat you on the back because you spent 10 hours rendering the perfect rock instead of focusing on the important parts of the job, I did a course a while back for concept art and there was so much ego involved and so much confusion as to what we were actually there to do, constant back and forths that using a photo is cheating, how much 3D is cheating, that guy sucks because he doesn't draw enough etc, such a mess in hindsight, this video really does knock the sense into what the industry is all about

Thx for your words

同質化

Hadoken man this is probably the best comment on here! you got it man, that's why I dig Artist like Simon Bisley_ Giger_ Joe Jusko_ and Alex Ross and Bernie wrightson_ Masters!

The contradiction is evident when you see what the guy in the talk is facing. He's trying to compromise people's need to be individual artists who want to follow their passions with the need industry has for concept production. This is the root of the problem which he tries to disguise by pandering to artist's sensitivities to be better and then bullshitting them about how to get there which ultimately just produces a more efficient concept art producing machine for his business, not another Leonardo or Frazetta. Are there people who are inclined to work this way? You bet. Was there anyone who picked up a pencil with a passion to get into it for it's own sake? Never, just like there's never been one person who ever looked at a Minimalist painting and was inspired to be a painter by it, ever. It's almost guaranteed that every single one has been inspired to persue a career in art by either a great classical artist, illustrator, comic artist or has some other motive like eventually directing an animation studio etc. And because you have to compromise the two, you have to let concept artists think they are doing what they set out to. But ultimately this is also why it's hard to have any respect for the famous concept artists of this era like say Craig Mullins. So what if he's the grandaddy of digital concept art, that's just accident of birth. The man has killer skills but he's just become and efficient machine that's producing concepts and concept artists. I don't think anyone can name or even desribe the last great piece he did that would make you look at it for hours, which begs the question, what's the use of them being so refined? I mean, it's like the man spends half his time coming up with ways to produce something as fast a possible, and when he does he eventually kicks himself and everyone coming after him in the nuts because once a concept piece can be produced in half the time with half the skill, you can bet your life that it will have less than half the value, so to finalize the economic side of the argument Craig Mullins and other's efficiency is leading people into starvation and giving guys like the one in the video larger profit margins, which is his goal, that's why he's there. For the life of me, I've never understood why anyone would ever want to be a concept artist just like I never got why one would want to be some, I dunno, post-modernist political commentary artist.

For every photobasher, there are also guys like jamie jones. His recent start wars concept art were entirely handpainted. Photobashing isn't the end all and be all of concept. Its just a tool you can use optionally to speed up your workflow.

hepzibah, we agree with this. Trouble is that the company is always going to strive to efficiency and speed because they have a product to ship and sell to make cash before the other guys do. It's understandable that photobashing has to be used, no question about it. The questions to be risen tho are a) is this type of work satisfying for most people who do b) is it the reason they put pencil to paper in the first place and c) does this affect quality in the long run? If you take a look at the making of Jurassic Park you will see that the effects were the combination of a bunch of artists from different disciplines. You have traditional puppet and stop motion animators animating the dinosaurs with special puppets that represented the virtual bones (since these guys weren't Softimage 3D users). You have the lighting, texturing, shading etc of each shot being studied versus paintings and illustrations where stuff like color temperature of the shadows and the lights are studied to adhere to the light on the scene. We're talking about an insanely excruciating amount of detailed work to make the visual effects look as lifelike as possible, a level of effort and sophistication that to my knowledge has never been exhibited in a movie since. You've got to wonder how in a time when renderers and 3d packages had 1/100th the tools they have today to autotrack camera movement, use the global illumination of a scene to sort of match the lighting in the virtual scene, use effects like radiosity, sub surface scattering etc to match the work done by all those artists automatically, how it is that Jurassic Park for the most part looks so life-like that the only thing keeping you from thinking it's an effect is the fact that you know dinosaurs are extinct and the latest blockbuster's effects look so cartoonily false despite the help of automation? Or why is it that the further back you go, with exception to films that are cheap knockoffs (and even there a debate can be had), films that involve concepting of any sort display a variety of ideas, photography, palettes and creations that make them totally distinct from each other whereas today, totally different films or games look and feel identical for the most part? I'd blame photobashing. The fact that it can be so economical that it's the only viable option and thus studios rely on it totally. Artists are gonna use, more or less, the same references because when looking for reference they will use Google, and more or less no one's gonna look through 1000 pages of photos, most will scour the 10-20 first pages and be done with it. Also you have the exact same tools and algorithms which produce exactly the same look outputting all the imagery in everything you create. When you have everything being drawn in Photoshop, using the same techniques to the effect of it seeming like it was all done by the same hand why wouldn't it all look similar? Also, most of these artists are being worked to death that they've no time to be artists, whatever individuality they may have is eventually burnt up in the concept farms. A case can be made that selectively the best techniques, software and tools for the job evolved and came on top, kinda like natural selection. But now we've got a product and a user of said product that so specialized that it creates a slightly different version of itself, unevolved like a shark.

Hadoken So much of this conversation is so dumb. There’s soooo many artists that pick up the pencil to become concept artists. I never wanted to be like an old master, and never wanted to do art for self expression, not every artist does, and tons of artists that do think they’re some special gem because they’re so personally connected to everything they do and they’re useless when it comes to creating a vision for a movie or game. If you’re comparing concept art to traditional masters you’re being ridiculous and you should never watch movies or play games again because the only reason for concept art is to create designs to inspire the people building the game. The concept art can be thrown out after the game is released and it wouldn’t matter. Obviously people enjoy looking at concept art, but it’s about creating a world or a vision for somebody’s idea, and it’s not about expressing only your ideas. It’s not a selfish art form like traditional art, it’s about inspiring others with your ideas, using any way you can to communicate those ideas. Also you literally said that using photoshop and photos from google is gonna make everything look the same. But you wouldn’t say that about traditional painting? Drawing with a pencil is a pencil. It’s gonna look the same as every other pencil drawing. Painting in oils is never gonna look like drawing in pencil, it’s gonna look like painting in oils. Do you say every oil painter looks the exact same? Every persons work that’s drawn with a pencil looks the exact same? Photoshop is a tool where you can literally render realistically as if using marker, you can use a brush that looks like pencil, you can make it look like oil paints, like acrylic, watercolour, pen, and pretty much everything else. Just using one program. It’s the least limiting art method ever invented, and if you think all photoshop work looks the same you haven’t even begun to expose yourself to the tip of the iceberg of digital artists. Nobody cares about you guys thinking photobashing isn’t real art. Open photoshop, grab the exact photos you see in a piece of concept art from this guy, and try to recreate it and watch yourself fail miserably. Using photobashing effectively is its own art form and isn’t something you can do beautifully quickly. And this guy is just telling people interested to do these things to get to a level where you’re working on AAA games and then you can spend your spare time learning any fundamentals you want and most concept artists do that. There’s so many closed minded people here who think they’re such valuable artists, and if you wanna only do traditional art and try to work in video games that’s great, Goodluck with that. But for the people who wanna work on AAA games and films and help fuel one of the worlds biggest industries by using any method they can that looks good and applying their own taste and ideas to it, they are gonna do it whether or not you think it’s “real art” or not. Get over yourselves and let people do what they want

Yeah, but I got the distinct impression that he thought Pacific Rim was more fun.

C. Alexandros I agree, but on the other hand it's cost effective since time is money.

It looks better, saves time and actually it means you can spend more time on creating original designs. Or are you being creative spending 3 hours pixel painting a background landscape just so you can say you did? Everything is based on something, where you take those influences is what makes you creative

I mean...isn't that the same for every IP in the entertainment industry. Honestly art direction should not matter too much. It is only a visual guide for the creation of characters and world. The main focus should be one's ability to grasp your audience with great characters and story. Art style or aesthetics is only "a cherry on top"

@@BBSHOCKZ quality takes time and creativity, not cutting corners to save time and money.

Shadi can definitely paint really well, but for games like Uncharted, it doesn't make sense not to use photobashing. This applies for most big game companies and movies.

@Danny Pavlov I've looked through that guys portfolio and everythings either photobashed crap or some dull landscape. Where you getting the idea that this guy can paint from?

Photobashing will make sense to you if you actually experienced working on a AAA game, or if you dare to produce one yourself. No matter what you say against it, the method is TIME efficient which makes the producers who pays the artists happy. It is what it is mate. We gotta move forward with it.

Ripping off someones photos from the internet and stitching them together is not art, so as long as people doing that dont claim theyre artists its fine. Every process, even the most scummy one, has its place when theres people willing to pay you for it. The other matter of course is the legality of what these people are doing, using someones photos for commercial project is very obviously a copyright infringement, unfortunately photographers rarely bother with protecting their property and suing the ones that use their creations without permission, so they go on without getting caught.

The unfortunate reality is that with the advent of digital painting you have the same 200 top people (who were the first 200 people who started this stuff by the way) teaching the exact same thing to everying who came afterwards, which is why all games and movies look exactly the same. This is also why the first Jurassic Park's effects still hold up incredibly well and last summer's blockbuster's look fake, because speed. Concept art for movies and games before 2000 didn't look nearly as finished or good as it does today yet the concepts aren't any better. Of course in concept art the idea is what's important it's quality isn't unless you're gonna produce an art book to make more money, so photobashing's OK. But yes, it's dubious that they use other people's work without compensating them.

Exactly. You turn your artist into some "Concept artist" printer and just ask him to create iteration after iteration, thats what you will get. Bland designs. Aliens work because they hired an actual artist not a game artist to do the designs.

Nobody remembers Oblivion? Are you ironic?

Yeah it's really poor, jesus can you imagine being the client, paying 10K and receiving that jpeg through the mail a week later? /r/instantregret all the way. And he has the nerve to say they're the best in the world.

is it a coincidence that the game that the piece was meant for ended up being dogshit?

Kliersheed people dont get that, no matter how the tech develops. You can never take the quality of translating an idea into pen and paper. Its raw and fluid. And its something that tech can never replace.

Well this is the gaming industry, most big budget aaa games look like boring trash. So this is what you'll have to create if you want to work on those titles. They dont need artistic visionary concepts for the next installment of Battlefield or FIFA.

@@vrc7net Wait a minute... There's concept art for FIFA? Why?

@@Samirxkhan yes. because there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. they sell like crazy, and you have to continue to sell the lifestyle and somehow try to keep it fresh to keep people interested and buying a new sequel every year.

I quite like this style, it could be slightly more stylized and have more contrast. Other than that I like it. The people in this comment section are so cancerous it's incredible, you people need to grow the fuck up and stop complaining about people's art online. There is plenty I could say about art I don't like, but I don't. Some parts of the art community is overly toxic. I like saturated, I like desaturated, I like realistic, I like stylized (not picasso level stylized though). TL;DR: People like what they like. Get over it, and stop complaining.

The panel was called the same thing, not his fault.

Squint your ears :))))))))))))))))

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH

no that hurts

LOL

I'm so mad that you're right LMBO!

dude i literally share the same idea as you. i want ot become a concept artist becuase i want to make a living out of what i like to do too

lmao same thinking. But apparently his concept art to modeling is a little not so good.

Shinkawa barely designs these days , it’s outdated

And he IS a good salesman of the pics he is in

Bro, I realized even I put him in one of my paintings. Didn't like how the overall painting looked, but I did actually put him in there. It's pretty funny.

It's nothing new. There was a time when "Rock and Roll is Dead" and "Disco is Dead" where the hippest things to say. Though, Disco did actually die, so it's not always wrong. This guy on the other hand, is pretty wrong and jaded. He's been ruined by inartistic AAA companies that are terrifies of originality and real art.

@Absolutely DreadfulNot in those couple of weeks as the guy claims, no he didn't. Art skill doesn't improve that way. It won't suddenly improve just because you've been taught a few tricks, I wish it was that easy.

@@jeremyron8793 Different people have different ways of thinking and learning. What may take you many years to understand may take the next person moments. So long as you have the will, drive and understanding, you can achieve most of anything in a short amount of time.

jeremy ron not exactly do you not use drawing and painting in photo-bashing do you really think it’s all 3D models It’s still painting but painting on photos Do they not judge scale ? Do they not judges lighting and colors? It’s as if people can’t improve my looking at nature

You can definitely improve that quickly. It depends on the quality of feedback you're getting (he surrounded himself with experts who pointed out weaknesses) and the effort that goes into implementing that feedback. If you're doing this seriously for 8 to 10 hours a day, that level of improvement is *expected* in a professional setting.

I think he objectively improved a lot, you can see cleaner edges, more defined brushwork, and better readability in the newer piece compared to the old one. Through mentoring, artists can definitely improve that fast.

Why are the other artists not "real artists?" They also had to learn all the fundamentals etc.

There’s plenty of spaces. Many studios are also turning back to the more stylized look. Other companies such as Nintendo clearly has no intention of going realistic/photobashy with their games.

@@R_A120 It really depends upon the purpose of their product. The industry as a whole is not moving in that direction. It’s only the studios that benefit from an approach like that, usually those with a more realistic art firection in mind.

actually, indie company should be the one that "cheat" a lot if they want to limit their cost and increase effectiveness, but it depends on how you approach your product. Some really want to deliver an artistic experience some just want to make a quick and effective fun experience

Damn dude I can't believe you do that instead of just using a pencil and ruler on an A3 sheet of paper, do you have no shame?! I"m joking in case that wasn't clear lol

A painting can also take just a couple of hours

Do you do sculpting or hard surface modeling

go try getting a job in an actual factory doing an assembly line. i give you about 2 days before you wish you were back being able to sit at a computer doing 3d modelling of anything and getting paid for it.

​@@aliasmcgames if youre an artist then youre not employed by anyone, you sit at home and make whatever art inspires you and then you can attempt to find someone willing to buy it from you. 0.000001% of 'artists' can manage to make a living from that because virtually everyone can draw or paint or play an instrument or dance or act and virtually no one can make a living doing those things without being forced to do them in a way someone else wants them to. if you go out and get a job, employed by someone else, youre no longer an artist fulfilling your grand creative vision, you are part of an assembly line. this is where 99.999999% of artistic jobs exist because if you want someone to pay you to do something in almost all cases the reason they have to pay you is because they want you to do something you wouldnt otherwise be doing, they want you to do what they want you to do, not what you want you to do, thats called a job and its what people do to make a living. ive worked driving forklifts in a warehouse the size of 5 football pitches for years and ive worked as a graphic designer for years. the amount of jnr graphic designers fresh out of uni ive heard complain about some corporate piece of design work not fulfilling their artistic dreams is as extensive as it is facepalm inducing. if you want to go on to unemployment benefits and paint dragons in your parents basement because it makes you feel like an artist expressing yourself then go ahead, if you want a job in a creative field be prepared to do a 9 to 5 as part of an assembly line that involves many people with many different skills and ends up in a consumer product. welcome to capitalism, and if those people had ever done a real job where their place in an assembly line is doing some actual manual labour they would jump at the chance to find a place in a line where they can kick back and use some artistic skill to add a piece of commercial art to an assembly line instead. if sitting in 3Dmax or adobe or cubase making a mouse around feels to you like sitting on an assembly line in a factor theres 100% chance youve never worked on an actual assembly line in an actual factory.

@@necaacen Damn dude you went hard lol, this whole comment section has been mostly people moaning about an industry that allows you to actually make a living out of being creative, because its not 'pure' enough in their eyes, its so bizarre, and as you said I'm pretty sure theres millions of people who would love to do it rather than whatever job they've landed, and probably wouldn't have such a stick up their ass about the ethics of using 3D/using a photo or whatever

All art is being boiled down to an endless stream of "content" where the specific virtues of individual forms are replaced with flashy, unchallenging slop.

the industry and consumer don't care how you did your work, as long its quick enough and effective, if you want to the "old ways" treat it as a hobby and not a job

To clear up the public misconceptions on how art works.

Because uninformed idiots will still often look at someone basing a character illustration off of a photograph of a model making a pose they liked as "cheating" and being devoid of talent. The way the games industry works has a HUGE influence on young artists, because every kid wants to grow up and make video games. People like this guy making it clear that photobashing is a viable and legitimate way to create worthwhile art is how you crush that false perception.

In this particular presentation clearly it's already the case XD

I've already met a few ;)

Concept art is not about creativity, is about presenting ideas

Ummmm..... that's a thing that's been going on since Photoshop's easy accessibility (torrents) to 12 year olds. They bypass the fundamentals and go straight to digital painting. Some who actually try to learn the fundamentals, just get familiar enough just to get a job. Okay understanding of light and form, color, composition and anatomy equates to shit art to me.

Lazy

That's basically every job in a big company

Ayan Choudhury that’s... not how anything works. Machines can perform tasks that we design them to and command them to. An ARTIST still has to be there, being creative and choosing what specific tasks to tell the machine to perform.,

@@Fantallana Thats the point though, with this kind of art you can just make a program that does art and not need an artist. One might say that this art has no soul. Although all art might be replaced with neural net generated art at some point, there is no reason why a neural net couldn't be "creative"

@@Fantallana damn bro just dropping in to say he was right… I mean look at Dalle 2 soon they’ll hire 1 or 3 dudes to do everything shown in this video if it far evolves from what it can do now which is crazy 😂

Tbf, it does take different skills to cheat well too ;P

There are many of us who work in the industry who are good enough and fast enough at the foundational aspects of drawing to not drop photos directly into our work, which is why our work has life and appeal. When I look at his PBY plane painting, it shows you how little he knows about drawing foundation, which is why he needs to drop in photos. He is good at research and assembly, not really the technical or creative aspects of the craft. And, truth be told, they are not asking his company to concept, they are asking his company to “visualize” the already existing concept created by the company’s narrative and content people. I don’t fault him for his ability to find a way to survive in the market, but viewing others as ignorant for not pursuing that narrow minded path is irrelevant and he should remove it.

You're comment deserves to be featured in the talk.

do you use a computer to do art? or do you go out, source pigment, grind it and mix it with oils urself then use the brush you made, by hand, to paint on a canvas you also made by hand? people who paint by hand will tell you using a computer is cheating, people who paint in photoshop will tell you photobashing is cheating... a job is where you produce something required by someone in a time efficient manner. if you want to impose your own conjured up restrictions on yourself because it gives you a sense of self justification in your hobby then go for it, power to you man, because a hobby is about doing the thing you love to do that makes you feel good. virtually no one gets paid to do their hobby, and the very few who do most of them find their hobby becomes a job. so do you want to do that job or you want to go be an estate agent or a line manager in a call centre? they call it a job because its work and you get paid to do it by someone else who wants what they want, not what you want, what you want is your hobby.

Yeah, he basically describes how to remove originality for the sake of efficiency. I didn't think most of this stuff looked that great.

Agree, this guy represent the aide of the industry that views games more like products to consume and dispose :(

mainly why I as an artist who was pursuing this industry, left and went back to the Japanese style designs I love. Every western game is literally "regular looking white dude in jeans and a baseball cap" or "Military guy from Afghanistan" or "Robot arm dude in a bomber jacket" and theyre heralded as amazing revolutionary designs. Anyone could come up with that shit. Its all just preference of the art director and networking at some point. Meanwhile any run of the mill mangaka could design circles around them because they havent watered down their imagination into a game dev pipeline.

Big companies cut costs including creativity to sell. It's hard to be truly creative if the industry is going in a different direction. Did you move to Japan to work in manga? I didn't understand that part.

Yeah, guys a hack

In other words...what photo reference actually is. What he is doing is photo bashing not photo referencing.

It isn't clickbait, it is the title of the talk. The original audience was GDC attendees, not RU-vid.

Let's call it attendbait then :D

The title alone is worth an instant dislike though... On top of that, the distinction between 'concept artist' and 'concept designer' makes basically no sense anyway. A good concept artist will already tackle the problem of cinematic lighting, assuming that is part of what is asked from them (as one could also design items, weapons etc. without that for sake of clarity for 3D modellers). It still always takes a good level designer to then actually put it in a videogame. This part of translation from concept to final level assets and design often gets lost and it's not the fault of concept artists. Exact same applies to storytelling. And you know something truly ironic? The Last of Us concept art is 10x better than what actually ended up being in the game. It's also a severely overrated game when it comes to storytelling from a visual point of view. So no, the trash talk on concept artists makes no sense. Yeah, I know portfolios from people just graduated from art college tend to be somewhat to very poor, but seeing the very games Saffadi worked on he's not making much sense in terms of the whole 'concept designers'.

Also, it might be just me, but The Last of Us has some of the most generic designs I've ever come across in a videogame and people acted as if they'd never seen such a thing before. Total cringe!

In GDC's defence, it was Shaddy who gave the session such a 'clickbait' title. We've ended up on the receiving end of the piece now, but it was a good talk overall. Could complain, but instead I'll be thankful, the title helped gain views and get this talk to appear in my recommended. It's not like I'm sat here feeling like I wasted my time.

@kogepanm Might be a misunderstanding here, I was arguing that concept arts are useful in that regard : "Where the tumor is placed", but not when it comes to pitching extremely normal ideas like soldiers with a backpack or snowy mountains. In any way, my views about it changed since I posted the comment, I got to see Jad Saber talk about concepts and it all makes sense now, it's not so much about pitching unique ideas but rather to give a guide to the rest of the production. I found them useless because I was viewing them exclusively as there to imagine unique designs.

LOL

lol that's pretty true

As a concept artist in America working with an entirely non American team aside from myself, I can't agree more. I seriously have no idea how anyone gets famous in this country, as being vapid, boring, unremarkable, and talent-less seems to be what's "In" these days. Luckily, only in the land of America.

Feng Zhu seems to teach the opposite of what this guy is saying, drawing and especially perspective seem incredibly important when he talks about concept art.

@@anima94 Thats because when you can actually draw like Fheng you can shit out art much faster, than the people who need to do 1 to 2 hours of prep work before they can actually start drawing.

And btw it is not even painting at all..

Referencing usually just means using a photo as color or lighting reference or grabbing a rock or grass texture... It's rarely or never just taking a piece of a photo and using it outright, but even if it is it's often rearranging so much that it hardly resembles the original.

Not really theft, but not reference

@Seiashun Welcome to the real world Neo...

It's not theft, it's called Photobashing. It's not so much a shortcut as it is implementing photos in the tools you use to create concepts. suzanne-helmigh.deviantart.com/journal/The-5-bullshit-myths-of-concept-art-452662427 Excerpt from link: ''Photo-bashing is not cheating, as a matter of fact it is a standard technique used in the majority of western AAA game studios especially when they aim for realistic visuals. ''

Oh, and some AAA studios, like Nintendo, use both. I've never seen one _Legend of Zelda_ game that didn't feature both "concept design" and "concept art."

Good points. I didn't find his points disagreeable either. It sounds exciting for people who like to explore different ways of complimentary efficient methodologies in a big pipeline. Pretty positive in a sense of a macro view. Micro viewed details within different specializations are still where plenty of designers are needed, and even in the subjective details in aesthetic impact for concept illustrators. A little rough in his pitch, but to be fair artists can feel or be the same way at times when it comes to adapting into a broader work environment with multiple co-workers.

We need to remind our selves that today’s environment isn’t about artistry it’s about time and money I get that photo bashing is cheating for you But think about how long it would take for someone to repaint and paint all of those things with out photo bashing Not only do you have to spend a large amount of time to get skin and textures right It’s insane and especially in today’s competitive field where people don’t really pay artist that much money

@@cherokeehernandez9748 yep. artistry in terms of skill is over rated anyway. the result is what matters. its like sampling in music. a guy plays acustic guitar, he thinks electric guitar is dirty cheating, electric guy thinks synths are cheating, synth guy thinks software synths are cheating, that guy says sampling is cheating... you know what matters? when you press play on a track and you feel something. all that other stuff is just jerkoff bullshit that really isnt about art, its about some sort of technical skill. the art is the final piece that you see or hear. like ur saying, its a job and a job is time vs money vs product, and none of that is about "oh look at me im so great i can do the same thing the hard way". and art isnt about that either, art is about the feeling the audience has experiencing the art. im a graphic designer, i play instruments, paint canvases, paint models, paint digital, make computer music, theres a lot of artists i really enjoy in all fields and say hey, look at this guy hes so great he can do that hard thing really well. i get it, thats cool, but it is what it is, its not a job and its not art, its technical jerking off for people who like a bit of technical jerk off. whos your favourite guitarist? is it the guy that can play the most complicated passage of notes the fastest? or is it the guy that played the solo that almost brought a tear to your eye with the feelings those notes conveyed? thats art, the other one is a guy who can move his fingers really fast in a precise manner.

​@@necaacen Very good comment, your music analogies are spot on, its really hard for people to separate ego from art and this comment section is proof

as someone who started learning 3D modeling WAY before drawing, nope, not necessary, drawing is a good help, but you can do without

@@PlexusDuMenton Yes but how about when you want to create more design versions? You waste time doing the complicated 3D modelling each time..

@@Constantinesisusualy when I model without making some concept beforehand I just change it overtime, you allways make a "concept" mesh, with only the base shape and continue to work on it, making lot of simple shape don't take much time, I usualy even do it in Zbrush

@@PlexusDuMenton Yes, Zbrush is something different, especially if you are using a pen. It is like real sculpting, or basically you are drawing in 3D.

Fake lighting tends to be a cinematic choice - it may not be realistic, but it's more visually interesting.

Nobody likes it, but HE likes it in the sense that his clients are paying big bucks for that shit, so he likes to sell that shit to those companies. He's just a businessman.

Blame Ridley Scott for this.

So the audience won't be confused about the visual interest?...it's not bad because it all comes down to the mood, importance, atmosphere of the scene. If it didn't have said filters...then you would have bad staging. Are you saying that A L L movies do that crap? No, there's comedy and drama and even video games that keep it grounded to realism.

Your opinion is not a universal reality. In my opinion, you leach off the creativity of others, and try to express a creative spark by a reductive, uninspiring dismissal.

That is wrong and artists dont do that most of the time. But artists can take art from different places and kitbash it. Did you not watch the video?

@@diadokhoi5722 dude chill!! Go to Facebook find a club where you can play cricket and free your mind You seem like if someone even watched this video summarized it yet didnt understand a single bit Will turn into anti thanos and passive aggressively ignore them If you are this DENSE then maybe you should study humans trust me a quick youtube search will be good

LOL they build these algorithms themselves. You think they throw away their best photos that they use to photobash? Nah lol

You don't need to be both, being either of those guys is being great at an advanced level and this guy will just churn out more mediocrity and not greatness.

Can you please show us your work that looks just as good or even better?

Suppose I do then what?

We can see it maybe, I would love to agree with you but I would have to see you do the work.

So right now you disagree with what I said but if I show you something you will agree?

I do not exactly disagree with you or him. I am curious to see what experience and the work shows. Do you have the backing to prove your point, this man has shown his work in public for all to see and has the credit, he makes valid points and perhaps so do you but the work is the work and it is the greatest proof of right.

Prob the latter, but hey what do I know as a first year illustration student XD

He stands by it, but there is plenty of creative aspects in this kind of work, it's very subtle though. With that said, it is indeed pretty generic, and only appeals to a certain set of potential clients, don't take his advice as an end all/be all.

So have you worked at naughty dog? I'm sorry but he clearly said that he's only talking about that style of work, which is what probably most of the game studios are looking for.

This "generic shit" is actually what the producers at games/movies studios actually want. they sell products to the average people, that's why you see the same shit over and over again, i recommend that you watch FZD channel here on youtube, the guy talks about that in more details through the years, you might hate it, but that's the truth about AAA titles.

When you look closely even the most original movies or games have some parts that don't look exciting or original visually but someone has to design them. Maybe one scene is set in abandoned warehouse or destroyed street in Berlin. Individually it might look bland and generic but when it's sum of all parts it starts to shine.

"There's absolutely nothing interesting about Naughty Dog games..." I BEG TO DIFFER!

Possibly agree with 1st sentence, strongly opposed to second one.

+Slippy Yeah, they're lifelike because they're completely traced, in composition, texture, and lighting

"There's absolutely nothing interesting about Naughty Dog game" What an idiot lol

Mah boi Insidious DrNine here trying to give us all alcohol poisoning.

yeah, people think concept Art is making beautiful paintings out of nothing when that's not the case. It's a CONCEPT, you have to take ideas from the real world, concepts, and delivering these ideas in the shortest time possible, there's no ''wrong way'' to do this