how many illos are expected of a concept artist, while on the job?

[maestro_612]

I'm not sure if it's been discussed before, but what would really help me, (and other artists) is if I knew how many illos/designs are expected from a concept artist everyday. In addition, I'd like to know how much time is given to the artist for each piece...would it depend on the particular subject matter they were working on (obviously, 1 charac. design, would not take as long as doing an immense environment)?

It would help a lot, because, at this point, I'm struggling with speed. I feel like each digital illo I'm working on should take only 2 hours max, with 1 hour for a charac. design. Being aware of a timeframe would only help me put out higher quality work. By the way, being somewhat of a noob, I'm under the impression that a piece by someone like Justin Sweet would only take about an hour or so.

If anyone has any info, it would be much appreciated, and put to good use.
Spanks a lot

[Jason Manley]

the images on justins website are almost all under one work day...its been a few years since i worked with him but back then he was spending about two-three hours or so each with multiple figure compositions taking as much as six or eight.

pencil drawings...marko or wes will do many each day. if they are really under pressure they could do twelve or more in a day...but averaged out it is less than that.

if you can do two solid pieces each day then you are doing ok...

if you can get two solid pieces each day...ready for approval...no input needed...then you can run with the majority of those just starting out without question. if you want to run with the best...sparth for example showed me a painting he did in less than an hour..environment...took him about 30 minutes i think...


jason

[Magic Man]

Everyone works at different speeds, at different qualities at different levels of finish in different types of environments, there is no one correct answer, but I will say that if you're a newb, then don't even worry too much about speed just yet, worry about quality first and foremost, 10/10 times, people would rather see a piece or design take a little longer than have rivers of crap flowing from your pen...and if you've never been in that type of environment before, a good art director will always give you that leeway for a few months.

If you are a low level starter, you will have seniors above you who will be working much faster, and you will pick up this work ethic - unless the company sucks and they don't have good workers.

A lot of vets in the field - I know of Carlos Huante for example, 1-2 good designs per day of each character, but these are relatively thought out characters such as:



He doesn't do much speed painting stuff, and on that note - all artists have different workflows as well.

The most common approach is idea generation - which will see lots of thumbnails, sillouettes etc, and the art director will narrow them down to a set to be developed. These are then further developed whether traditionally or digitally with different color schemes and peripherals being added/subtracted. Art director will the help with narrowing again, and will lead to more fine tuning. This is the general process most people take since it is controllable and easy to work out how much work is actally being pumped out by artists - this is the process I use to direct my jr designers, for lack of a better reason - because I do not trust them on their own accord just yet.

Personally I use a range of idea generation techniques myself, if I have a good idea of what I want I'll start designing straight off, if not I'll use sillouettes, thumbnails, abstraction etc to help get my brain ticking...as well as that, research is a large part of what you do, and is unquantifiable work. Its the thinking behind the work that takes up a lot of time.

Then you have to look at what is being created - vehicles, character/creatures, environments, buildings etc all have different time frames, generally I'll say that creature/character design takes less time than environments and vehichles, environments take the most times, sometimes you'll work on one environment for a week or more depending on scale, finish, etc. Then it also matters if it is a design shot, or a 3/4 design, or an orthographic, etc etc.

I will say though that the less explaining you need to do to say a modeller - the better, so taking a few hours more to describe the frm visually will a) let modellers work more easily b) impress the financiers - it says to them "hey, this guy knows what the feck he's doing" - never underestimate the importance of eye candy.

You will work slowly obviously when you first start, but your speed will increase, always try to have a nice balance between quality and speed though, we're not creating fine art (or if you want it at that level, you'll need to sacrifice some of your own out of hours time to get it done - I do that sometimes). Take as much time as you need, but as little time as you can is a good rule to stick by.

For further visual reference as to workflow and speed the pros work at - visit www.thegnomonworkshop.com and orer a couple of feng zhu's dvds, he's been in the industry a decade or so, and you can see how fast a real pro works, dont try to emulate it or you'll most likely end up with rubbish, but know what is a high standard so you can work yourself towards it.

m

edit: oh, also forgot a major thing - the people who take your work and develope game/film assets from it. If you have top quality guys with a lot of experience, you won't have to detail out everything, as they will also have a strong grounding in tangible design, some of them don't even need orthorgraphics to work, give em a character design in 3/4 view and they can mark it up quick as hell - a lot of awesome 3d modellers also have strong 2d background. For newbie modellers, or modellers who don't draw at all - imo these modellers generally aren't very good - they will need a lot of things literaly spelled out for them otherwise they genuinely cannot tell that the guys legs are too small, or that the hand resembles something more like a deformed penis than a hand. If you have a good modellers, you can spend more time on design than worrying about having to translate it into orthorgraphics later, if not, you'll need to think...a lot lot more.

[maestro_612]

Mr. Manley, and Magic Man...you have no idea how much freer I feel right now! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I won't waste your words, and get to painting, RIGHT NOW

[vigostar]

this was a pretty helpfull thread... I havebeen concerned with speed ever since I started to draw again and got serious thoughts about making this my future one day.. I have a friend who is a grafic designer with his heart in art and gives me great advice all the time.. one of the major things he told me was that the turn around time in the real industry is usually pretty quick.. in his case he would need spot illustrators that wouldneed to produce a few thumbs or roughs then come up with a final that same day.. usually they dont even know they need a spot illustrator.. they use them alot to fill space... ultimately saying that to work in the industry you need to be fast and it need to be readable... this of course made me very nervous because the style I have developed takes quite a while.. I told my friend that I needed a way to learn how to get quicker.. He advised me to keep on doing what i was doing and learn first... get what Im doing well down packed... speed will come to you... I took his advice and I have to admit that my speed has gotten tons quicker.. i would say by about 35% quicker.. and in the interum I have developed a more simplified style that can be used for faster works.. the moral of the story is to take magic man's advice.. dont rush... hone your skills first.. you'll see how much quicker you get once lighting, structure, design, figure, perspective and all the rest come as second nature.. anyways.. great thread...

[Dizon]

Mr. Manley, and Magic Man...you have no idea how much freer I feel right now! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I won't waste your words, and get to painting, RIGHT NOW

I could see it in your face! LOLOLOLOL