concept central

He's  French, he likes the hip-hop culture, and his art kind of objectifies women. His day job at Steambot Studios has him working on the most interesting franchises out there. He's Joel Dos Reis Viegas.

He studied at prestigious Les Gobelins, an experience he describes as "...something unique for anyone who wants to be an talented artist". He said it's known as one of the best animation schools in the world.



Well, guess what happens when someone who has a background in animation enters the concept art world. Yep. His drawings are full of beautiful gestures and powerful emotions!!!!


He uses all kinds of apps, like Artrage for color blending, Painter for those large, painterly strokes, and Photoshop for everything else. He also has above average 3D skills (which greatly complement his work), thanks to the wonderfully intuitive Mudbox. What a guy.

Of course, he wouldn't be where he is if he didn't develop discipline. It's said he worked as in-between animator and storyboarder for an Animation studio in Paris called Alphanim. Very interesting!


According to an interview at CG Channel, one of the most important skills an artist can learn is to control one's creativity, as a flow, and to be productive even when inspiration goes up and down. That's discipline for ya'!

"I have a fascination for explosive and controversial characters and I love to paint these. It could be a punk, monster, warrior or serial killer; I‘ll try to paint with the most appealing rendering possible" The guy never runs out of inspiration. Deform reality, observe, and all that jazz.




"...Hip hop is my culture, I grew up listening to rap music and looking at graffiti. It still influences my art. Sci-fi is everywhere, all the concept artists I know already painted sci-fi in the past, so I thought mixing both universes could make something interesting." That quote, my dear readers, was directly lifted from CG Channel.



His advice to all you wannabes and amateurs. A little something he learned from all those conferences and setting up his own lil' studio with a couple of concept art heavyweights: "Teamwork is the key when you start a structure with your friends. Its important to be able to see their skills and to learn from them."



"The other advice is be respectful with your friends, don’t think because you are friends you can be less organized or use less clear communication. You should treat each other like colleagues to keep good working relations. This is the key to succeed in creating together."

Interested? You might be. So go rummage through the archive through his blog (doesn't get updated often), or better yet, his deviantART.

Oh, and just so you're aware of what other graduates of this "Les Gobelin" churns out, why don't you watch some of these animated shorts?

Voodoo. Exquisite animation. It is what it is!


The classic Pyrats, which I featured already once in this blog. I didn't know it was animated by grads from this school. Took seven months, and was shown on an animation festival in 2006. Still awesome.


Traintamarre. Great mood. You may have not noticed, but I love 2D animation.

That's all you need to know about him really. The guy's resume is all over the net anyway, and I'm sure they've done waaaay better writeups than I ever would. I just... had to feature him here, that's all.


Okay just so I have something to say for this post, according to Mr. Dan "Adonihs" LuVisi's' lil' deviantART FAQ, he first started out real terrible-like. He said he could draw, sure, but the moment the pen touched the tablet...it was just one of the most irritating processes ever. "I felt like giving up, I found myself not know how to choose colors or do anything." As you can see, he eventually got the hang of it.


Nowadays, he usually works on a canvas roughly around 4500 x 6500 pixels (300 DPI = poster size) with tons of layers. It takes... three to four days to complete a piece.

Most of his skill was derived from the great tutorials at www.thegnomonworkshop.com. He did NOT attend art school. But I think you knew that.

His work sports that wonderful, always-in-vogue, retro-inspired look. Just about all the artists I like seems to have dabbled in this style one way or another...

You can see a lot more of Mr. Vasili's wonderful work at HonkFu! Just no hotlinking, please.

 
I first heard about good ol' Mr. Gary Tonge's work on an issue of ImagineFX magazine. I then bought Mr. Tonge's book, Bold Vision. It's nice. Too bad I only found out about his showreel today. Beautiful stuff.

I'm lazy.



See more of Gary's work at http://www.visionafar.com/ or you can get other updates on his deviantART profile.

So far I've had regular blog staples like "Featured Portfolio" and "Artist Profile" where I showcase a sampling of some of my favorite visual artists' works. I have poor memory, is all. And since most of my content is "borrowed" from places like ConceptArt.org, I decided to feature another thing from that place. Sketchbooks!

I love ConceptArt's artist's sketchbooks. This is where you get to see your favorite artists early works, work-in-progress (be it sketches or paintings). The evolution of an artist is absolutely fascinating. But enough of my babbling.

Let's start off on a high note with the magnificent Jana Schirmer (Janaschi is her ID), an absolutely amazing visual artist based on Leipzig, Germany.


She was born July 30, 1987... and what amazing figure studies! Amazing considering these are some of her earlier works of 2009.

Nobody knows how long this bubble will last. In the meantime, I'm loving every minute of it. Here's another artist doing the same!!

It's Matthew M. Laskowski, ladies and gentlemen! Lovely, slick style. Gotta hand it to him. He's at his best when he delivers clean, crisp illustration like the one I used for the title.

He's got that larger than life perspective thing going on, which I love. Colors are vibrant, but I wouldn't expect any less in this post-Mirror's Edge world.

The guy loves photography, and for some reason, that always translates well for illustrators like good ol' Matthew.

He's got this original character names named "Maia" from his original graphic novel "Sythesis". Sorta like Artgerm's infamous Pepper. I like quirky stuff like that.

 
All of you students and aspiring artists out there looking to break into the art/media industry... read this article. It might just give you the mindset to survive. Here's an excerpt:

We know you've been working very hard on your screenplay, but before you go looking for some professional feedback, you might keep in mind the following piece by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson.

​I will not read your fucking script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fucking script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

You're a lovely person. Whatever time we've spent together has, I'm sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II.

But I will not read your fucking script.

Go on. Read the full article http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php?page=1

Now replace what you've just read with the specific artistic/design field you're working on and you're good to go. The article was reposted at ConceptArt. You might find some good responses there to answer any artistic turmoil within you.

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=168616&highlight=I+will+-read+your+fucking

People have been "pimping" this article for a while now, but for those of you who haven't heard or read it, here's an excerpt:

When you're an artist, people try and take advantage of you in ways they wouldn't if you had a conservative career (though whenever you're self-employed, people will generally try and take advantage of your skills).

They don't know they're doing it, because in a society that doesn't value art for the most part; it's normal not to value artists. And artists often don't know it's happening, because they're part of that society and the trend of devaluing their own work. [...]

That is the culture of art and artists in Western society. People on my friends list are guilty of it. People I meet and hardly know, and people I know very very well are guilty of it. I'M guilty of allowing it (though you can probably tell I'm getting reaaaaaally sick of it now). Friends of mine who are artists participate in this 'I will sell myself short because I'm an artist and you expect me to sell myself short' culture.

It's the expectation that bothers me. It's not like I don't freely give my art as gifts, occasional pro-bono book covers, or haven't sent pictures in the past. I do and have. I genuinely want to.

It's the expectation that because I'm an artist, I exist to do art for others, for free, or for nothing more than a 'gee, you're so talented' (I know that, that's why art costs money, because it's a rare and desirable skill that not everyone can do - even with training). It's the assumption that I am some bohemian who basically wants to spend her entire life sharing my creativity with others, but never making money off it - because bohemians live on tea and noodles and tuna and don't want for anything more than that if they have art in their lives. Right? Wrong. Or at least, certainly wrong in my case. Doctor's appointments, art supplies and a mortgage aint cheap.

Full post:
http://moonvoice.livejournal.com/1075184.html

It's a universal problem, probably more so where I live. If you've got 90% of the population that's barely scraping over the poverty line, who's gonna care about your sketch or painting? Nearly everything here's either pirated or shown for free, so paying for a drawing or even a painting seems ludicrous and a tad hedonistic.

Of course, there's hope. One reply referred to an interesting book you probably should seek out and read:

"... It (the post) reminds me of a book called The Talent Code that proposes that it's not so much about raw talent but passion, drive, opportunity, etc. Without those, even the most talented individual may get nowhere. Worth a read, especially if you see it on sale."

Agreed, you need passion, skill, but most importantly exceptionally wealthy parents / spouse to back your career up. I've met a few successful artists who got where they are because of these benefactors. The rest are probably slaving away at some dull, demeaning desk job staring at the office clock.

Fung Chin Pang is another one of those talented Chinese illustrators that has developed a nice little niche in the international market. Like Benjamin Zhang Bin and fellow Hong Kong-er Lokman Lam, they draw girls of legal age pretty well. Cute, innocent, vulnerable... Nevermind.


The guy racks up at least a minimum of 100,000 hits per illustration in deviantART. There's nothing that says "You're popular!!!!!" if you get that sort of attention for your work.



I should know. It said on his deviantART profile. Amazing, isn't it? He's also worked on a book entitled "鶯~EROTICA". It depicts pretty, young things wandering around picturesque neighborhoods...

... Or staring at themselves at the mirror, feeling insecure about their bodies. That sort of thing. You can check out more of the world-famous Fung Chin Pang at his deviantART profile:


http://cellar-fcp.deviantart.com/gallery/

Oh, I forgot he did concept work for some game studio...

Anyone aspiring to do their own animation short should probably have a look at what "Tete" has accomplished with "Fumiko's Confession". It's short and cute.

Based on some of the Youtube comments, the translation goes like this in the two speaking scenes: