Concepting

• Overview

Concepting is the term used for the initial creation of an idea/project, this typically involves creating various sketches for games assets. For this stage many sketches can be crated for a single asset known as "concept art", then they can further improved by either combining the "best parts" multiple concepts or just refining the one (or more) images to be later used in the project. The main reason for the creation of "concept art" is to help consistency of the games creation by providing a reference point(s) for help to keep the asset(s) of the game consistent, this can be more important if the game asset(s) are created by different people working on it.   

• Examples of concepting

 Following will be a couple sections displaying some concept art I created for generic "weapon" assets I created along with a final "concept art" piece.

• Initial sketches

Initial sketch's are more about getting the idea of what your going for drawn, these can then be used to see what they think of your concepts and to get feedback on what can be improved or added in the next version(s). In the following image I decided that I would make design the initial concepts for a couple swords, an axe, a scythe and a cutlass.

• Improved sketch's

Following is my attempt at improving on s couple of the above sketches, I choose to improve the "scythe" first as I thought that could be the one I manage to draw the most character out of. Then I decided to try and improve the three bladed sword, this because it was one of the ones I liked designing initially and thought i might be able to draw it better. Finally I tried making a more detailed double headed axe as I though giving it more detail might be interesting.

A lot of these changes came from feedback from friends that I needed to make certain areas more clear, such ass the connections between the handles and the blades. They also recommended a few images of items similar to my drawings that ended up helping my improvements on the designs.

• Fineline line art and shading

Following is an attempt at making a cleaner "line art drawing" of the double headed axe (left) and an attempt at defining the axes shading (right).

• Colouring 

The next image is the above double axe coloured, I attempted to make it look like a gold gilded axe but had very limited colours. Because of this trying to make a decent "shading" wasn't really possible with the available pencils I had, that and my level of skill still needs improvement.