I want to be a concept artist / illustrator for movies and games.

Jurgen

Hi,

I have artwork here :
https://www.artstation.com/jurgenbotha

Here is a concept of 'Bog Man'. A character I am developing for a fighting game I'm making.



I would like to learn a lot more about character design and telling a story with my art.

Could you give me any advice?

Elyaradine

There's a post that Feng Zhu made a few months ago that I think is very relevant if your aim is to make concept art something that you'd make money out of, particularly with the portfolio you've currently got on ArtStation.

I reviewed a lot of portfolios last week in Paris. The contents basically broke down into two categories:

1. For professionals working in the industry, their portfolios mostly contained real world, grounded designs (historic, current day, real costumes, etc.)

2. For student's looking for work, their portfolios mostly contained made-up, high fantasy/sci-fi content. Real world stuff were nearly non-existent.

There was a real contrast between pros and students. The obvious difference was really interesting for everyone to witness first hand.

To stand out as a designer, especially if you are junior and looking for work, it's not about "doing extreme designs and different to be different." In fact, studios are looking for capable junior designers that can assist on the project by adopting design languages, researching and understanding history and culture, and having the ability to visually communicate designs with strong fundamentals.

At FZD, we have many projects that train students to design within limits (real world). Below is such an example. We call this project "between worlds." Take a read and see how we break down the design process.

https://fzdschool.com/blog_posts/visual-storytelling-through-set-design