ILM art director shares his concept art tips

We recently spoke with supervising art director Jason Horley to learn about Industrial Light & Magic's concept art culture, and how the studio's art department has picture the possible on screen, from Star Wars to Superman and Tron: Ares.

During our conversation, Jason reflected on how he approaches the iterative design process and provided a couple of tips for concept artists (also see our feature what is concept art?).

Study visual language to build on existing worlds

Creating with a universe’s established physical cues is vital, Jason told us.

“When it comes to working on an established franchise, they often already possess a visual language. If you compare Star Wars with Star Trek, for example, you can see that both are epic sci-fi worlds, but also very different.

"And so it’s about studying existing material and thinking, ‘What is it about this world that’s being created? What are those visual cues?’ Even if you’re creating something new, keeping some of the visual cues from movies or source material will let the audience know they’re still within that universe and that world."

The importance of sketching and selecting

Jason also recommended respective the iterative process of creating concept art. The first design is rarely the right one even if it's something you were happy with. Concept artists have to accept that the majority of their work will never see the light of day.

“Quick sketches are often just silhouettes or roughs that we build up to finish with a whole page. For example, you might have a page of 20 silhouettes and that’ll go to the director, production designer and producers," Jasons said.

"There’s a process in designing, especially when it comes to characters. Most of the work we do never gets seen by anyone – it’s only the final design that gets approved and eventually gets seen. And for that, there’s been probably months of design work to get to that point.

"That’s not to say the months of design work beforehand is bad, it’s just not quite right and is all a part of the process the public never know about.”

For more tips, see Cheri Wang's 15 steps for creating concept art that feels real and Marvel Studios artist Rodney Fuentebella's advice on how to create concept art.

For inspiration, check out the winners of the Concept Art Awards 2025.

This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.