Game environmental concept art how is it done?

Yea something i've always seen and wondered, how do they do that?
Creating a 'smooth' and realistic 'no border' sort of look. I suppose drawing comes with practive, i mean you got the technique and all you need is to add detail to your perspective drawings but something i've never been able to grasp is how to 'colour it in'

http://scribblejames.blogspot.com/se...&max-results=8

Check out a few of this guys concept art hes done for uncharted. How do you reckon he does those?
How do you reckon he does about doing the whole thing?
6h pencil sketches? They sure are complicated perspective drawings. Some of them you look and it takes a while to find the vanishing point, its like a photo

Based on what I see in most environmental concept art pieces, the artists first go about creating a rough image with quite large brushes, then add detail as they go. It doesn't seem to be a very complicated process, perhaps not even difficult either (a matter of knowing the key light and colour tricks that add space and volume to images), but quite time consuming, especially when the detailed areas are to be drawn.

Ok well paint for me is like an entire new skill. With painting, digital or real paint i'm basically starting from where i left off when i was like 8 hence why any digital painting i've done looks like its done by a primary school child.

But on his techniques i've taken several works and tried to identify vanishing points and just analyse then a bit. Not looking at colour at this time. And they dont look like 1,2 or 3 point perspective drawings. As i said they have a more real life look to them while still retaining the use of perspective.



Now i'm assuming this mountain fort one is a 3 point perspective with the 3rd way off the bottom of the page and the right on also way off to the right. If you divided the page into thirds horizontally you can see the general left vanishing point area is placed according to the rule of thirds



2 point perspctive. Now what made this one stand out for me is that is appars as if you are 'in' the picture as opposed to some of my similar style drawings iv'e done before where you feel as if the picture ends before it gets to you and you are not standing it it. Do you get what i mean by this? Maybe you jsut have to continue drawing and imagine there's more room off the page, probably put an a3 piece of paper underneath an a4, but after trying to indentify the left vanishing point i found there was just a general area, and some points eg the street closest to the viewer doesnt even follow the same vanishing point area, in fact it veers right off to the left of the page

Am i missing out of a vital piece of information here? I havent done 'art' since primary school. During high school i've opted to go through to 'graphics' or 'Design and visual communication' instead of taking Art. So while i've been taught how to draw isometrics,obliques,planometrics,1,2,3 point perspective i've never been taught anything about making landscapes, area's etc. I've been taught to draw a single thing eg a house, desk, car but not the whole picture.

So i wont ask about colour and texture at the moment, i'll try and see if i can get a light pencil perspective drawing done sometime and once it looks good i'll start thinking about the extras.

I've done some research today on environment conceptual art, and it seems that the majority of works are drawn with a combination of matte and raw digitalized painting techniques.

As for the perspective, it's something that you will learn gradually as you draw. You can use geometrical perspective lines to help you orient your work, but I would in fact recommend going directly from the mind and letting the imagination do the rest. If a piece of art has good atmosphere, perfect geometry isn't really necessary at all, as demonstrated by the works you provided above.

Now what made this one stand out for me is that is appars as if you are 'in' the picture as opposed to some of my similar style drawings iv'e done before where you feel as if the picture ends before it gets to you and you are not standing it it

This is a tough one, but my bet would simply be the way the image has been drawn. The viewer stands on the walkway, and can easily imagine how the canal continues past the end of the piece. To convey the feeling that the viewer really is inside the drawing, you should let objects be unmercifully slashed off towards the edge, giving the impression that they continue past it.

k well well i've found a bit more info and one thing i go was, do some research and have a picture or two in front of you so that your drawings look 'believable'. Done that and its looking a little better. All i have is a book on pompeii with some artists recreation of the houses and that. And i also have a realistic colour palette to choose from. So i've just pieced together a Roman style drawing which i'll begin colouring in using gimp. Using the airbrush at teh moment and its creating a hand drawn/painted effect which is good

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Aim finished yet.
Used GIMP. With airbrush tool because it gives it a hand pained feel to it with the uneven strokes.
Havent added much detail or textures yet. Its brighter than i wanted. If i wanted something to appear more 'grungy'. How would i go about doing that? Would i just colour over the existing stuff with grey or would i paint over it with a darker version of that colour or what

Hm, well, you'd just pick a shade colour and go all crazy over the shaded areas of the drawing. Obviously, if the main surfaces are still too bright, you would have to lessen their light slightly by (perhaps) greying them out, but that's something you will have to judge on a case-by-case basis.

Perhaps the Colour Balance, Hue/Saturation, etc ... tools could help with that ?

Looks good so far !

Done a bit more. Trying to get lighting though. That, i reckon can make it a whole lot more believable if done right. Though i dont reckon what i have done isnt bad, i have to admit it was a fluke. Anyone know any techniques for adding light? The effect i'm sort of looking for is that technique that's noticeable in games where you get a bright light and its pretty much blinding when you look at it and then it sort of wraps itself around closer objects . I'll try find a few examples

Originally Posted by Voodo chile

Anyone know any techniques for adding light? The effect i'm sort of looking for is that technique that's noticeable in games where you get a bright light and its pretty much blinding when you look at it and then it sort of wraps itself around closer objects . I'll try find a few examples

That would be contrast. If most of the piece is dark, the little light there is will seem much stronger as a result.

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The light source in these pictures sometimes hurts your eyes jsut looking at them, as if you were actually staring at the sun or a powerful light source but they dont seem to be that much lighter than say the white lines paper of an ordinary excercise book.

The point is that they stand out against the rest of the background. What you have is a normally covered backdrop, but then a huge swathe of light (white) across the center piece.

Or, as is the case with the first and last, you have high concentrations of light against a contrasting darker surface. This is especially noticeable on the first image you provided.

so if i wanted to go about doing this would i start off (before doing anything else) just painting the light coming from above the horizon basically with white an then add of layers of darker light as i get further away from the light source? And then draw everything else on top of that?

I normally start with whatever it is I'm going to have as the backdrop (usually the sky, then the ground/sea), and then move on to make all the objects that will occupy the picture. After that, I apply light sources such as the sun, while making additional layers for every distance level where I add reflections and shine effects. I have never tried applying light first, since I use light as a tool rather than the actual star of my works, but that might also work.

Hey at school we've got this a3 scanner. I've got an image in jpg and ttf format but you see i can only paint them in black. The paintbrush and airbrush tool can only paint in the colour black. I cant change the opacity or the colour.
Basically i can only paint in black or white

In GIMP, you'll find the necessary options in...

Picture/Image -> Mode -> RGB

I'm using a Swedish translation of GIMP, so obviously, I don't know the exact naming of each tab, but hopefully this should offer some guidance.