General Concept Art Advice

Being in a priv­i­leged posi­tion of being able to help guide other peo­ple in var­i­ous ways is a hum­bling experience.

When some­one of their own free will comes to me with a ques­tion that will poten­tially shape a large part of their life or help them to choose a path to travel, I con­sider it a real honor. So I do my best to give them an authen­tic point of view that is my own, as opposed to a luke­warm limp wristed polit­i­cally cor­rect answer. It may grate some peo­ple, but I am unapolo­getic about it.

That isn’t to say I tell them they have to do any­thing I talk about — that they must do this or else they will fall into a pit of acid and go to hell. That’s not what I’m about.

In fact, I do like to start with a dis­claimer, and that is to take any­thing that any­one says with a healthy pinch of salt. This includes any­thing I say as we are likely to be very dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als, the oppor­tu­ni­ties opened to me may not be present for you, just as there are oppor­tu­ni­ties present to you that may not have been around when I began.

Things change so fast in this tech­no­log­i­cally depen­dent age that, if I can make an analogy…recipes can lose their flavour very quickly.

As I am in the field of con­cept art and illus­tra­tion, log­i­cally, the bulk of the ques­tions that come my way deals with that path and what it entails.

Just recently, I was sent a lovely email by a young woman who is con­tem­plat­ing her life jour­ney, or at least a very big chunk of it.

It is a sim­i­lar ques­tion to many that have come before it, so I asked her per­mis­sion if I could post it here to my blog where it may hope­fully help some of you out. I have of course changed her name and other ref­er­ences to insti­tutes, but other than that and a few log­i­cal and syn­tac­ti­cal alter­ations, her email and my sub­se­quent reply are pretty much intact.

I hope you get some­thing out of it.

Her email:

Hi Dar­ren,

I just read your ini­tial sketch­book post at ConceptArt.org, and wow… that was the most inspir­ing thing I’ve ever read. Ever.

I’m cur­rently a sec­ond year under­grad at Grey­land Uni­ver­sity, Com­puter Sci­ence major, Asian par­ents, the works. My par­ents never even had to tell me that art wouldn’t be a lucra­tive direc­tion; I think all Asian kids just know that instinctively.

I’m also cur­rently intern­ing as a com­puter engi­neer and I recently found out that the woman who mod­er­ates our meet­ings (who is not an engi­neer her­self and seri­ously does fuck all for a liv­ing) grad­u­ated from Grey­land Art Academy.

It made me so depressed to think that even a tal­ented artist who grad­u­ated from such a rig­or­ous art pro­gram could still wind up doing absolutely noth­ing down the road, tak­ing notes for a room­ful of socially awk­ward men on a daily basis. The entire prospect of some­day build­ing a career in art just dimmed to faint flicker.

So I’m going to stick with CS for now, but your story has given me so much hope for what else I might be able to achieve as long as I keep work­ing on my own to improve as an artist.

My dream is to do just what you’re doing now. I want to make baller games and even­tu­ally be able to teach oth­ers what I’ve learned. But I need to get so much bet­ter, because I haven’t stud­ied nearly enough to pro­duce con­cept art for real.

So I have a ques­tion: were you able to study art and improve while you were in college?

If so, how did you find the time, and how did you keep your­self moti­vated in the midst of all the par­ties and life, etc. I get dis­tracted SO EASILY, but I really want to cap­i­tal­ize on my time at Grey­land, because it’s the most inspir­ing and moti­vat­ing place I’ve ever been. I’m afraid of wast­ing that inspi­ra­tion by being lazy.

Any­ways, thanks for the story, thanks for the hope, and I hope to hear back from you. (OMG and sorry for writ­ing so much!!)

Best, Linda

My response:

Hi there Linda,

It was lovely to get your mes­sage, thanks for that and the kind words about the stuff I wrote.

Con­nect­ing with oth­ers who have a sim­i­lar life story, who per­haps aren’t as advanced in expe­ri­ence or help­ing to give them a word or two of encour­age­ment when all they have known is doubt and fear yet still inex­plic­a­bly are drawn towards the cre­ative ener­gies of their life is com­pletely the rea­son I wanted to write that up.

Call it an exor­cis­ing of past demons too if you will and a basis for any redemp­tion that needs to take place.

Your story seems very sim­i­lar in a lot of ways to my own and a lot of oth­ers out there, so I guess the first thing that is reas­sur­ing is that you’re not alone.

You’re not the first to expe­ri­ence your ques­tions, fears, aspi­ra­tions and doubts…just as you will not be the last.

Now, before you read my advice, please take it on board that I give it from the stand point of some­one who is in a very dif­fer­ent place from you, men­tal­ity and expe­ri­ence wise, not that that is any­thing unique, every­one is dif­fer­ent, but what I am get­ting at is to take my advice with a grain of salt as we’re not the same per­son. What works or worked for me may not nec­es­sar­ily work for you.

Also, I tend to be a bit more spir­i­tual these days, so please excuse if some of this seems really vague or Zen like.

Okay, in ref­er­ence to your com­ment on a lucra­tive career direc­tion, that in itself is, I feel a dan­ger­ous point of ref­er­ence, in that it implic­itly denotes that money is some­thing to strive towards and will estab­lish some sort of base­line hap­pi­ness – some­thing most peo­ple are look­ing for.

I feel it is impor­tant to under­stand that hap­pi­ness comes from within, espe­cially from what you think, as opposed to what you have or may have, which is what money is – a token that allows you to delay attain­ing a phys­i­cal good or service.

I’m not against money at all (and I’m not say­ing you’re all about money either), I per­son­ally like a lot of the finer things in life. But if that is your major point of focus, you’re bet­ter off going into some other indus­try like finance.

Money is of course needed for daily sur­vival, but as I grow older and I ques­tion things a lot more objec­tively, I find that a lot of what makes many of us unhappy – lack of money, rela­tion­ship issues, envy, etc stem from the world around us telling us through media such as tele­vi­sion, news­pa­per, radio, con­sumer mag­a­zines and other peo­ple per­pet­u­at­ing this thought pat­tern that you “need” all of this to be happy.

House, mar­riage, cars, designer wardrobe, exotic hol­i­days, thin­ner stomach…you really don’t, to be hon­est, I con­sider them to be what Greg Manchess refers to as “Golden hand­cuffs”. There’s noth­ing inher­ently wrong with striv­ing for any or all of these things, but be aware when they really begin to affect your “true hap­pi­ness equilibrium”.

For me, as I’ve grown a lit­tle older, I’ve found that the less I worry about these things in an “OMG! I’m going to die if I don’t have that new shiny mate­r­ial good!” the hap­pier I become.

When I walk down the beach near my house and look across the beau­ti­ful, expan­sive ocean and hear the waves lap­ping gen­tly against the pier struts and I breath in the fresh salty air while the sun shines on my face, I know peace and hap­pi­ness. And the price was sim­ply open­ing myself up to enjoy these things that most of us take crazily for granted.

An inter­est­ing side effect is that as a result of unlink­ing mate­r­ial gain from my art­work, the pres­sure to make my art­work con­form to other people’s expec­ta­tions dimin­ishes, which para­dox­i­cally unshack­les me to do bet­ter work which strangely meets client expec­ta­tions in a higher way. Once the exter­nal pres­sure is off, you’re free to really ask your­self “What the heck is it that really makes me tick?” you become inter­nally dri­ven and sud­denly noth­ing a client or employer can ask is daunt­ing because you ask of your­self greater and greater things – which I must men­tion you may not always suc­ceed at.

So on this point, in a very round­about way, if you spend energy wor­ry­ing that it will not be a lucra­tive career, it prob­a­bly won’t be. If you free your mind from that, relax and do the work because it is a part of what makes you com­plete as a per­son, you’ll be much more likely to suc­ceed – and it’s almost pre-requisite to be like that in this field. You have to love it so much you’re will­ing to do it in your own time for free. Expe­ri­ence, espe­cially early on in your career is the cur­rency you should be most focused on.

In ref­er­ence to a sec­ond point that you men­tion, regard­ing your mod­er­a­tor hav­ing gone to a rep­utable school and not doing any­thing of note with it, that’s an inter­est­ing point, but one that you really shouldn’t be too con­cerned with. It is of course nat­ural to look to oth­ers for inspi­ra­tion, but be weary of who you do look at as we tend to digest and then reflect much of what we see in oth­ers, and even more so at a young age when we are espe­cially per­cep­ti­ble to being influ­enced by oth­ers who we deem more “expe­ri­enced” or “intelligent”.

Now, in play­ing devil’s advo­cate for a moment, I’d also like you to think of not judg­ing that woman so harshly, you only see her for a frac­tion of her time, yes she may be lan­guish­ing in a dead end job which has noth­ing to do with what she stud­ied, she may do that for the next 50–70 years and pass on with regret for not chas­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties in abun­dance out there.

Or.

She could be work­ing her butt off in the time you don’t see her, toil­ing away at her job as a mod­er­a­tor in order to pay the bills while devel­op­ing her­self as an artist. Jack Vet­tri­ano worked as an engi­neer for years, toil­ing away at his art for decades before becom­ing an “overnight sen­sa­tion” at the age of 35. His paint­ings, which take about a day for him to do now sell con­sis­tently for six figures.

So, try not to judge peo­ple so harshly (it’ll give you more wrin­kles than you know what to do with), bet­ter to turn that energy in on your­self to work to make your art bet­ter, and look at peo­ple in the field you aspire to who have “made it”, read about their tri­als and tribu­la­tions and under­stand that if they made it through alright, there’s no rea­son why you can’t do the same.

Now, if you’d like to become a con­cept artist, I’d say great for you! It is an excit­ing field, the job is almost never the same and you get to work on your art skills all day in a cre­ative fash­ion. It’s also one of the most com­pet­i­tive fields to get into because of the skills required, the sheer num­ber of peo­ple who want to become con­cept artists and the com­par­a­tively small num­ber of posi­tions and jobs out there for such people.

So if you’re not look­ing to become one of the bet­ter artists, you either won’t last long, or you’ll lan­guish on unin­ter­est­ing jobs that kill the soul. With that out of the way, don’t at all feel dis­cour­aged, I do that for a liv­ing and I don’t think there is any­thing spe­cial about me, nor a lot of the other con­cept artists I know. But there are some vital ingre­di­ents that I per­son­ally feel are respon­si­ble for me doing okay, that I’ve learnt that I pos­sess along the way.

Now I’m not say­ing you need to pos­sess these, just that I pos­sess them:

1. I love what I do more than any­thing. Includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, fam­ily and friends. If I had to choose between all of that and art, there would be no con­test. Harsh but true. And I am one of the hap­pi­est peo­ple you will ever meet, so I’m not some depres­sive type who cut’s himself.
2. I am learn­ing to improve in some way with every stroke I put down on paper or tablet, if you’re not learn­ing, you’re either stalling or mov­ing back­wards. There is no room to be lazy if you want to become great at what you do.
3. I ask good con­struc­tive ques­tions of myself…bad ques­tions are ones like “Why do I suck!?” Good ques­tions are ones like “How do I improve the descrip­tion of form?” Good ques­tions, mean good answers, which means knowl­edge and growth.
4. I have per­sis­tence. Stu­pid mule like per­sis­tence where if some­one were to say “You can’t do it.” I say fuck it and do it any­way and either prove them wrong or fail. Then try it again. And again. And again. Until it works.

You also men­tioned a few other things that I deem impor­tant to look at and under­stand that in pro­fess­ing these points, you already hold some of the answers you are look­ing for:

“I haven’t stud­ied enough to pro­duce con­cept art for real.”

Firstly, if you’re com­ing up with things from your imag­i­na­tion, you’re already a con­cept artist, that’s the basis of the work, that you can con­ceive of some­thing which does not exist and to put it on paper, no mat­ter how rough a form. So con­grats, you’re already doing what you want, per­haps not pro­fes­sion­ally,  but you are in essence pro­duc­ing con­cept art “for real”.

What I believe you meant, is that you haven’t stud­ied enough to trans­late those ideas into a work­able form that is pre­sentable to oth­ers in order to sell your con­cepts to them. There is a dif­fer­ence and it is impor­tant to under­stand that this dif­fer­ence exists.

In response to study­ing, my answer is that I did not study art at all dur­ing my col­lege years, becom­ing an artist was the fur­thest thing from my mind and all I was wor­ried about was going to the gym, hang­ing out with friends and chas­ing girls haha.

I only found out about con­cept art after col­lege and was work­ing full time, so I guess my sched­ule was even tighter than if I had stud­ied art at university.

When I did how­ever find out about this and wanted to make a go of it, I dis­ci­plined myself to come home from work every day for 6 months and teach myself from DVDs and books, every night and on week­ends too. I made a com­mit­ment to cut off just about any con­tact with friends and fam­ily mem­bers and prob­a­bly alien­ated a bunch of peo­ple by doing so, but that is how I taught myself art.

I’m a 150% type guy, I don’t tend to be able to do any­thing half way, nor do I like to, if I don’t want to do some­thing, I’ll quit. If I do, I’ll work my ass off to deliver more than is required.

My advice on dis­trac­tion is to firstly develop in your mind what it is you really want, tell your­self this dream 10 times a day every day until it crys­tallises in your mind, so that you can hold it in your hand, turn it around, see all the facets of your dream.

When it becomes some­thing tan­gi­ble, when you realise that the only thing between you and that dream is hard hard work, you’ll work hard. Don’t even worry about tal­ent. “Tal­ent” is the word invented by peo­ple who haven’t made the effort to find out the real story behind why some peo­ple suc­ceed and why most don’t, so they put it down to some inex­plic­a­ble force. I don’t con­form to that the­ory, I believe to a large degree that we are all nat­u­rally inclined towards cer­tain pur­suits, but that we have a more pow­er­ful force that can be devel­oped — and that is self determination.

The rea­son you per­haps don’t work at it as hard or con­sis­tently, is prob­a­bly because you’re not sure it’s worth it or that you can attain it or that you don’t really want it, but it seems like a nice dream any­way so you keep it around like pet dog that you can tell peo­ple about.

Want­ing and doing are worlds apart, and the chasm that lays between them is hard, dif­fi­cult, soul search­ing work and that is why most peo­ple do not become artists – because they are not will­ing to sac­ri­fice, to pay the price that is required.

My hope is that this email make sense, didn’t come off too harshly and that you get some­thing from it =)

So, long email huh? I hope you find some­thing useful.

Peace, Daz.