I want to get into creating concept art (need advice)!

[LuminusTytus]

Hey everyone! This is my first post on this forum I found. I signed up because I wanna learn how to draw concept art digitally. I own adobe photoshop CS5.1 but I'm not sure what other tools I need to get started on learning this craft.

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me out with my question and give me any advice they feel is important for a complete beginner.

I've never been a drawer (on paper) or on any other digital mediums but I am semi decent at photoshop.

I'm guessing I'm going to need some kind of computer art drawing tablet to get into this. I've been told to get the Wacom Bamboo Touch tablet.

I don't have much money but I really wanna get started on learning how to create digital concept art, so again, any help or advice on what tools etc I would need would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Hitsu//San]

Hey Luminus, welcome to CA.

To do concept art you need 3 fundamental thing:

1: Skills

2: Imagination!

3: Passion

You totally can't do concept art if you miss one of this!

Now let's start with questions... do you know what concept art is? What are your skill set? How old are you (this is not fundamental for the job but i can help you better if i know you better)?

Just to let you know anyway, any concept artist can do the same thing you'll see digital in any other medium either pretty much. If you have the skills to do concept art it's not like that you need photoshop or a wacom cintiq to do it. Years ago there wasn't such powerful software or advanced tools, only paper and pencils but concept art was already there. So if you want to start you can catch a piece of paper and a pen and do your concepts in there. Today most concept artist use photoshop or painter and a wacom tablet (intuos for most) cause it's fast, not cause it's needed.

[LuminusTytus]

Hey Luminus, welcome to CA.

To do concept art you need 3 fundamental thing:

1: Skills

2: Imagination!

3: Passion

You totally can't do concept art if you miss one of this!

Now let's start with questions... do you know what concept art is? What are your skill set? How old are you (this is not fundamental for the job but i can help you better if i know you better)?

Just to let you know anyway, any concept artist can do the same thing you'll see digital in any other medium either pretty much. If you have the skills to do concept art it's not like that you need photoshop or a wacom cintiq to do it. Years ago there wasn't such powerful software or advanced tools, only paper and pencils but concept art was already there. So if you want to start you can catch a piece of paper and a pen and do your concepts in there. Today most concept artist use photoshop or painter and a wacom tablet (intuos for most) cause it's fast, not cause it's needed.

Thanks for replying to my post!

Well I know that I have passion and imagination. As far as skill, that's something to be acquired through learning, unless you mean "talent."

Concept art is the art process used to come up with "concepts" for productions such as games and movies I believe. But it's also just art. Art is art whether it's used for conceptual purposes or purely for aesthetics in my opinion.

My skill set? Are you asking me about specific skill sets, like how well I know adobe photoshop etc? I'm decent at photoshop. I know how to work with layers and such, and I'm proficient at using a computer. You might have to be more clear when you ask "what are my skill sets."

I'm 23 years old, born in November of 1988.

I prefer a digital medium since I have a choice between the two actually, but I know the applications are probably different.


Again, thanks for replying to my post. I'll be waiting to hear back from you.

[F4celess]

What you need, on top of fundamental skills. is the willpower to practice, So much that there won't be a day that you don't at least think of what you could draw and paint. Create the pictures in your head.

Assuming you are between 15 and 19yo. I recommend getting a cheap graphics tablet. Don't worry about quality of the tablet if you go with Wacom. It's just a size and feature difference between the models. Start with a Wacom Bamboo of some kind. great platform for beginners.

Since you are already familiar with Photoshop. I think you should keep using it. No point in spending too much time learning new softwares or traditional drawing instead of learning what you can do with Photoshop. But, you must make a habit of doodling and sketching when you have the time. It activates the brains creative stuff and are great practice.

Note that I'm just a amateur, But it wasn't more than a year since I decided to go digital and the improvements has almost been explosive.

[LuminusTytus]

Hey, sorry for the late reply but for some reason I couldn't respond yesterday. I kept getting a pop up which said my post needed to get moderated. I come back today and my post was never posted, but now for some reason I can post. Strange...

Anyways to answer your questions I have plenty of imagination. And for the passion, well I'm not entirely sure yet. I feel in my gut that I really want to do this. I'm excited and know it will be hard work and take a long time to learn, but right now I'm scouting it out to see if it's really for me. As far as the skill goes, I believe that's something one acquires over time through a lot of practice, so I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by "skill." Maybe you meant "talent."?

I believe that concept art is the art process creators use to come up with concepts for things like movies, video games, etc so that the creators can get a feel for what they're working on. I believe it's also just fine art, which as an aesthetic value as well.

What are my skill sets? That's a little vague seeing as I have skills sets in things like tile installation. But then I'm going to assume that you meant skill sets related to concept art design lol. Well actually I'm not sure what skills are required to be a concept artist other then being an excellent drawing and good at marketing your services off to potential clients. I'm semi decent at photoshop. I know what all the tools on the left pallet do, I'm familiar with layers, etc. I'm familiar enough with photoshop that if I don't know what a feature does or what it's for, I can get on youtube to find a tutorial to learn it. Finally to answer your last question about my age. I'm 23 years old and I was born on November of 1988.

Yeah I know concept art can and is done on regular paper with pencils and ink and all that, but I don't like the idea of having paper, pencils, etc laying around on tables. I'm a digital junky, and the idea of using photoshop and a touch tablet for making art sounds amazing. I also was watching some videos on concept art design and the creator was talking about making a rough sketch of the art, and then going back over it (in a photoshop layer) and adding more detail and or changes. I'm familiar with photoshop layers, and layering like that sounds like a lot of fun!

Anyways, I know my post was kinda long. Sorry about that. I'll be waiting to hear back from you!

[Hitsu//San]

Let's make it clear: For me talent doesn't exist.

There is understanding, willpower, knowledge and there is brain experience (wich most people call talent, generalizing on all the other quality that need an enormous effort to achieve).

I think everyone can do everything in his life, no matter what.

Now back to the main topic, i know that doing concept art on digital is much easy to do it entirely on paper but the first thing is to learn to draw. If you don't have the tools yet (seems that you don't have a digital tablet) start studying on paper. There are so much things that you need to study in order to be able to do this kind of thing. Before even thinking on doing it as a full time job you must master perspective, proportion, form understanding and material knowledge. It's really really hard i won't lie to you. Right now i think you have to focus on improve your skills in every way you can.

To be more accurate about yourself you need to show us what you're capable of, then we can start to talk about how you can become a concept artist one day.

[LuminusTytus]

Good, because people love to say you have to be talented to be good at creating art. I think it just takes a lot of practice and perseverance to get good at it!

I can't say I know much about the baseline drawing skills you mentioned that are needed to pursue this line of work. In fact they probably aren't there at all at this point, but I can't be entirely sure. I'm assuming that I'm starting at the very bottom level of the learning curve (obviously.)

I don't have money, so I can't pay for an education, which means I will have to teach myself with learning material such as books, tutorials and videos. It will probably be much harder to learn without going to school, wouldn't you say? Do you have any suggestions on the best starting materials I can study with seeing as I'm a COMPLETE beginner at this?

[Hitsu//San]

You can't achieve almost nothing without sacrifice, you'll need some money to spend. The best thing you can do is a life drawing class for starter. You must open a sketchbook here in CA an post your drawings asking for tips about you mistakes. When starting out you're always terrible at spotting mistakes, the fastest thing is to let someone else with knowledge help you. In short the fastest way to learn is in a school ambient. Doing things on your own can be a very slow process. Fortunately i'm a semi self taught artist and i know how hard it is to learn on your own. It will take several years. To gave you an idea on how hard can be i can tell you that i've taken pauses from jobs once in a while to study and my study and praticing ratio is about 10-12 hours per day for months, it's double the time i've spent wasting my time at school!

Anyway you can use books, find someone that can help you grasping the basis and probably you want to see tutorials on youtube but you have to be sure you're watching someone that knows what's talking about. Start with drawing things around you and studying and making practice to draw 3d shapes and perspective, you can find books everywhere about the topic, even dvd and tutorials. This is the way to start, learn forms and use them to recreate objects around you.

[LuminusTytus]

Alright, well I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me on here. I'm gonna keep looking into the subject and if my interest for this keeps up then I'll probably get a bamboo tablet or an older model intuos like you told me to in that other post of mine.

I want to spend as little as possible at first so if it doesn't take, I wont be out the door very much. I know I could start out with paper and pencils but I'm really not a paper and pencils kinda guy. Like I said, I'm a digital junky lol. Not to mention if I were to use paper and pencils I'd have to scan in my work to get it on the computer and I don't have a scanner.

[Hitsu//San]

I hope you're not falling in love of the idea that having some fancy piece of hardware can make you create concept art or that knowing a good software can help you being creative cause it wont. Every good concept artist can do concept art with sticks and stones if necessary, never doubt about that.

[LuminusTytus]

No I know digital art takes thousands of hours and many years to master. I just prefer digital mediums.

[iambanana]

LuminusTytus: As countless other people have told you, just forget about doing digital art for now. Practice with a pencil and paper. In time, you will be ready to go digital.

And don't even bother replying to this. You really need to get drawing and stop talking. If I know the mods correctly you are about a Photoshop layer away from being banned.

Best of luck.

[Lhune]

Stop making these threads and get drawing already. You've just wasted hours of your day that could have been a good start in your improvement. Nothing wrong with being curious, but you're pushing limits here.

[JeffX99]

LuminusTytus: As countless other people have told you, just forget about doing digital art for now. Practice with a pencil and paper. In time, you will be ready to go digital.

And don't even bother replying to this. You really need to get drawing and stop talking. If I know the mods correctly you are about a Photoshop layer away from being banned.
Best of luck.

In Overlay mode at 20%.

But I have to disagree about going traditional. Stick to learning digital...it's what you want to do anyway, and the learning curve required will mean I'll be dead by the time you realize you should have just stuck to paper and pencils.

[LuminusTytus]

In Overlay mode at 20%.

But I have to disagree about going traditional. Stick to learning digital...it's what you want to do anyway, and the learning curve required will mean I'll be dead by the time you realize you should have just stuck to paper and pencils.

lol Okay, I think I got it. Start out traditional with paper and pencils. I've changed my mind and have decided that's what I'm going to do, assuming I decide I'm going to devote every hour of my life for the next few years learning to draw.

Last question. Do you know how to close a thread on here?

Thanks