What does a concept artist do? How do you explain it?
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.
They do all spaceships for video games.
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.
I'd say translate the words to visuals.
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.
I think we're the most important people in the pipeline. We make the things that go in. So without us, all the things that go in look pretty naff.
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.