Concept artist: overview of the profession

Hello! My name is Tatyana Nazhimova, I am an artist in mobile game development. I have been in the industry since 2013, went from Junior to Lead position, tried myself in the role of art director. I design any art for games that fits into the 2D framework, and in this article I will talk about the profession of a concept artist in the gaming industry.

Who is a concept artist?

A concept artist invents the visuals of the whole game in the early stages of art development: characters and their equipment, environment and design of its individual elements, key art, as well as the overall style of the game. Gaming graphics have their own specifics, and the concept artist must come up with creative ideas, taking into account the genre of the game, the expectations of the players and the technical requirements of the gaming device.

Differences between concept art and illustration

Illustration — is a detailed picture with a plot and a developed environment. Its goal — is to show an interesting action using stylistic artistic techniques. Concept art has different goals, although sometimes it looks like an illustration. Concept — this is only the first stage of developing a game asset. It must clearly show the design and idea — so that it can be passed on for development to 3D artists, UI and VFX specialists. For example, the character must be depicted in full growth, visible from three sides and shown in an enlarged form in those parts where the design is not visible in the main picture. At the same time, it can be drawn without working out textures and without realistic lighting, it can be assembled using the collage technique or half-generated by a neural network and modeled in 3D — the tools are not important, it is important to clearly convey the idea.

What skills do you need to work as a concept artist?

Concept artists are those who know how to think creatively, non-standardly, find memorable images and organically fit them into the world of a particular game. This is the most creative profession that you can imagine! But what skills do you need to master to become a concept artist? First of all, you need to have basic drawing skills. This concept includes fundamental academic knowledge:

• Sketching (correct construction, transmission of plausible proportions, anatomy, spatial thinking);
• Volume transmission;
• Stylization;
• Composition;
• Harmony of color;
• Transmission of different materials (textures and degree of transparency);
• Graphics purity (important for creating icons and interfaces, as well as completed objects for 2D games).

And no, you can’t skip learning all the above due to the набирающих обороты AI: you will not be able to use neural networks effectively because you will not see the mistakes they make. AI is just one of the tools for work. And there are many tools for art development, and everyone has the right to choose the convenient ones. Nevertheless, the gaming industry has its own standards, which helps, first of all, to work in a team and exchange sources. Here are some of the tools:

• Adobe software package. We draw in Photoshop — it is absolutely necessary;
• 3D programs: Blender, 3D Max, Maya, etc.. They are not necessary for the concept artist, but they help to speed up and simplify the work process, approach the solution of tasks from different sides. Usually they make dummy blocks in order to bring them to the final stage in 2D;
• AI burst into our lives in 2022, but companies are still hesitant to introduce it into work, as the legal side of using this technology has not been fully regulated. It’s definitely worth trying to generate pictures to get acquainted with the program. But inside companies, their own tools with their own trained models are still encountered and you will be provided with a clear pipeline of work to start using the neural network relatively easily.

Looking for our first job as a concept artist

All your skills, both basic and technical, will be reflected in the accumulated portfolio. A portfolio is the most important baggage that helps to attract attention and get the desired job. The portfolio is usually designed in open sources, for example, on the Artstation website. It is most convenient to look at projects and related information about the author (working communication channels, self-description, programs used) there. When you are ready to break into the industry, you will start looking for vacancies on hh.ru and Linkedin.com, you can also find telegram chats with vacancies in game development, study the Career (Jobs) tab on the websites of specific gaming companies or just type in the search engine «Concept Artist vacancies»‎.

What about money?

Let’s refer to open sources on the Internet. Since you are most likely still getting acquainted with the profession, I will give examples of salaries for начинающих specialists. It is logical that the more experience a concept artist has, the higher the salary will be. In 2023, several studies were conducted on salaries in the Russian-speaking game development, but the results were given only by White Nights Media Group. Unfortunately, there is no clear sample of artists without work experience in the public domain, but there is useful information on the numbers. Here are some excerpts from the report: In addition to annual surveys, there are resources where you can look at analytics on salaries in general. For example, djinni.co shows that Junior 2D/3D earn 500-700 dollars a month in the game development of Ukraine. Concept artists belong to 2D art, so this information answers our request. And getmatch.ru says that product designers in IT at the Junior level receive 50-120 thousand rubles a month in Russia. Let’s make an amendment that salaries in IT are slightly higher than in game development, so roughly I dare to assume: 50-80 thousand rubles a month — it seems to be true for beginning concept artists. Input salaries are approximately clear. What to expect in the future when the necessary experience is gained? Everything will depend on your successes, on how much benefit you bring to projects. Statistics from the sources already mentioned here says that specialists with 3-5 years of experience receive on average 100-200 thousand rubles a month.

Evolution of the Concept Artist

Concept artists do not always become immediately. Often artists change roles in different companies and projects, they can be 2D artists (generalists), UI artists, illustrators, marketing artists — it all depends on the workload on the project and on what strong points a particular specialist has. The gaming industry is very dynamic and constantly changes development strategies, adapting to market dynamics. So artists: have to continuously learn, change and prioritize to make everything look cool — this is necessary to stay competitive in the labor market. Therefore games need to be loved no less than creating art 🙂

How to get the first experience as a concept artist

Invaluable experience at the beginning of a career path is considered participation in game jams. Game jams are short events where teams of a few people (usually a programmer, game designer and artist) make a small demo of the game. The main value of such events is that you will learn how to work in a team, what real tasks for an artist look like, and also show yourself in the community and make valuable acquaintances. In addition to game jams, you can join an already working team of enthusiasts. You will get similar experience, but on a more complex project, since development is not compressed by deadlines. You can also make fan art to an already existing universe of games, developing your own vision and offering new ideas to make the game even more interesting — this attracts hr, and it’s generally very interesting to do. To master the profession of 2D artist and smoothly enter the industry, the course 2D Artist will help. During the training, you will create several projects for the portfolio from scratch: you will try yourself, among other things, in the role of a concept artist, learn to generate and implement ideas, conduct work systematically and цельно, observing deadlines. The course lasts more than a year, and in addition to the pool of knowledge and skills necessary for working in the industry, you will receive real tasks from gaming studios, and for the last two months of training you will complete them under the guidance of a curator.