Second attempt is a much more interesting design, lighting setup, and POV. Nice!!
Only thing I would say to improve it some is to consider hue and saturation more. Looks like you're starting to play with it some in the second one, but metal generally has a much great variance than you've got.
I really love both the concept and shape, just wondering if you could go just one step further into simplification so you get a better read on the text, particularly if it had no color to help you out. You have a lot of experience in both design and illustration at the moment, but I feel like leaning back into the design chops and trying to get some bolder/more refined lines and shapes might make this feel more solid.
If this is purely for a shirt or something that going to similarly stay on the larger side, this might work as is, but I would still consider ways to give the text a little more breathing room. Maybe the mohawk is just the shape of the text, but solid so its all attached to his head, for instance.
I think the cheetah face could use a little bit of design revision to really emphasize the action there.
I did a little drawover below: Trying to map out the rhythms of the head- connecting up all those little design details into a pattern that tells the story of the gesture- the original seems a little soft and mushy, not getting a strong sense of directionality to the overall action. In the drawover, I've tried to go back and reemphasize the gesture of the action, structuring the head to be like flowing lines converging from the back to the front- then redesigning the shapes of all the individual parts to help get that idea across (using the fur dots to make a gestural pattern, choosing where to go with smooth lines versus sharp/jagged ones in the outline, etc.
A thing I've noticed when drawing or referencing vicious real world animals, is that often you do have to do a lot of digging for good ref that really shows that, and do a good bit of work of exaggerating to make the character of the animal come across- because in repose, real lions/tigers/bears/wolves/etc. often look pretty adorable, rather than intimidating. So don't be afraid to push or edit the design beyond what you'd get from your ref, in order to sell the idea of "a roaring cheetah", more than an actual photo of a roaring cheetah would.
If you look at a lot of Frazetta's animals, anatomically they rarely are particularly accurate to the animal in question, because he's exaggerating shamelessly- but they sell the idea of 'an attacking, vicious lion' or 'a powerful warcharger steed' far more effectively than an accurate rendition would.
the design seems kinda of top heavy, radio is just dominating most of the design, i think the cheetah should be the focus word, with radio more of a tag-line maybe at the bottom? and yah the more cartoony/simplified you can make the cheetah the better, seems like some crazy jokey station? so reflect that tone with the cheetah, just think geometrical shapes for the face, triangle teeth oval face etcc, besides way ezier to vector later right
@Bacon That looks so much better! I'll try to revisit it over the weekend
@SeveredHead I was trying to get the type to read as a mohawk, so I can't really move it down to the bottom. I do agree with simplifying things though, it's way too cartoony for my tastes at the moment
Here's another thing I'm working on at the moment. The layout/treatment of the type is very much notional, so ignore it for now
Only feedback I can give on the other thing is I kept reading it as RADID. So maybe shave off the corners of the O?
I think I was also reading it that way because originally it was a cheetah with a mohawk, and I thought you were playing on the RAD, and there are no (that I noticed) radio elements that would prime my mind in that direction.
Thanks! The stuff there is pretty paint-by-numbers following the first lesson from Jama's 3D concept course, but I've been struggling to implement it otherwise.
I actually had to google that, but thanks I think :P
Here's an idea that I don't think is quite panning out. I wanted a really bright product-photography style scene with subsurface scattering through the beetle. Maybe I'll come back to this
Feels good and solid, colors and lighting are strong which feels like a good result for a class like the one you are in.
The stream feels a little unfinished in that I don't understand how its flowing. It seems to be creating a waterfall on the left of the image, but the water in front of the mailbox appears to be lower, since the river is being obscured by the hill. Might not be much to do for that without messing with the composition more than is needed.
Thanks guys. I've gotten a bunch of feedback from a few different places, I just need to motivate myself to go back and finish it off
In the meantime I'm trying to push into doing more design-oriented work, as per Bacon's feedback. I feel like this is a really underwhelming start, but it's something. Any ideas on how I can make this more appealing?
Lesson 2 from the schoolism Visual Development course
As a brainstorming sheet, this looks fine. Not sure what you're envisioning as 'more appealing', but as a design exercise you could take it to the next step - select three or four to polish up and present to an imaginary art director.
Or you could do some full colour renders as a lighting exercise, eg
I could do that- use a darker background, use a layer with low/no fill and some inner/outer glows for the light bulb shape (maybe use some color shift gradient on the fade-off for some extra color richness), use some more layer/glow magic for the filaments, just some simple effects to get across the idea of 'light bulbs' across cheaply, and add some simple nicety appeal to it.
However, I think that would be some pretty surface level feedback, which I suspect isn't really going to get to the heart of the issue if you're feeling like there's something missing for you here.
Let me go on a little ramble for a sec.
I had a English teacher in high school that I didn't like very much, but I begrudgingly conceded had a rule that made a lot of sense and agreed with.
The rule was: "you will automatically be deducted 10 percentage points off your grade, if you ever use the word 'thing' in an essay".
Why?
Because there is always a more descriptive, specific, and useful word you could have used, instead of the word 'thing'. 'Thing' is too vague to be useful.
Similarly- and I've given this rant to people at work on this point before- in an art direction context, "cool" is a word that should largely be verboten. It's fine for a quick compliment, sure it's useful if you're talking specifically about color temperature- but when people say, "I just want this to look cool", or "make it cooler", it's pretty worthless. Too vague. Doesn't mean anything. Can't do anything with it.
When you ask about "appeal", it's the same thing- you're basically asking, "how can I make this something I/you/the audience likes more?"
How on earth should we know? Whose definition of 'appeal' are you even trying to cater to?
Everyone has their own personal definition of what is cool or appealing- it's totally subjective. You can't have useful conversation with that as the only metric, you can't art direct around it. In trying to do so, you don't wind up with anything "cooler"- you just burn yourself out making a bunch of random junk and in the desperate hope that something, by chance, trips upon somebody's particular hidden tastes. I guess some guys manage to make a process of that, but I know I find it exhausting and often futile.
I suspect a reason that so many games end up so boring and generic boils down to a lot of inarticulate/insecure people trying to make something "cool". You try to make a main character that is "cool", and that fits what you think everyone's unstated definition of "cool" is, and whoops- you've just made the 50th game this month starring a white buff guy with short brown hair and stubble wearing a leather jacket and jeans.
Meanwhile, Mario, a dumpy plumber whose initial design was largely determined by, "how do I make it so you can tell this sprite has a nose? I know, I'll give him a mustache", stars in his 5000th game, still beloved by millions.
Rather than waste your brainpower on something so vague as "cool/appeal", use it on specific, concrete problems. If you define a clear, specific purpose in what you're trying to accomplish, and you pursue that purpose to the degree it needs to be, the cool/appealing part will follow all on it's own. It might not get there in a straight line, but it'll get there.
So, you've presented us a bunch of light bulbs.
How do you figure out what's a good light bulb, what's a bad light bulb? More importantly, what's the right light bulb? With what we know- which is currently nothing other than 'here are some light bulbs'- any one of them could be absolutely perfect- or hell, even all of them could be! Congratulations, close your eyes and throw a dart! Let's all go out for an early lunch!
Or, all of them could be totally wrong.
How do you, or we, figure out which is which?
You establish a context.
Where did this light bulb come from? Where will it be seen? In a glorious temple? In a seedy dive bar? Is it supposed to be a rare thing in this world? Or are you going to see it all the time, on every street corner? Is it something that you're going to see in closeup, the camera lingering on it's importance? Or is it something in the background that should not draw an undue amount of attention to itself? Is it a thing made to be delicate and precious, and can be ornate and intricate? Or is it something that's going to be plugged into the back of some junkyard robot slamming down walls, and therefore needs to be tough and sturdy? Is this world a wacky cartoon world? A gritty steampunk world? A world of magic? What culture made this light bulb? What's their whole deal? Is this light bulb using the same technology as real world light bulbs, or something else? Is this being made for a Hollywood movie, or a stylized mobile game? Etc. etc. etc.
If we know these answers (and the answers to the questions that will arise as a result of those answers), we can start to give you real, actionable feedback and direction. More importantly, if you know these answers- if you can close your eyes and smell, taste, touch, hear and feel this fictional world in your minds eye with such specificity that it appears as real to you as the one outside your door- a lot of what does and does not belong, where you need to push and why, becomes largely self-evident.
You shouldn't try to design in a void. Often the context IS what separates something that is "cool" and "appealing" from something that's not. A Ferrari racing around a race track at 150mph? Pretty cool. Same exact Ferrari, crashed through my kitchen by a drunk rich asshole? One of the least cool things. Darth Vader, pretty cool design for a Star Wars villain- would be a pretty lousy, stupid design if that's what they went with for The Godfather's Don Vito Corleone. Take The Last of Us- got a main character that knows how to craft things and is trying to survive a zombie apocalypse- makes sense if he made a bunch of cool rusty zombie-fightin' armor out of rebar, make him all buff and badass with a bunch of gnarly scars and tats, right? Well, that design would probably be cool- on a portfolio page, at least- but also totally wrong. Because the context and the necessity of the design is about this guy being a dad/father figure, and Ellie and the audience is probably gonna have a hard time connecting with the kind of dude that wears a necklace strung with zombie fingers. That "cool" design would singlehandedly screw that game up beyond saving.
Now, I have not taken whatever class this assignment belongs to- maybe that context is provided there (in which case, maybe I should have saved myself a lot of time and just asked what it is, instead of going on this long rant- but at this point I might as well finish my thought), or maybe it isn't and you have to sorta make one up on your own.
If I had to guess, I would expect the point of this assignment is no more than driving home the point of not just immediately settling on one idea, and to make a point of exploring.
Which is fine for a school exercise, and still a useful lesson- but is that an example of a realistic concept task, by itself? Not really.
(Which is kinda what I was hoping to push you more towards with my previous feedback- showing you can apply your taught learnings to a specific, well-defined purpose as you will have to in a real-world working scenario. That if quizzed on your work, you'd have a concrete answer to every asked, "but why this?" question. ex: 'THIS light bulb is in THIS bulbous goofy shape which reflects on THIS bulbous goofy scientist character that made THIS goofy bulbous machine' or 'THESE light bulbs are in this weird, long, bending, twisting and turning organic shapes to get across the techno-organic nature of the alien ships they are used on.', etc. It's not just a bunch of cool stuff, it's stuff that all has well-defined purpose in selling a specific fiction to an audience.)
Is this class lesson something that makes sense for a peanut gallery to try to art direct you on, as if somehow somewhere floating out there in the ether there is a platonic ideal of a New and Great Light Bulb That Is The Most Beautiful and Correct In Any Context that we can help direct you towards? Again, not really. We presently can only give you subjective opinions that we may or may not be able to articulate clearly, which may or may not be useful at all. We need context to be useful to the purpose here.
I know if I got a work assignment that was just, "draw a bunch of different light bulbs", my first move would be to start hunting down whatever relevant designers/art directors/art managers and make them explain themselves in clearer terms of what they are actually trying to accomplish with this task, as to not waste my and everyone else's time by going down a bunch of dead-ends.
Establish the actual-for-sure-needs, the nice-to-have-if-possibles, the proffered maybe-this-would-be-cools, and figure out within the gaps where I've got room to play and explore- then I'd get down to work. If nobody had any information to share (who would make a game like this???), I at least know my first responsibility would be to come up with a pitch for what the context could/should be, before starting on the specific details. Without that, I'd just be left with smoke coming out of my ears in frustration, plowing through a task that I'd have no clue if I were totally nailing or completely screwing up. Wouldn't stand for it.
Holy shit bacon thank you. I'm gonna need to sit down and digest all this
EDIT: Completely agree with all of the above, and it's a problem that I recognised while I was doing the assignment. I'll try to be more specific with what I design
Are there any resources or courses that you guys would recommend on the design process specifically? Most of the stuff I've found essentially boils down to process (thumbnails, sketching, refinement, final) but so few resources actually talk about the thought process behind creating something original. I can usually dissect what makes a piece of graphic design or animation good or bad, but I just don't have the language to analyse the design of an object or an environment.
I feel like to really be able to design anything I need to understand the whole process of manufacturing as well as the historical context, but then it's impossible to know where to start because there's so much designed stuff in the world, and so little information written for the purpose of concept design
Are there any resources or courses that you guys would recommend on the design process specifically? Most of the stuff I've found essentially boils down to process (thumbnails, sketching, refinement, final) but so few resources actually talk about the thought process behind creating something original. I can usually dissect what makes a piece of graphic design or animation good or bad, but I just don't have the language to analyse the design of an object or an environment.
I feel like to really be able to design anything I need to understand the whole process of manufacturing as well as the historical context, but then it's impossible to know where to start because there's so much designed stuff in the world, and so little information written for the purpose of concept design
I don't know of a specific resource describing a thought process, though I think art books for animated movies and some video games, where they actually have the designers dive into their own logic, can start to give you a sense of where those designers are coming from.
Now, this is a hit-or-miss proposition due to not all books being created equal and not all artists being tremendously articulate about their decision-making- frankly I agree that this is something that gets glossed over too much in tutorials. Maybe they're just embarrassed to talk about it because a lot of the thinking isn't that deep when you get right down to it (not that it needs to be).
What I would say is that for concept design, as opposed to something like industrial design or architecture, the primary need is EMOTIONAL, rather than PRAGMATIC.
That is, your first concern should be with
1) What feeling am I trying to invoke in the viewer? (fear? joy? comradarie? etc.)
2) What abstract design queues do I know will invoke that feeling? (spikes = scary, soft-shapes = comfort, etc.)
3) How can I take everything I know about the world (real world research, your fictional lore, etc.), and essentially use this toy box of facts I've accumulated, to shape into something that fits with my abstract design needs (point 2) which will evoke a particular emotional response (point 1).
If you were doing real world design of real things, these priorities would be totally different- if you're making a dishwasher, the primary thought is to make it easy and cheap to manufacture and the thing works- and as long as it doesn't cost too much, it shouldn't be too ugly either. If a dishwasher makes you feel nothing emotionally, it probably just means it hasn't broken yet. If it doesn't break, most people are going to say it must be a pretty good design for a dishwasher.
But in concept design, what matters is how the viewer is supposed to feel about whatever you're designing- and therefore, you only have to meet a certain threshold of believability.
You aren't building a house; you're essentially building a movie set version of a house. Getting hung up on details from the start, can end up getting in the way of what you're actually trying to accomplish.
So for example, if I'm given an assignment to design a castle, that by itself isn't a lot to go on. I gotta dig in and find the emotion. How is the player supposed to feel about this castle? Happy that they happened across it because it represents a temporary reprieve from the bandits that was chasing them? Or should it feel intimidating, a physical representation of the cold, cruel Lord that commands it?
Let's say it's the latter. (Now I have my point 1)
Now in putting together a reference sheet (I just like to make a huge 7000px wide PS doc and copy/paste GIS results into it), I'll obviously look for real world examples of castles, gothic architecture, maybe some fantasy art that's inspiring- but I might also start putting in stuff that only fits the intended emotion.
What's intimidating? A Kodiak bear. A tidal wave. A cab over semi-truck coming right at you. These are things that generally aren't a part of castles- but figuring out what I find intimidating about these things, will help me design a castle using real world elements. (Now I have my point 2)
What abstract elements might I use? Obviously, scale- all these things indicate a person being dwarfed by a huge size. I can use the idea of the flat-face, boxy semi truck design to create this sense of sturdiness, immovability. I can use the idea of the road- maybe a long, long narrow bridge leading up to this giant block of a castle. Can I use the bear idea, and organize and exaggerate architectural details to imply the idea of 'claws' or 'teeth'? Can I use the idea of the tidal wave- maybe there's some element of rock overhang that creates the idea of this rock seeming like it's about to crash down on anyone approaching, or perhaps it's some architectural cantilever element on the castle accomplishing the same thing. (Now I'm starting towards my point 3).
At this point I should be able to sketch up broadly an idea- and use my real-world reference to give my idea that veneer of believability- the windows will look appropriately gothicy, the buttresses will seem legit, all the little details will be right, to sell the viewer on the idea that this could be an actual place.
But a historian or an architect or an OSHA inspector might look at your castle and say it could never work like that (there's a reason actual castles look the way they do, after all), but that really doesn't matter for our purposes as a concept designer.
Because it's not a castle, it's a means of creating a sense of intimidation in the viewer- that just happens to have castle-like elements. And my Castle TidalTruckBear is going to accomplish that task better than say, Windsor Castle- a real castle that actually exists and functions as a castle.
Certainly, doing your research and reading to understand manufacturing and architecture and history is going to be useful, it's going to give you more elements to play and work with; but it's not the be-all end-all of what should and should not go into a design. You choose the facts you need to support the emotion- just replicating the facts as they are, has limited use.
Now, you might look at my above post about "cool" and think, "wait, how is 'intimidating' different than "cool"? Isn't "cool" an equally valid emotional response to try to evoke? And perhaps it is, if you have a distinct and confident enough personal idea of what is and is not "cool" to give you something useful to design around. But because most people's idea of "cool" is pretty bland and generic (especially any version that 2 people or more can agree on), it's hard to get much originality out of it.
So back to all those context-establishing answers- a good number of them are about dialing into ever-more specific emotions: "a glorious temple" = awe and wonder, "a seedy dive bar" = intimidating to outsiders, comforting to a certain rough in-group. "Wacky cartoon world" = non-threatening, "steampunk world" = whimsy.
If I can nail down what I want the viewer/player to feel when they come across a design, I can start to get a lot better idea of what I need to design.
I hope that helps a bit in shaking off the sort of information paralysis that can happen when designing/researching.
Thanks bacon, I think you've hit on exactly the problem I've been struggling with for a while. That's a massive help, I really, really appreciate it. The conceptual reference sheet is even an idea I already use in my motion graphics work, I've just never thought to apply it to concept art.
I feel like I might have internalised the process of Scott Robertson too much. He's one of the better ones at describing his thought process, but he's very much an industrial designer first and foremost. I also feel like a lot of concept designers recommend that you 'think about how a design would be used', and I was conflating that with 'this must be a piece of design that could function in the real world'. That was paralysing me because I'm not an architect, or an industrial designer.
It's probably going to take me a while to readjust my process but at least I have a direction
I'm working on a set design, FZD style. I'm trying to be a bit more specific, so the premise is a museum curator's office in 1940s London (during the London blitz). The basic plot I have in mind is that the curator is working to get precious artefacts to the English countryside, but they've been mysteriously disappearing. I'm going for a detective vibe, dark and moody, but in a cramped disorganised space.
Yeah, now that's the stuff- having that little bit of specificity has added a ton here, and I hope you can feel the difference. It's not just a bunch of cool stuff, it's all working together to tell a specific, consistent story.
The only comments I have are kinda minor details about how out curator character would move through this space:
- The desk looks pretty prim and proper as opposed to the mess on the floor- is that because the story is that this character doesn't spend much time typing in the office? Or should the desk be more messy, piled up with more of the junk that tends to accumulate on a desk when working (open books piled up, loose folders, telephone resting on a loose stack of papers, half-filled ashtray, pens and mugs and coffee stains, more articles piled up on the conspiracy theory corkboard, etc.)
-Speaking of newspapers, not sure about the placement of them here- were they in the trunk and they just unpacked them? Were they last reading them in the middle of the room instead of sitting down (where they would naturally deposit themselves nearer the desk)? If they were in the trunk, it would make sense if they was using them to wrap artifacts in for protection, which would be an interesting touch. If you want to show they'd been away awhile, you could also deposit a few newspapers or loose mail near the door, where they'd been put through the mail slot and left to pile up (maybe with a footprint on them if you want to show your character as being too busy for trifling things like the electric bill.
-Roller chair on top of a rug when you've got a nice hardwood floor? Again, maybe they don't spend a lot of time at their desk, but that seems like a pain. Also if it's meant to be a nice rug of cultural interest, a museum curator might show it more respect. (Or not- maybe this museum curator is in it for the action and thrills more than the culture. Or maybe they just are proto-hipster and has an ironic love of tatty old rugs).
-I might suggest raising up the open trunk on top of a crate- if I want to get stuff in and out in a hurry, or I expect to have to leave on a moment's notice, it's going to be easier if it's raised up in arm's reach and I don't have to bend down all the time. You can get some additional storytelling by showing how as the trunk was hastily slid on top of the crate, whatever was on there before got rudely shoved off onto the floor.
-Could put in some packing straw in/around the crates to get some more mess/urgency.
-More of a going forward/rendering thing, but even if this museum is well-appointed and maintained on the whole, you could put a small crack or some dirt/grime in the window if you want to get the idea that there's a war going on outside, and maybe some shrapnel from across the way had hit the building recently.
Now this may seem like really minor, nitpicky stuff- but it's the sort of thing that you can get into (or really, expect whatever art director you wind up with to be into) because you've done a solid job world building, and now it's just looking for those little things that can plus it just that little bit more. I hope you're proud of this one, I think it's really on the right path. :^:
Thanks again Bacon! I tried to incorporate all of those changes, although I'm not sure how well I did. I'd like to elevate the trunk more, but I couldn't get it to work with the composition.
I've about run out of steam with this drawing, but if you guys have more ideas I'm open.
I fell into a creative rut and did nothing but play Sekiro for a week. But I'm back! Here are a couple of exercises I've been doing from the foundation patreon
Taking a simple structure and redesigning it based off different references:
Kitbashing a design from elements in the sketchup warehouse (WIP)
Posts
Only thing I would say to improve it some is to consider hue and saturation more. Looks like you're starting to play with it some in the second one, but metal generally has a much great variance than you've got.
If this is purely for a shirt or something that going to similarly stay on the larger side, this might work as is, but I would still consider ways to give the text a little more breathing room. Maybe the mohawk is just the shape of the text, but solid so its all attached to his head, for instance.
I did a little drawover below: Trying to map out the rhythms of the head- connecting up all those little design details into a pattern that tells the story of the gesture- the original seems a little soft and mushy, not getting a strong sense of directionality to the overall action. In the drawover, I've tried to go back and reemphasize the gesture of the action, structuring the head to be like flowing lines converging from the back to the front- then redesigning the shapes of all the individual parts to help get that idea across (using the fur dots to make a gestural pattern, choosing where to go with smooth lines versus sharp/jagged ones in the outline, etc.
A thing I've noticed when drawing or referencing vicious real world animals, is that often you do have to do a lot of digging for good ref that really shows that, and do a good bit of work of exaggerating to make the character of the animal come across- because in repose, real lions/tigers/bears/wolves/etc. often look pretty adorable, rather than intimidating. So don't be afraid to push or edit the design beyond what you'd get from your ref, in order to sell the idea of "a roaring cheetah", more than an actual photo of a roaring cheetah would.
If you look at a lot of Frazetta's animals, anatomically they rarely are particularly accurate to the animal in question, because he's exaggerating shamelessly- but they sell the idea of 'an attacking, vicious lion' or 'a powerful warcharger steed' far more effectively than an accurate rendition would.
Twitter
@SeveredHead I was trying to get the type to read as a mohawk, so I can't really move it down to the bottom. I do agree with simplifying things though, it's way too cartoony for my tastes at the moment
Here's another thing I'm working on at the moment. The layout/treatment of the type is very much notional, so ignore it for now
Only feedback I can give on the other thing is I kept reading it as RADID. So maybe shave off the corners of the O?
I think I was also reading it that way because originally it was a cheetah with a mohawk, and I thought you were playing on the RAD, and there are no (that I noticed) radio elements that would prime my mind in that direction.
With this second one I wanted to see what I could get done in a 3 hour time limit, so it's still pretty janky, but I think the core is there
It looks so good!
Also have a few more spitpaints:
Prototype Wing
Nature Out of Control
But thanks Iruka! I really like having this thread as a reminder of how far I've come
Speaking of which I finally got over the hump that was blocking me from finishing exercise 4 of Fundamentals of Lighting
Here's an idea that I don't think is quite panning out. I wanted a really bright product-photography style scene with subsurface scattering through the beetle. Maybe I'll come back to this
Feels good and solid, colors and lighting are strong which feels like a good result for a class like the one you are in.
The stream feels a little unfinished in that I don't understand how its flowing. It seems to be creating a waterfall on the left of the image, but the water in front of the mailbox appears to be lower, since the river is being obscured by the hill. Might not be much to do for that without messing with the composition more than is needed.
In the meantime I'm trying to push into doing more design-oriented work, as per Bacon's feedback. I feel like this is a really underwhelming start, but it's something. Any ideas on how I can make this more appealing?
Lesson 2 from the schoolism Visual Development course
Or you could do some full colour renders as a lighting exercise, eg
I could do that- use a darker background, use a layer with low/no fill and some inner/outer glows for the light bulb shape (maybe use some color shift gradient on the fade-off for some extra color richness), use some more layer/glow magic for the filaments, just some simple effects to get across the idea of 'light bulbs' across cheaply, and add some simple nicety appeal to it.
However, I think that would be some pretty surface level feedback, which I suspect isn't really going to get to the heart of the issue if you're feeling like there's something missing for you here.
Let me go on a little ramble for a sec.
I had a English teacher in high school that I didn't like very much, but I begrudgingly conceded had a rule that made a lot of sense and agreed with.
The rule was: "you will automatically be deducted 10 percentage points off your grade, if you ever use the word 'thing' in an essay".
Why?
Because there is always a more descriptive, specific, and useful word you could have used, instead of the word 'thing'. 'Thing' is too vague to be useful.
Similarly- and I've given this rant to people at work on this point before- in an art direction context, "cool" is a word that should largely be verboten. It's fine for a quick compliment, sure it's useful if you're talking specifically about color temperature- but when people say, "I just want this to look cool", or "make it cooler", it's pretty worthless. Too vague. Doesn't mean anything. Can't do anything with it.
When you ask about "appeal", it's the same thing- you're basically asking, "how can I make this something I/you/the audience likes more?"
How on earth should we know? Whose definition of 'appeal' are you even trying to cater to?
Everyone has their own personal definition of what is cool or appealing- it's totally subjective. You can't have useful conversation with that as the only metric, you can't art direct around it. In trying to do so, you don't wind up with anything "cooler"- you just burn yourself out making a bunch of random junk and in the desperate hope that something, by chance, trips upon somebody's particular hidden tastes. I guess some guys manage to make a process of that, but I know I find it exhausting and often futile.
I suspect a reason that so many games end up so boring and generic boils down to a lot of inarticulate/insecure people trying to make something "cool". You try to make a main character that is "cool", and that fits what you think everyone's unstated definition of "cool" is, and whoops- you've just made the 50th game this month starring a white buff guy with short brown hair and stubble wearing a leather jacket and jeans.
Meanwhile, Mario, a dumpy plumber whose initial design was largely determined by, "how do I make it so you can tell this sprite has a nose? I know, I'll give him a mustache", stars in his 5000th game, still beloved by millions.
Rather than waste your brainpower on something so vague as "cool/appeal", use it on specific, concrete problems. If you define a clear, specific purpose in what you're trying to accomplish, and you pursue that purpose to the degree it needs to be, the cool/appealing part will follow all on it's own. It might not get there in a straight line, but it'll get there.
So, you've presented us a bunch of light bulbs.
How do you figure out what's a good light bulb, what's a bad light bulb? More importantly, what's the right light bulb? With what we know- which is currently nothing other than 'here are some light bulbs'- any one of them could be absolutely perfect- or hell, even all of them could be! Congratulations, close your eyes and throw a dart! Let's all go out for an early lunch!
Or, all of them could be totally wrong.
How do you, or we, figure out which is which?
You establish a context.
Where did this light bulb come from? Where will it be seen? In a glorious temple? In a seedy dive bar? Is it supposed to be a rare thing in this world? Or are you going to see it all the time, on every street corner? Is it something that you're going to see in closeup, the camera lingering on it's importance? Or is it something in the background that should not draw an undue amount of attention to itself? Is it a thing made to be delicate and precious, and can be ornate and intricate? Or is it something that's going to be plugged into the back of some junkyard robot slamming down walls, and therefore needs to be tough and sturdy? Is this world a wacky cartoon world? A gritty steampunk world? A world of magic? What culture made this light bulb? What's their whole deal? Is this light bulb using the same technology as real world light bulbs, or something else? Is this being made for a Hollywood movie, or a stylized mobile game? Etc. etc. etc.
If we know these answers (and the answers to the questions that will arise as a result of those answers), we can start to give you real, actionable feedback and direction. More importantly, if you know these answers- if you can close your eyes and smell, taste, touch, hear and feel this fictional world in your minds eye with such specificity that it appears as real to you as the one outside your door- a lot of what does and does not belong, where you need to push and why, becomes largely self-evident.
You shouldn't try to design in a void. Often the context IS what separates something that is "cool" and "appealing" from something that's not. A Ferrari racing around a race track at 150mph? Pretty cool. Same exact Ferrari, crashed through my kitchen by a drunk rich asshole? One of the least cool things. Darth Vader, pretty cool design for a Star Wars villain- would be a pretty lousy, stupid design if that's what they went with for The Godfather's Don Vito Corleone. Take The Last of Us- got a main character that knows how to craft things and is trying to survive a zombie apocalypse- makes sense if he made a bunch of cool rusty zombie-fightin' armor out of rebar, make him all buff and badass with a bunch of gnarly scars and tats, right? Well, that design would probably be cool- on a portfolio page, at least- but also totally wrong. Because the context and the necessity of the design is about this guy being a dad/father figure, and Ellie and the audience is probably gonna have a hard time connecting with the kind of dude that wears a necklace strung with zombie fingers. That "cool" design would singlehandedly screw that game up beyond saving.
Now, I have not taken whatever class this assignment belongs to- maybe that context is provided there (in which case, maybe I should have saved myself a lot of time and just asked what it is, instead of going on this long rant- but at this point I might as well finish my thought), or maybe it isn't and you have to sorta make one up on your own.
If I had to guess, I would expect the point of this assignment is no more than driving home the point of not just immediately settling on one idea, and to make a point of exploring.
Which is fine for a school exercise, and still a useful lesson- but is that an example of a realistic concept task, by itself? Not really.
(Which is kinda what I was hoping to push you more towards with my previous feedback- showing you can apply your taught learnings to a specific, well-defined purpose as you will have to in a real-world working scenario. That if quizzed on your work, you'd have a concrete answer to every asked, "but why this?" question. ex: 'THIS light bulb is in THIS bulbous goofy shape which reflects on THIS bulbous goofy scientist character that made THIS goofy bulbous machine' or 'THESE light bulbs are in this weird, long, bending, twisting and turning organic shapes to get across the techno-organic nature of the alien ships they are used on.', etc. It's not just a bunch of cool stuff, it's stuff that all has well-defined purpose in selling a specific fiction to an audience.)
Is this class lesson something that makes sense for a peanut gallery to try to art direct you on, as if somehow somewhere floating out there in the ether there is a platonic ideal of a New and Great Light Bulb That Is The Most Beautiful and Correct In Any Context that we can help direct you towards? Again, not really. We presently can only give you subjective opinions that we may or may not be able to articulate clearly, which may or may not be useful at all. We need context to be useful to the purpose here.
I know if I got a work assignment that was just, "draw a bunch of different light bulbs", my first move would be to start hunting down whatever relevant designers/art directors/art managers and make them explain themselves in clearer terms of what they are actually trying to accomplish with this task, as to not waste my and everyone else's time by going down a bunch of dead-ends.
Establish the actual-for-sure-needs, the nice-to-have-if-possibles, the proffered maybe-this-would-be-cools, and figure out within the gaps where I've got room to play and explore- then I'd get down to work. If nobody had any information to share (who would make a game like this???), I at least know my first responsibility would be to come up with a pitch for what the context could/should be, before starting on the specific details. Without that, I'd just be left with smoke coming out of my ears in frustration, plowing through a task that I'd have no clue if I were totally nailing or completely screwing up. Wouldn't stand for it.
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EDIT: Completely agree with all of the above, and it's a problem that I recognised while I was doing the assignment. I'll try to be more specific with what I design
Are there any resources or courses that you guys would recommend on the design process specifically? Most of the stuff I've found essentially boils down to process (thumbnails, sketching, refinement, final) but so few resources actually talk about the thought process behind creating something original. I can usually dissect what makes a piece of graphic design or animation good or bad, but I just don't have the language to analyse the design of an object or an environment.
I feel like to really be able to design anything I need to understand the whole process of manufacturing as well as the historical context, but then it's impossible to know where to start because there's so much designed stuff in the world, and so little information written for the purpose of concept design
@Flay:
I don't know of a specific resource describing a thought process, though I think art books for animated movies and some video games, where they actually have the designers dive into their own logic, can start to give you a sense of where those designers are coming from.
Now, this is a hit-or-miss proposition due to not all books being created equal and not all artists being tremendously articulate about their decision-making- frankly I agree that this is something that gets glossed over too much in tutorials. Maybe they're just embarrassed to talk about it because a lot of the thinking isn't that deep when you get right down to it (not that it needs to be).
What I would say is that for concept design, as opposed to something like industrial design or architecture, the primary need is EMOTIONAL, rather than PRAGMATIC.
That is, your first concern should be with
1) What feeling am I trying to invoke in the viewer? (fear? joy? comradarie? etc.)
2) What abstract design queues do I know will invoke that feeling? (spikes = scary, soft-shapes = comfort, etc.)
3) How can I take everything I know about the world (real world research, your fictional lore, etc.), and essentially use this toy box of facts I've accumulated, to shape into something that fits with my abstract design needs (point 2) which will evoke a particular emotional response (point 1).
If you were doing real world design of real things, these priorities would be totally different- if you're making a dishwasher, the primary thought is to make it easy and cheap to manufacture and the thing works- and as long as it doesn't cost too much, it shouldn't be too ugly either. If a dishwasher makes you feel nothing emotionally, it probably just means it hasn't broken yet. If it doesn't break, most people are going to say it must be a pretty good design for a dishwasher.
But in concept design, what matters is how the viewer is supposed to feel about whatever you're designing- and therefore, you only have to meet a certain threshold of believability.
You aren't building a house; you're essentially building a movie set version of a house. Getting hung up on details from the start, can end up getting in the way of what you're actually trying to accomplish.
So for example, if I'm given an assignment to design a castle, that by itself isn't a lot to go on. I gotta dig in and find the emotion. How is the player supposed to feel about this castle? Happy that they happened across it because it represents a temporary reprieve from the bandits that was chasing them? Or should it feel intimidating, a physical representation of the cold, cruel Lord that commands it?
Let's say it's the latter. (Now I have my point 1)
Now in putting together a reference sheet (I just like to make a huge 7000px wide PS doc and copy/paste GIS results into it), I'll obviously look for real world examples of castles, gothic architecture, maybe some fantasy art that's inspiring- but I might also start putting in stuff that only fits the intended emotion.
What's intimidating? A Kodiak bear. A tidal wave. A cab over semi-truck coming right at you. These are things that generally aren't a part of castles- but figuring out what I find intimidating about these things, will help me design a castle using real world elements. (Now I have my point 2)
What abstract elements might I use? Obviously, scale- all these things indicate a person being dwarfed by a huge size. I can use the idea of the flat-face, boxy semi truck design to create this sense of sturdiness, immovability. I can use the idea of the road- maybe a long, long narrow bridge leading up to this giant block of a castle. Can I use the bear idea, and organize and exaggerate architectural details to imply the idea of 'claws' or 'teeth'? Can I use the idea of the tidal wave- maybe there's some element of rock overhang that creates the idea of this rock seeming like it's about to crash down on anyone approaching, or perhaps it's some architectural cantilever element on the castle accomplishing the same thing. (Now I'm starting towards my point 3).
At this point I should be able to sketch up broadly an idea- and use my real-world reference to give my idea that veneer of believability- the windows will look appropriately gothicy, the buttresses will seem legit, all the little details will be right, to sell the viewer on the idea that this could be an actual place.
But a historian or an architect or an OSHA inspector might look at your castle and say it could never work like that (there's a reason actual castles look the way they do, after all), but that really doesn't matter for our purposes as a concept designer.
Because it's not a castle, it's a means of creating a sense of intimidation in the viewer- that just happens to have castle-like elements. And my Castle TidalTruckBear is going to accomplish that task better than say, Windsor Castle- a real castle that actually exists and functions as a castle.
Certainly, doing your research and reading to understand manufacturing and architecture and history is going to be useful, it's going to give you more elements to play and work with; but it's not the be-all end-all of what should and should not go into a design. You choose the facts you need to support the emotion- just replicating the facts as they are, has limited use.
Now, you might look at my above post about "cool" and think, "wait, how is 'intimidating' different than "cool"? Isn't "cool" an equally valid emotional response to try to evoke? And perhaps it is, if you have a distinct and confident enough personal idea of what is and is not "cool" to give you something useful to design around. But because most people's idea of "cool" is pretty bland and generic (especially any version that 2 people or more can agree on), it's hard to get much originality out of it.
So back to all those context-establishing answers- a good number of them are about dialing into ever-more specific emotions: "a glorious temple" = awe and wonder, "a seedy dive bar" = intimidating to outsiders, comforting to a certain rough in-group. "Wacky cartoon world" = non-threatening, "steampunk world" = whimsy.
If I can nail down what I want the viewer/player to feel when they come across a design, I can start to get a lot better idea of what I need to design.
I hope that helps a bit in shaking off the sort of information paralysis that can happen when designing/researching.
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I feel like I might have internalised the process of Scott Robertson too much. He's one of the better ones at describing his thought process, but he's very much an industrial designer first and foremost. I also feel like a lot of concept designers recommend that you 'think about how a design would be used', and I was conflating that with 'this must be a piece of design that could function in the real world'. That was paralysing me because I'm not an architect, or an industrial designer.
It's probably going to take me a while to readjust my process but at least I have a direction
The only comments I have are kinda minor details about how out curator character would move through this space:
- The desk looks pretty prim and proper as opposed to the mess on the floor- is that because the story is that this character doesn't spend much time typing in the office? Or should the desk be more messy, piled up with more of the junk that tends to accumulate on a desk when working (open books piled up, loose folders, telephone resting on a loose stack of papers, half-filled ashtray, pens and mugs and coffee stains, more articles piled up on the conspiracy theory corkboard, etc.)
-Speaking of newspapers, not sure about the placement of them here- were they in the trunk and they just unpacked them? Were they last reading them in the middle of the room instead of sitting down (where they would naturally deposit themselves nearer the desk)? If they were in the trunk, it would make sense if they was using them to wrap artifacts in for protection, which would be an interesting touch. If you want to show they'd been away awhile, you could also deposit a few newspapers or loose mail near the door, where they'd been put through the mail slot and left to pile up (maybe with a footprint on them if you want to show your character as being too busy for trifling things like the electric bill.
-Roller chair on top of a rug when you've got a nice hardwood floor? Again, maybe they don't spend a lot of time at their desk, but that seems like a pain. Also if it's meant to be a nice rug of cultural interest, a museum curator might show it more respect. (Or not- maybe this museum curator is in it for the action and thrills more than the culture. Or maybe they just are proto-hipster and has an ironic love of tatty old rugs).
-I might suggest raising up the open trunk on top of a crate- if I want to get stuff in and out in a hurry, or I expect to have to leave on a moment's notice, it's going to be easier if it's raised up in arm's reach and I don't have to bend down all the time. You can get some additional storytelling by showing how as the trunk was hastily slid on top of the crate, whatever was on there before got rudely shoved off onto the floor.
-Could put in some packing straw in/around the crates to get some more mess/urgency.
-More of a going forward/rendering thing, but even if this museum is well-appointed and maintained on the whole, you could put a small crack or some dirt/grime in the window if you want to get the idea that there's a war going on outside, and maybe some shrapnel from across the way had hit the building recently.
Now this may seem like really minor, nitpicky stuff- but it's the sort of thing that you can get into (or really, expect whatever art director you wind up with to be into) because you've done a solid job world building, and now it's just looking for those little things that can plus it just that little bit more. I hope you're proud of this one, I think it's really on the right path. :^:
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I've about run out of steam with this drawing, but if you guys have more ideas I'm open.
I fell into a creative rut and did nothing but play Sekiro for a week. But I'm back! Here are a couple of exercises I've been doing from the foundation patreon
Taking a simple structure and redesigning it based off different references:
Kitbashing a design from elements in the sketchup warehouse (WIP)