Concept art tools and stuff

edited in Tutorials
So since the topic of Concept Art came up I started doing some digging - I've always marveled at the speed with which ca gets made, the efficiency in strokes and the feel of it. But I've never really investigated into the techniques... So now I have :)

Sharing some cool links. If you got more please share :)

DISCLAIMER: All the brushes and tuts won't magically make you good. You need to practice and earn your skill if you want to get good. All these are just resources, not magic wands.

Me, I'm just personally interested in seeing how it works so I could start practicing in that direction :)

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Mad giant treasure trove of principles about colour theory, etc:
http://www.floobynooby.com/ICG/artvalues.html

CA.org's brush sharing thread, quite useful:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82641

A whole pile of brushes, with accompanying works created with them. Some have step-by-steps. Good to learn from:
http://theroundtablet.com/category/brushes/

An artist's brush collection. Looks pretty good.
http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/download

A collection of brushes/tutorials/end pieces of industry artists.
http://theroundtablet.com/2011/06/27/photoshop-brushes-of-the-pros-for-free-skills-still-required/

Comments

  • edited
    Cool! I'll check those out.

    My personal favourite is Maciej's brush pack. :) Even though it was made for concept art, I use some of them when I texture too. They're wonderfully organic.
    http://tiger1313.deviantart.com/art/Brush-Pack-v0-1-381264656
  • http://hi.baidu.com/blur1977/item/6e5b166c30a9700aa1cf0fd6 is my personal favourite brushpack atm, which has a nice balance between drawing tools, texture and shape stuff.
  • Josh, our artist, has recently put together a brush pack over on DA. I'm sure he'd appreciate feedback if anyone wanted to try 'em out.

    http://joshuanel.deviantart.com/art/All-I-Need-Photoshop-Brushes-394117569
    Thanked by 1damousey
  • before this just becomes a brush sharing thread;

    Something every Concept artist should watch are the FZD school videos. The man has so many projects under his belt and is very open about sharing his techniques. throughout his videos he offers a lot of well grounded advice. things like focusing on the right aspects of the piece for speed, so that a director/client can see what's going on in your head as quickly as possible. etc etc

    seriously, lookit: http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL
    Thanked by 1Tuism
  • OMG @damousey that bunch of stuff is AMAZING! Videos like this, just watching it, BLEW MY MIND how they use photographic sources, but not copying it. Wow.

  • ikr!

    this youtube channel is one that I camp at every time I'm recovering from being internetless. It's literally dozens of hours of solid advice.
  • edited
    Yeah Feng is great. I'm not even an artist but would set my laptop up with these episodes playing and just absorb theory.
    (Even now I can hear him going "mkay, mkay... turn dis layer on... bonk... bonk... bonk, mkay" :D )

    Then when I finally got a graphics tablet, I really felt an improvement on my (very basic) art skills.

    I was even inspired enough to make this:
    image
    image


    Thanked by 2hanli WelshPixie
  • Dude! Good work man, what "very basic art skills"?!?
    Thanked by 1hanli
  • edited
    Thanks! Yeah if you look closely there's no proper perspective, the shading is all funny and slapdash and the texturing could be improved..

    The only reason it looks acceptable is because of stuff I picked up watching Feng Zhu's tutorials
    - constantly balancing light and dark,
    - add lighter and lighter hues to each layer of the background to increase percieved distance,
    - draw a line drawing first then fill in the colour over it
    - plus the biggest thing of all: I used this as my starting point, so it already gives you composition, perspective and colour values:

    image


    The idea was to do reverse-concept-art: Take scenes from my favourite game and paint over them to get a richer environment feeling.
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