First Contact with Mirrors
1 day ago
This is just a discussion I found on Conceptart.org's forums. It's a thread where folks discuss how many veteran artists have deemed the 'anime' style as somewhat amateurish. I will post some of the more interesting responses for reference.
Flamedragon speaks:
- With anime, on average it's quite simplistic...like a mouth might just be a line across, the calves might just be lines curving upwards, a line to indicate the neck muscles from the front. I like seeing the muscles show, shadows...I want to get the feeling that the character is alive! That's why nowadays I've been getting back into comic books.
Kev Ferrera:
- I think the limitations of anime art are somewhat analogous to Egyptian Hieroglyphs or Persian Miniatures. It can be beautiful, but its a bit like fast food. Easy and simple and enjoyable, but often offering only empty calories.
HunterKiller:
- The reason Anime exists as it is, is because it's a style intended for animating. It necessarily needs to be simplistic.
Brendan:
- Personally, I don't have anything against the anime aesthetic. In fact it does a lot of things really well using the aesthetic. My issue with young artists placing a strong emphasis on anime is that it drives them into a stylistic and especially conceptual corner. I've seen this over and over, where young artists who subscribe to this style becomes uncreative - all of it ends up looking the same, feeling the same, reading the same - and more over, the concepts don't vary at all. I think it's really important for any contemporary illustrator to diversify, to be flexible and versatile. Subscribing purely to anime, from what I've seen, goes a long way in killing those qualities.
This is interesting - Brendan is convinced that sticking to to 'anime'-style would lead to a kind of 'stagnation' - which is true. More often than not, the only distinguishing feature amongst a lot of anime characters is through hair-type, eye-color. This blandness is dangerous and will definitely lead you to creating a lot of same looking art.
Seba boi:
- As for anime-style animation, as already said before, it's simplistic because it's made to be drawn thousands of times... But that said, there's still a significant amount of very innovative character designs from the anime world... And I'm particularly fond of some of the works in CLAMP, Ah! My Goddess, Cowboy Bebop, Serial Experiments Lain, Last Exile, and Rurouni Kenshin... And I love it when some of them tries to emulate the Mucha style like some art pieces for Wolf's Rain and X...
Nilaffe:
- Why does anime get all the attention? Am I wrong, or do young artists also confine themselves by emulating American comics, Disney, and whatever cartoons are playing on Cartoon Network? If you hop over to the creature-creating world, every other drawing looks like it stepped out of The Lion King, Balto, or Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron - no appreciation for animal anatomy. I'll admit there are a lot of anime artists out there, but before anime took over wasn't everyone drawing steroid-pumped men and big-breasted women with tiny waists?
The important thing... is that anime and manga creators normally have a very strong understanding of anatomy before they begin to push it into their own style. And as mentioned, anime needs to be simpler because of the medium. That's the step that most kids miss... and if they're lucky, they'll figure it out. Otherwise, they're just going to do what most all kids do: copy the stuff they like.
Megas Imperius:- There are certain anime that throw the stylized characters into contrast with realism, in a good way--Cowboy Bebop, for instance, has very detailed backgrounds and, though the futurescape is strange, it's handled in a very realistic way.
And there are works like Castle of Cagliostro which have astoundingly fluid animation--if you really pay attention to the way characters move, it looks almost mo-capped. Not to mention that Castle's environments were some of the lushest I've ever seen in an anime.
Here something. Not all Japanese artists stick with the anime style. If that's what you're thinking... http://www.boilet.net/am/mariko_parade.html
For me, half the enjoyment in researching these old and modern science fiction productions is that they expose me to things that I normally wouldn’t seek out. Thanks to this blog, I’m really trying my best to take each western and eastern properties and see how they would inspire me for my original and fan productions.
However, I sometimes get caught up in this aspect that I fail to see why I am doing it. I sometimes have to pull myself back to the basics and see why I have made this blog – which is to refine my technique, and hopefully, get The Void (my supposed audience) who is reading this inspiration as well to take up a pen and start doing your own stuff.
I recently purchased a really great ‘how to' books on design called “d’artiste”. The book contains a lot of material on how a conceptual artist must think in terms of forms and design. For this post, I will focus on George Hull, an artist who has distinguished himself in some notable productions such as the Matrix sequels. However crappy that franchise has become to some, the book or this post isn’t going to be about that, so keep yer' trap shut. Here are some of George’s design philosophies that hopefully everyone reading this could adhere to.
As a concept artist in the industry, George states that a director is always looking for points in the script and asks for ideas. This fact can be frustrating or rewarding in the creative process. The director would sometimes give a brief description and the artist should know where to take it. The concept artist should know the genre well or else his or her work would fall within the typical trappings of it and look generic and stuff.
The Call of a Concept Artist
When starting off with an art piece, focus with value composition first. Try producing multiple ‘thumbnails’ (small sketches) before starting on a big canvas. The point on this is to have an idea of how the overall image would look lest you wastev too much time fixing and tweaking it. This will also help in determining where the light would and dark values are for the image, so that it would look more ‘solid’ in the final product.
George Hull emphasizes that you have to have images that are bold enough to make a point in a few seconds, yet subtle enough to have depth and emotion. Note that I have shown some examples throughout this blog, yet I haven’t really tackled the subject matter itself.
Provide an art direction which helps people clearly decipher the qualities of a strong imagery. George Hull provides three basic principles in that aspect:
- Knowing the essential controlling idea of a shot
- Deciding on the focal point which will express that idea
- Designing everything in the color lighting and value composition to support that idea.
Attention paid to these steps can be the difference between dramatic, captivating imagery, and a muddy composite of great detail but poor design. This is a crucial aspect in visual effects. I think this is where my art suffers the most.
Looking at the portfolios on deviantART and Conceptart.org, and so many other sites dedicated to amateur and professional artists, you can see just how massive an impact digital art has had on so many young, talented artists and aficionados. A lot of them are pretty good at it which is why it is of utmost importance to differentiate yourself.
George Hull states that a lot of young artists can paint an image and make it "look dramatic, colourful and maybe realistic", but the market is saturated in that end. He emphasizes how having a refined drawing and design ability can help separate your work from the thousands of amateurs in the world.
Forms, architecture, design details and how to draw all of them well are key. Mr. Hull stresses that you can only do this by going beyond digital art, and spreading to more traditional means. Sketching things around you will provide you the kind of training he speaks of.
In Mr Hull’s concluding statement, it would be best to take a look at the pre-production art departments in films and games. Ah. It's a good buy. Now to apply his damn lessons.
Inspirations of George Hull:
Despite the majority of his work being based on science fiction, Mr. Hull finds inspiration in fine artists as well as photography. Among his idols are Sebastian Salgado, Steve Mc Curry, Edwin Church, Kent Willliam, Bill Henson.
I do hope you actually learned something in this post! I suppose I'll probably gush over another science fiction property very soon. Anyway, I hear George Hull worked on some racing movie... I forget the name, but it involves this retro racer... Doh!
Wow. Weird, huh? According to one answer site, the animated epic was "... Scripted by Mamoru Oshii (Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell to name a few), the story contains some familiar themes like power struggles inside government organisations, terrorism, back-stabbing and many others. Based on his manga (translated by Studio Proteus under the title Hellhounds) and two live action features (Akai Megane and Stray Dogs), there is plenty of depth and background in this story."
Gee whiz! I am so out of the times! I really have to find this film on DVD, despite what looks to be another convoluted anime story. Although this is a little worrisome... Charles McCarter mentions "This film is definitely very cerebral, and, like PATLABOR 2, has more psychological and political intrigue than all-out action." Seriously folks, I'm still trying to figure out a lot of the concepts in Ghost in the Shell. OVA and the series.
Whatever man. This is the type of design I want for my projects! If its going to be a 2 hour film with less than ten minutes of high-quality action sequences and the rest is just talking heads talking about existentialist concepts, just like that underwhelming first Patlabor feature, then so be it! Damn you, anime-otaku magazines for telling me its a classic. I almost slept through that one.
This is a strange still feature from something called the 'Last Battalion', or whatever the hell that means. It looks pretty cool. You know what I'm going to do now? Research! I'm going to look through history, and see which time period the Japanese or any other creative people haven't tampered with. Hmm... How about a... a sci-fi universe with a similar concept to Crusades! That's it! It will have over-zealous priest-like soldiers and... and... crap. Stupid Warhammer 40k. Ah, I'll find something that would give me inspiration.
Hey, these designs look so good, and they don't look so bad in real life as well. I wonder if they're selling the live action version of this Jin-roh thing...
What happens when effects gets in the way of a story? Throughout modern visual culture's colored history, there are classic examples where stunning effects, massive setpieces, and bombastic sound design that have somehow managed to fail in carrying an entire production simply because the story was just well... ordinary.
"I have a love of astonishing sights, of films that show me landscapes and cityscapes that exist only in the imagination, and ''Final Fantasy'' creates a world that is neither live action nor animation, but some parallel cyberuniverse."-Roger Ebert
Hmm... I just found an ol' copy of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within lying around the house, so I thought, why not? puts it that "...even though the characters were entirely computer generated, the skin tones, Aki’s flowing hair, without good story to keep things flowing, everything gets muddled." For awhile, you are led to believe that these characters are real people fighting aliens. Then the story gets in the way."Seeing the film though, almost its not as bad as people say it is. And the funny thing is I sorta agree with a lot of what Roger Ebert said in the film. The film had this whole spirit aspect going on (hence the frickin' title) and while it can get really weird at times, I guess they had to have it cuz' it did bear the Final Fantasy title. Mr. Ebert commented in his old 2001 review, "The most realistic are probably Dr. Sid and Ryan. It all comes together into a kind of amazing experience; it's like you're witnessing a Heavy Metal story come to life." I agree... The story felt had that whole depressing post-apocalyptic motif/thing which I have seen in a lot of in my Heavy Metal mag collection.
"The company and its cadre of digital artists have proven that they can create some pretty impressive effects for film, and they have also proven that they aren’t as adept as they had thought in getting into the filmmaking business." The film was a international failure, garnering a hundred twenty million in losses. There was a plan to use the Aki character model/asset for other films in the future, but that planned quickly turned to dust. For shame.
Whatever the case may be, the film is indeed a stunning piece of work. This opening dream shot was really an eye-opener, especially back in the beginning of the second millennium.
And while you know that all the characters were fake, there was that... believability in that they exist in that world. Ebert notes that "Not for an instant do we believe that Dr. Aki Ross, the heroine, is a real human. But we concede she is lifelike, which is the whole point." I guess the only problem was the poor facial capture technology at the time. Lip synch was also pretty off and sometimes just plain bad at times.Imagine that these were the graphics that we could achieve in 2001. At the time of this writing, its 2007, and games are rendering all this stuff in REAL TIME! Thanks to leaps and bounds in processing power, games are reaching that quality with current generation Playstations and Xbox 360s. PC power is also pushing that barrier to photorealism with games like Farcry 2 and those uh... just about every other first person shooter in development at this time.
I was also really impressed with these trooper designs developed for the film. Nowadays, a lot of creative people have focused on this type of design aesthetic (is that the right jargon??) Halo and a bunch of other properties pioneered this craze, since they sold so damn well.
I also liked this concept of the 'touch display' which was has been seen in many features to date, though I remember it most from the film 'Minority Report' starring Tom Cruise. I remember quite a bit of buzz about that aspect in that particular film.
So anyway, the film is indeed a triumph in design. Square USA brought in veteran concept designer Craig Mullins, who helped realize this Spirit's intricate worlds. The film's muted color scheme sorta made me wish for a wider palette, but I blame creative decisions...
Upon the film's release, people threw the term 'Hyper-real' around a lot due to the film's graphics. ‘Hyper-real’ is defined as a means of taking what's real and then putting something into it that makes something happen more than we’ve seen actually happen on our soil. In this case, its making this entirely believable world, yet unreal world. Well, whatever. I'm still impressed with this 2001 one-shot film. Despite bombing so bad, this whole 'hyper real' film making movement produced was still able to produce "wonderful" and "memorable" classics such as Final Fantasy: Advent Children and "Appleseed". More on those films in the future.Wikipedia Entry
Final Fantasy Review
Final Fantasy in Hollywood
I've been browsing TV Tropes terminologies on modern visual culture and I think I have come to realize the importance of understand these ideas before proceeding with any form of concept work for my fan and original projects. It is at least important that I have these ideas on my blog so I will not lose focus.
We begin with the term to begin all other terms - 'Verse'
The Verse
The thing is, I hate that word. I didn't coin that word. And yet because it's on the title of a book of mine, my name is attached as if I made it up.-Orson Scott Card
The Verse is usually referred to with a show or franchise identifier (such as "Buffyverse", "Whoniverse", "CSI-verse", etc.). It is a crafted combination of setting-elements that define the rules for how the world works and sometimes provides for sharing of characters and continuity across more than one series.
Many 'verses have a thriving life in the aftermarket, spawning books, movies, comics and fanfic.
Thus we move on, to a term coined by... Lucas? Nah.
Expanded Universe refers to everything that is not the primary medium. All that other stuff. This can create a schism in fans.
Schism? Golly!
Some believe the entire Expanded Universe, EU for short, is canon. Others do not. It is usually written so that it can be fit in to the canon without having to alter the canon itself. However, later developments in the actual series can make it definitively out of continuity. For example, the Star Trek The Next Generation novel Dark Mirror expanded on the Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror", showing an updated version of that episode's Mirror Universe where the mirror-Federation was powerful and had conquered the Romulans and the Klingons. Later, Star Trek Deep Space Nine had characters go to a similarly updated Mirror Universe, except in this version, the mirror-Federation had been conquered by the Klingons and Cardassians long ago.This Star Trek reference is completely lost on me. I wonder why I never got into Trek... However, its a... good example?
Even if it isn't canon, the Expanded Universe often serves as a place to apply Scotch Tape to the canon through RetCons; this may verge on professional-grade Fan Wank.
The term comes from Star Wars, which has an extensive Expanded Universe covering events before, during, and after the films. (However, this particular EU is much better defined than that of most fandoms. A fan can take all or none of it, whereas most EUs require picking and choosing from contradictory sources. Most, if not all, is in fact vetted by either George Lucas or one of his employees who can, and have, vetoed.)
Odd though that a different term is used in a favorite television series of mine called Robotech' - the term for derivative works is 'secondary continuity'. Honestly, the name itself kind feels out-of-date, and has some fairly negative connotations considering that franchise's history. But I digress. Just some fanboy nitpicking - who isn't guilty of that?
Some fun examples of professional grade fanwank, or just plain professional stuff from my source:
- A less well known example is the 1998 movie Soldier, which was written by the co-scriptwriter of Blade Runner, David Peoples. He has stated the movie to be a "sidequel" to Blade Runner, and the movie includes direct and visual references to the earlier film.
- Transformers. A bunchload of comic books. A number of text stories. A handful of video games. And that's not even counting that not all the cartoons are in the same continuity. Many fans are split over what the primary source really is: the original cartoon is named as such by most, but many others choose the original comic series instead, or the British version thereof, with mixing-and-matching becoming increasingly popular. The term canon is hard to apply here: It all happened, but didn't all happen in the same timeline.
- Halo's Expanded Universe is either created by staff from Bungie, the game studio behind the game, or under their control, and is integrated entirely into the overarching plotline. All of it is entirely canonical.
Sometimes an element from the Expanded Universe is so popular (or just so good) that it gets put into the officially continuity of the original medium. This is a Canon Immigrant.
Here's the concept of a Canon Immigrant. A real interesting one, this is.
The Expanded Universe is a wonderful place, where new ideas can frolic without having to worry about fitting into the canon.
However, sometimes an idea is so interesting that the people who create the canon decide it deserves to become "real". Thus, we have the Canon Immigrant, who is a character who was created and nurtured in another medium and, eventually, imported back into the original. Note that, often, surface details are brought in to play off a new movie or TV series; this isn't that. Rather, it's usually a completely new character, who over time becomes more and more popular with the fandom, often filling some niche that was never quite complete before. If they're successful enough, they'll be included in new entries in the Expanded Universe, cross-pollinating concepts.
With a notable example in science fiction:
- Aayla Secura, a blue Twi'lek female Jedi established as a character in the Expanded Universe, got a few appearances in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and a minor speaking role in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, reputedly after George Lucas saw some comic book art of her he liked. This was fairly notable, as the Star Wars universe has strict and elaborate separations between canon "levels" (with the movies at the top, unsurprisingly) that are rarely transgressed.
- Boba Fett first appeared in an animated segment of the decidedly non-canon Star Wars Holiday Special; however, he was probably taken from the then-in-production The Empire Strikes Back.
Purist fans often reject characters and plots not found in the original work but are included in adaptations. A lot of this has to do with perceived quality, while other times it's just the fact that original authors don't always have strong control of adaptations once they sell the rights to them elsewhere. They just learn to deal with Adaptation Decay, and see it as someone else's problem.
Adaptation Decay is the gradual distortion or even disintegration of a world and its characters during its odyssey from original source material to movie to TV movie then to television series then to video game and finally to licensed derivative work. The dramatic equivalent of photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy... Occasionally though, you have a character who is designed by the creator, but for whatever reason, isn't included in the original work. This makes the fan task of establishing canon difficult. The character might not fit in the old chronology, but the "Word of God" implies they have a sort of elevated 'legitimacy'. Mostly though, this is a case of the creator feeling they had a good idea after their work was released, and finding a new chance to use it.
To clear some more mini-terms up, the Word Of God is a statement considered inarguable because it comes from someone thought to be the ultimate authority, usually a creator or executive producer (or creative director).
In the cases of 'Adaptation Decay' (term description above), fans look for the Word Of God to settle "Fanon" disputes. Which in some fandoms (hmm...) has led to even more disputes and schisms from fans. It's a case of "Lucas said so! Or Capcom said so! Or who the hell said so! And sometimes you sit back and realize just how stupid this whole situation is.
So, dear readers, I have given you a couple of terminologies for you to digest. In some ways, the entire fictional world of terminologies based on fictional worlds is just so freaking ridiculous. But considering I am involved in a 'fan project' called Robotech: Rebuild, I will have to get my hands dirty in fishing out stuff to make this thing a success. Good luck to me!
Source: http://tvtropes.org/
The good ol' days of wanton destruction and violence. Oh wait. Violence is more present than ever in today's media. So why discuss such a non-issue? Well, I was just thinking whether or not the entire concept of bloody violence is necessary for a science fiction space opera type thing. Sure, we got the ol' standbys such as the classic Aliens and Predator franchises showing us just how violent the genre could be, and we got games like Gears of War and Fallout just how cool it might be...
But is this teenage fantasy really necessary in a sci-fi universe?I was just wondering this while reading the same boards for the umpteenth time. Over the decades, we've had the usual assortment of sci-fi violence such as people blowing up or being atomized, fools freezing up in deep space, floating corpses and body parts - you know... kid's stuff! How about giving us some of that buckets of blood and severed spines ala Predator?
I once read the ol' Starwars comic "Shadows of the Empire" and it had Luke Skywalker, lightsaber in hand, slashing some poor guy, cutting his limb in the process. The comic scene had copious amount of blood splattered around the victim, and for some reason, I felt it looked... wrong. Its not just in science fiction comics like that, I remembered watching a failed animation pilot/movie called Gen13 I think, and it was American style animation with a lot of violence - but the violence itself looked like crap and out of place. (These aren't very good examples, I know)
Anyway, I'm rambling. I can only offer so much of what little I know about the subject, but maybe its just too hard to translate grand space operas with insane amounts of violence. Or maybe not... I just recalled the cheesy yet cool 199x film Starship Troopers. Now there's a sci-fi epic with the insane amount of violence I was thinking of! Well, this is a blog, so I might as well wonder if the concept would fit with whatever I'm working on...
In the meantime, waste your time and watch this short.
PS. I was typing this while half-asleep.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is an upcoming multimedia project developed and published by Lucasarts. This new franchise for the most famous sci-fi brand of all time includes a a tie-in novel, action figures, a comic book, a reference book and a role-playing game supplement.
Honestly folks, despite a certain level of... 'crappines' to Mr. Lucas' films and merchandise machine, you really have to give him a hand for generating great excitement over all the stuff he makes. This new line seems to be no exception.
The one thing I love about Lucasfilm/Lucasarts previews is that, for someone like me who is untrained in the entire Creative Process of developing a certain type of media, I just love these kind of behind-the-scenes look. It may be a peek at times at the idea generation phase, but it really makes for fascinating television. I will not deny that I found the Super Special Edition Original Trilogy Starwars DVD previews compelling as hell - and the new trilogy's behind-the-scenes featurettes aren't so bad either.
Lucas seems to somewhat understand just how rabid his fanbase is. Everything is captured in film, nothing is spared - from Concept to Completion. (Unlike other franchises...)
Speaking of concepts, you will notice in that nifty video that Starwars: The Force Unleashed's main concept was simply...
"Kicking someone's ass with the Force"
Repeat that three times and you'll appreciate this new franchise. You can really feel the enthusiasm of the Lucasarts Creative Team, who are constantly trying to one-up themselves in everything they do, all in the name of Lucas. But anyway, the team bases this entire project on this... idea. It really does take a strong concept to drive a project such as this - something in which a lot of other franchises seem to miss.
In a similar fashion to how most fan-fiction ideas are born from hardcore fanboys, you have these professional geeks working for Lucas, talking about how this and that event was referenced in the original movies, and how they wanted to expand on those ideas and concepts. While not new, I just love that whole spinoff-ish idea - especially when done right.
Imagine how a single word/reference in a movie or series can be a gold mine of potentially cool and profound fiction. Starwars is literally littered with these kinds of story nuggets - the more famous ones are references to Kessel Run, Bothan Spies, Ord Mantell, aw heck, I can give you a whole list of geek stuff (all of which have already been expanded in the Starwars novels, games and comics).
"Good concept art for me is the beginning, it... unleashes creativity, so to speak... What if we do this, what if we do that...?"
I would love to dwell in the future about Concept Art in general but I think the concepts shown so far for this new franchise will really make your head turn. It's like they really hit the mark in capturing the feeling of the game, without having to actually play it (reference to Media Res in my previous post Xavier Marquis)
The concept art for this feature always had these amazing stuff I've always imagined Starwars to be. Wide open shots of hundeds of AT-ST and AT-AT walkers in a ruined city, or other similarly dazzling display of artistic prowess are just... great. But like everything, its just the beginning. Though I have to say that the developers are really delivering well in the promise shown by the earlier Concept Art.
One last, quirky thing I saw in the feature was this... continuity checking. I really have never seen anything like it until now. From what can be plainly seen in the featurette above, the Creative Team first faxes question forms with questions like "Can Vader's apprentice be this or that?", and then The Man himself, George Lucas will check either a Yes or a No.
Despite all his faults and ideas, they treat the man like a god, as opposed to other franchises were the original creators of a show are mocked and laughed at. His ideas and inputs are like the Holy Grail - the Core Continuity. I find it kinda odd beyond reason actually, but its not really that different from what I am doing now with some of my own projects. All in all, it really made me wonder how more continuity-sensitive franchises are run.
I hope you had a good time reading this, and I hope you read the other posts in this blog. Feel free to leave some comments and suggestions!
Yes, you heard me right, I'm not a big Halo nut. I've played the first game, and it didn't exactly impress me. The second one upped the scale a bit, but the gameplay isn't as life-changing as people seem to say it is (as compared to the first Half-Life). But looking at the hype build around this latest Halo, and the world its building around itself, I might actually learn to love this... game involving the 'Master Chief'.
Why? Aw man, just watch these two vids:
ARMS RACE Part 1 & 2
Who wouldn't fall in love with a franchise as cool as that? And they've also got a series of videos up on Gamespot with the message "Believe". It seems to be working, noh? Yes, some of the videos are a bit hammy/cheesy, often referring to this Great War (complete with a Brit's voice to add credibility to the narration) but I leave that up to you. It sure beats listening to some guy in some podcast saying "This franchise is in a great place right now, blah blah blah..."
Gamespot Link of "Believe"
They even got this old dude to play some fictional war veteran from the epic battle in Halo! The developers are really trying hard to sell Halo as this great epic. Is this a good concept? With the right budget, of course it is.
The trick to 'Epic' status:
- Have characters speak an inordinate amount of 'cool' one-liners
- Strong female leads that butts heads with strong male leads, and when male gains advantage, he looks cooler than ever
- Take your simple 3 note music theme, get a 300 piece orchestra, and have them play it
- Sweeping camera angles should all be set to wide, showing your sets as imagined by the Concept Designer
- Take as much ideas from sci-fi media (i.e. classic movies like Aliens, Starwars Original Trilogy, Star Trek, Serenity, etc.)
- Intergalactic politics / religions makes anything feel 'epic' (Force, Bene Gesserit, The Covenant Ruling Council)
- Create viral videos/promotional stuff and other 'alternative' marketing schemes
It's a shame that technology will make these trailers look... quaint/tame in a matter of a few years. Still, one can always look at these clips and have some degree of fun.
Sample of Yoji's Metal Gear ArtThe industry's emphasis on 'media res' - or having the concept artwork (coupled with strong lighting, composition, etc.) reflect the final result of whatever it is a company is trying to achieve, so yes, I have much to learn.
In future post, I'll be dealing with Concept Design 101, what to avoid, and what you could do.
Also be sure to check out (as of post time) Xavier's older works:
Xavier Marquis' Unupdated Webpage
Cool Killzone Trailers
The man takes a lot of inspiration from anime, and that his favorite artist is Metal Gear Solid's Yoji Shinkawa. He states that whenever he wants to find inspiration, he need only look at his idol's artbooks. He claims that they both adhere to the idea of 'cliche +1' (which brings me back to my previous post on Space Marines and Supersoldiers)"You can make something totally new and amazing, but with around 90 per cent based on common references" Pretty good words to live by as a concept artist.
