Learning Outcome 9_Reflect on practice and recognise and critically appraise strengths and weaknesses

With my work I think my strengths are the following based on both personal opinion. As well as feedback from industry professionals and tutors.

• Use of and understanding of Composition. I believe this one is self explanatory, and is probably one of my strongest skills.
• Use of and understanding of colour - this is open to debate but for the most part I believe I usually have quiet strong use of colour. However in a recent feedback session for the Atomhawk work it was pointed out I did not have a cohesive colour scheme that matched my initial thumbnails. I believe this shows I need to not get complacent when planing my colour schemes as it can lead to create lower quality work than I am capable of.
• Understanding of ideation and design principles in order to create various answers and design directions for briefs.
• Communication ability, and a general understanding of my practice as a concept artist.
• Creation of environments to a high standard. I believe at the moment my environments are quite strong, whilst my lighting could use improvement as confirmed by my presentation with Ron from Atomhawk, I feel my environment design and general output for environment designs shows a higher ability level than my other work.
• Strong researching skills as demonstrated in my previous posts showing use of reference. And in my opinion I believe I demonstrate in my presentations of my work that I have thoroughly researched all aspects of my designs.

Again based on feedback from professionals, my tutors, and my own opinion I believe these are my weaknesses.

• Lack of preparation for my work sometimes leads to easily avoided mistakes, as an example for the Atomhawk brief the final environment Illustration, 'The Clearing' I should have spent more time making sure my perspective was correct before going into rendering. As well as making sure I had worked out the value grouping before hand. This would of saved a lot of time with the corrections I had to make later on in the process.
  Moreover with the example in a previous learning outcome I could of created a better designed Shadow creature if I had spent more time in the initial design phase in order to tell earlier the design was not working instead of going straight into rendering.
• Carrying on from the previous point about perspective, I tend to add confusing perspective choices in my work which lead to problems later. This could easily be addressed by spending more time in the initial foundation stages of my work.
• Figure drawing and character design are by far my weakest areas of expertise and they are really holding my work back. I feel I spend so much time struggling with the anatomy of the figure the design suffers. Or I do the opposite and the figure ends up being of a very poor standard.
• As a relation to the above my characters all lack expressive faces, and when I do try to do expressions they tend to look awkward and stiff.
• My presentation skills could use a lot of improving, especially my tendency to waffle in the presentation of research stage.
• Sometimes my designs suffer and are not clear due to my use of a inappropriate idealisation method ex. using silhouettes and then forgetting to flesh them out as sketches.
• And related to this is again lack of preparation for my work. With the Assassins Creed brief for instance I should of spent more time getting the figure correct first, and then designing on top of the character. Instead it just ended up like Id thought about the design and not the figure as well.

Learning Outcome 8_Explore and evaluate a range of visual responses to a brief.

For the Atomhawk brief I initially had this design for my final 'The Shadow' creature.

 

However I felt that this creature design was not working from both an aesthetic and design perspective. Also it did not fit very well with my initial intention of creating a creature made of lots of different environmental pieces example dirt, twigs, rocks etc And instead looked like some weird vegetable man lol

Moreover the design did not look related to the given example for the 'lamphead' creatures Atomhawk had already designed. As such I went back to my initial designs and selected the below design for my final creature which felt much more a part of the 'Lamp Head' creature set compared to my other design. I feel I have better answered the brief as a result of this.

Learning Outcome 7_Demonstrate critical understanding of specialist techniques relevant to Concept Art.

Here are some of my ideation drawings and turnarounds which I believe addresses this learning outcome.

 

Learning Outcome 6_Analyse and interpret challenging client briefs and produce relevant and original work in response.

This is some example work from the Assassins creed brief. I found this brief very challenging as my figure drawing and character design are the areas I need to improve on the most. Moreover my chosen area of design the Aztecs was a difficult era to match the brief.

 

And the final character design for the brief which I believe demonstrate an original take on the Assassins Creed character whilst still being somewhat recognisable to the brand.

For my feedback it was mentioned by the Art Director Jack Couvella that I had done possibly the best I can do with that era with the design choices I had made. But in future that if it starts to feel like its very hard to match the brand to the era then its probably best to change the era as you cant change the brand.

Learning Outcome 5_Demonstrate a professional and effective approach to the specialist area of 'Pitch Presentations'.

In my opinion the key to an effective approach to a pitch presentation comes down to preparation. For instance working out a plan of how you will present your work and then practising what you will say during the presentation.

Generally you will show your work in the order you did it, like have initial research first. Then following this up with initial designs, followed by your improved iterations as you go. Finally concluding with your final work.

As you are presenting you’ll more than likely be listening to feedback as with most client artist talks, and generally the presentation will have a lot of back and forth. So you should know your work, research, designs, and so on thoroughly so that you can have a conversation with the art director, or whomever you are presenting to.

The presentation should be interesting, memorable and to the point. As well as using appropriate body language in order to make the viewer feel at ease and project confidence in yourself and therefore your work.

At the end of the presentation its important to allow for questions, making sure you have the answers or can give the impression you have the resources to answer said question. And to leave contact details and reference to your presentation, and generally just leave a good final impression with the viewers.

And finally establish when to follow up with them about the project being green lit.

Learning Outcome 4_Demonstrate a critical understanding of the key issues relating to Concept Art practice.

The issues relating to concept art practice are the following:

• Meeting deadlines
• Effective communication between the client and the concept artist
• correctly interpreting briefs
• self analysis and improvement of work, as well as the ability to respond to client feedback.
• delivering effective ie successfully answers the brief, and quality work ie its to a equal standard or exceed that of contemporary practitioners.
• Keeping strict confidentiality of work of clients, sticking to NDAs (a non disclosure agreement), and gaining permissions before showcasing work commissioned.
• Maintaining professional integrity for example not plagiarising others work, respecting intellectual property, keeping to NDAs, and keeping to contracts.
• Keeping a social media presence and generally keep up with their promotion in order to say relevant.
• And slightly related to that point keep an up to date portfolio in order to be able to present to potential clients. Especially when working in an industry where your work can go years before your allowed to release it.

Learning Outcome 3_Synthesise complex concepts and professional practice into the production of original imagery.

The Alien line up below are the result of using ideation techniques in order to produce a strong final concept in order to meet a brief: