Thumbnails

Thumbnails

The main requirements for a Concept Artist is not to paint beautiful, elaborate illustrations, but to design an object. And to achieve an interesting and innovative design in a short amount of time one needs a lot of iterations, iterations, iterations and communication. Thats why Thumbnailing is the fundamental skill of every concept artist. For a good concept you don't really need a stunning drawing skill. What matters most are lots of good ideas. Thumbnails will boost your flow of ideas, are a base to communicate about ideas and are a fast way to produce variants of one object.

The starting point is a more or less elaborated literal description : "a huge, bulky robot that shoots rockets", "a now inhospitable, sick territory that looked like Canada before", "a lone mid-aged Warrior who wandered around the globe to overcome the memory of his long lost love" ... Everyone will get a picture of this certainly. But is this the same idea the Art Director, the Game Designer or the Reader/Gamer/Viewer has? Likely not. Thats the point why you need a lot of variants: You will stumble upon fresh ideas in the process, rethink your own ideas and step away from clichés.

Step 1 - Silhouette, basic shape

Especially in games the most important thing is the silhoutte. Because the player has to recognize and identify the ocject fast, even when it moves and from a mid to far distance. So what is a good silhouette? Thats where the Gestalt Laws come into handy: The first thing people recognize are the simple forms (circle, square, triangle and so on).

It's easy to draw thumbnails with a brush pen or digitally with the Photoshop Standard brush. The background can be grey or white. As an example I will design "some kind of shaman wand/bludgeon, tall as a man, native tribe".

Step 2 - Detailling, Combining, Variants

If the basic shape is set you can add more detail and in the same breath make more variants. Remember you can also "erase" details into the silhouette. And NEVER zoom into the image. You will lost the overview and get lost into details. It's rather usefull to step back, squint or flip the image...

How to make variants with photoshop efficiently:

  • monochrome background, DO NOT draw on the background
  • Basic shape at new layer, do not select
  • use "Move Tool (V)"
  • Select "show Transform Controls" in the tool menu panel, always usefull
  • press the Alt key (the cursor changes) and move the object
  • fill the page with some clones and merge the new layers with Ctrl-E

Step 3 to 8 - Details Details Details

Keep in mind that tons of detail don't necessarily improve the silhouette. In fact detailling EVERYTHING will make the sihoueete harder to read and distract the viewer from the IMPORTANT parts. A good concept has one impotant, detailled piece: professional example. Furthermore you have to consider that details like spikes change the silhouette.

Last Step - inner Details

To maintain overview better one can draw prominent forms with white into the sketch. For example the eyes (human) or shiny sensors (robot) or the different parts of an armor.

What now?

If the design is final you can use it as a base for light rendering.

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