TL;DRThe artists describe a concept artist as someone who turns words and ideas into visuals and solves problems, such as making designs fit Star Citizen's strict rules like interiors fitting inside exteriors.
Well, that's a concept artist for video games for spaceships, but a concept artist is broader than that. Talk to me about the position itself.
S
SamConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I'd say translate the words to visuals.
J
JacobConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I would say in addition to that, problem solving for sure, because usually those visuals aren't correct right away. There's a lot of problems to solve, especially with Star Citizen, where components, metrics, stuff like that.
So unlike in other projects, with Star Citizen you have to work to very specific rules. A door has to be as big as a door needs to be. Whoever concepted the Millennium Falcon way back when didn't have to worry about the inside fitting inside the outside. You certainly do.
I would say that it is that figure between the ideation of a product and the final result of it, the one that explored all the different ways something might go and decided, we'll do this because, and can tell you why it made those choices.
It's taking the words, taking the ideas of somebody else, of a designer, for instance, and giving them form, giving them shape, giving them color, giving them personality. It's finding out if this idea is actually viable, can actually exist. It's literally taking thought and bringing it into reality.
TL;DRMost of the concept artists are self-taught or came from varied backgrounds, such as product design with a private master's course or a games art degree, rather than one specific training path.
S
SamConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I always liked to draw, and then I wanted to draw properly, got into the loop, learned what concept art was, and just liked it, started studying it by myself.
I graduated in product design. I started working in the product design and transportation design industry in a pretty famous car design company, manufacturer in Italy. I understood that it wasn't for me, really. Nothing particular. It was just too real, and I really like the virtual world a little more, so I did a master in concept art, still in Italy, did some indie work in Germany, moved here in production, became concept artist, became senior and lead.
No, it was a private academy. It was a very small course. The best thing it did was really introducing me to the people in the industry and motivating each other. The industry in Italy is not very big, so moving out was almost mandatory.
J
JacobConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I'm self-taught as well. Mostly because concept art, I would say, is a bit more of a niche job, at least for now. So where I'm from, Germany, there are not really any, at least not any good schools that have concept design courses. There are some around the world. There are some very good ones. Usually they're quite expensive, though. I'm not saying they are bad, but I'm saying the schools are not as good as ones in other countries. So self-taught, was working freelance for a while, and at some point joined Star Citizen, and it's been very nice so far.
I have a degree in games art and design, which I call a gaming license. And I got that six years ago now. And I worked at Frontier for a bit, so I actually worked on Elite Dangerous for a bit. I was at Frontier, but the work they were giving me was not very exciting, because I was on F1 Manager as well. And if you're thinking, what on earth do you design in a Formula 1 management video game? It's a great question. I also didn't know what the hell I was doing. And then I messaged this guy, and he was like, yeah, OK, we'll let you in.
TL;DRThey chose games over film or luxury design because of who they make things for, player interactivity and, for one artist, a deliberate path aimed at Star Citizen.
I would say it's who you do it for, and that was my main concern with the luxury market. So I was working for a lot of yachts, planes, politicians, billionaires around the world. The public you do a video game for is generally a very different public from the one you would do the most expensive bracelet in the world for, or an 80 million yacht for. I did a yacht that was consuming as much as the city we designed it in. So that's why. And I wanted video games, not really for video games themselves, but for Star Citizen. That's the reason I chose to go to Egosoft first, because it just made sense if I wanted to end up here, as I was a fan from a long time.
I got into games on my university course in the first year. They have people doing 2D animation, 3D, games. So you try stuff for a whole bunch of different fields, and I dipped my feet in each of them. But video games were the one that spoke to me most, and also because I actually play games in my spare time, so obviously I care about them, so I'd like to make them good. So for me it just makes sense to be doing concept art for games. And also I hear some horror stories about how designs can go in the film or TV industry, where directors can have influence they maybe shouldn't, and it leads to some very bad things happening, is what I've heard. So I thought, let's go with games, and games have been good to me.
J
JacobConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I would say for me it's the level of interactability that people have with what you make. It's really cool that in a video game, especially a video game like Star Citizen, a player can really look at every nook and cranny of the design, can walk around, open up all the component bays. I think it's just a lot cooler than seeing the design you made for maybe half a second in a movie, just fly by in a specific shot from a specific perspective. It's an interesting challenge. I think the end result is just more impressive though, usually.
TL;DRThe artists cite influences including music, aviation and car design, Japanese anime, real-world spacecraft and a fondness for chevron warning stripes.
S
SamConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
I get inspired a lot by music. It all depends on the design that I'm doing.
That's something really personal, because I hear the sounds and the scenes and everything, and I imagine how this ship will look with this as a soundtrack, and it will sound cool and look cool. So it needs to match the coolness.
J
JacobConcept Artist, Vehicle Concept Team
So for me, it's a lot of real-world influence. I was always very obsessed with aviation, still am, and car design. So a lot of product design, sleek forms, stuff like that. In terms of media, I would say a lot of Japanese stuff. So classic anime like Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, Evangelion, that kind of stuff. I would say the media I like is disproportionately from Japan.
I also get inspired by some anime stuff, a lot of the same stuff that Jacob's mentioned, but also just space in general is pretty cool. I like to look at real-world spacecraft where I can, because even though the stuff we do is obviously very far removed from anything that NASA is doing right now, it's still good to understand a lot of the principles going on there. Understanding why real-world rockets and ships and cars and whatever look the way they do, I think that's very helpful.
If everything you've made is pretty solid, you can be satisfied just in the fact you've made some pretty cool stuff, even if no one really gets to see it. At least you get personal satisfaction out of it, and maybe they'll be used for other stuff later down the line, even if they're not used for the original purpose. So you make peace with it, I think.
It's another RSI thing. Get excited, RSI fans. It's a little RSI salvage ship. It's going to be a tiny little dinky guy. It's going to be smaller than the Vulture. So it's going to be a starter ship as well. So you've just got the game, don't want to fight guys because you're a coward or you're lazy, whatever, you can go salvage, and you can use this thing for it. It'll be cool.
TL;DRThe artist walks through three entry-level salvage ship concepts, including RSI-style designs with front salvage grabbers, noting salvage arm movement is undecided and the third design is their personal favorite but not their decision.
This was meant to be similar-ish to the Mantis, actually, so it had some inspiration from that. So on the front, it's got its little grabbies for doing its salvage stuff.
Yeah, they'd either come out or... We're not sure how much movement it's going to have on it yet, so there's still a lot of interpretation there. But it's also got the little frilly bits on the side, like what the Vulture's got for the scraping stuff.
This guy, he's a much more stereotypical RSI, I guess, because it's got a Zeus-y silhouette. So it's a lot flatter. But it's also got its big salvage grabbies on the front. It wasn't exactly meant to have the same sort of Zeus look at first, but then I looked at it and I was like, hang on, looks quite similar. So I'm going to say it was on purpose, actually.
And again, the brief here is a salvage starter. So this is the entry-level ship. You could start your Star Citizen journey with this one, and obviously you would upgrade to things like the Fortune or the Mole and stuff later on. But a place to start with salvage. And then our third and final look.
I quite like this one personally. This one was my favorite of them, but it's not up to me. I just make the pictures. It's quite sharp, maybe a little too sharp, some people might say, but I think it's pretty cool. I think it's pretty RSI. You can't see it from this view, but the cargo comes out the back. It only holds a few cargo, so don't expect to be hauling massive claims in this, but I think he's neat. We'll see how it goes.
TL;DRBoth artists agree manufacturer aesthetics shouldn't stay static, since real-world brands and tastes evolve over time, and CIG's own designs have changed over a decade.
The brands shouldn't stay completely stagnant, because, as you say, real-world car manufacturers don't stay the same forever. I can see where people come from, where stuff doesn't look like a given manufacturer from a set time, but you can think of stuff like the Constellation, the Aurora, that was designed well over a decade ago. So naturally the stuff we do now is going to be different, and we always want to try and improve on the manufacturer aesthetics.
Even we've changed. Changed during a decade. Changing fashion, changing cars, real cars. So it will change even in the video game aesthetic. A good-looking game from 10 years ago looks different from a good-looking game now, not just because the graphics are better, but because we keep changing the taste. Someone will come and do something completely groundbreaking, and everyone will start copying. This happened all the time in cars: [someone] removed the grille on the front and everyone started removing the grilles on the front.