What is concept art? One of the most misunderstood crafts in game design explained

Even when video games were little more than rudimentary pixels on a black screen, art has played an important role in sparking players’ imaginations, whether it’s what decorates the side of an arcade cabinet or the illustration on a game box.

While huge advances in technology have changed how games can look today, that vision still has to take shape from somewhere, which makes the concept art an essential part of game development.

Yet it’s perhaps not always that well understood as a profession, especially as the very term of “concept” may have you assuming it’s primarily only a focus at the start of a development cycle. I spoke to three concept artists to learn more about what they really do and how. If you're inspired to start work on your own title, see our guides to the best video game development software and the best laptops for game development.

What is concept art?

“I think it’s probably one of the least understood jobs,” Paul Scott Canavan says of concept art for video games. He has worn a number of hats in his career as a creative director, art director and artist, but has always been hands-on with concept art, including 2023’s narrative-based adventure A Highland Song. "Concept art encapsulates a whole lot of stuff. It’s like the broadest range of art styles that you can do as an artist," he says.

It’s a skill set that can also cross over to other lines of work, as Maxime Desmettre, a concept artist for action RPG Eternal Strands that released earlier this year, also does occasional art in films, book illustration, collectible card games and tabletop role-playing games.

But while we may associate concept art with hand-drawn sketches and illustrations, his interest in game art began with early pixel art. “I enjoyed copying backgrounds and characters from arcade games of the time like Street Fighter 2,” Maxime reflects.

Even then, concept art can also be easily conflated with anything of an illustrative nature, especially if the game itself is 3D. When comparing with other mediums, Ibrahim Idris, a concept artist on the BAFTA-winning Tales of Kenzera: Zau says game concept art is much closer to industrial or product design.

“For games, you have to be more detailed presenting characters or environments; you have to explain the intricacies,” he says. “If it’s a mech, you have to show the workings, how the joints combine and move, and its materials. If it’s an animated character, you have to know how they deform with different expressions.”

Concept art often starts loose

As broad and varied as the role can get, we can nonetheless start at the beginning because concept art still fundamentally involves bringing a brand new game idea to life visually and concretely. It’s not uncommon for there to be references to existing games or other sources of inspiration, as it can also be anxiety-inducing creating something from nothing.

“A huge amount of what we do is research,” says Paul. “The people who do best as concept artists have a real lust for learning new stuff and not being completely stuck on one genre that they’re really obsessed with.”

With those early ideas, the first phase, pre-conception, involves more general explorations and establishing shots just to convey a feeling of how the game might look and play when it’s realised in 3D. It’s often a little loose and vague but will also be iterated upon based on the director’s vision, and you should expect plenty of ideas to be discarded.

“If you can work fast, it’s handy when exploring possibilities; the more to show the better,” says Maxime. “Part of the work won’t make it to the final version of the game, but it will most likely contribute to discussions that evolve the project nonetheless.”

Although it’s often useful to receive some instructions, such as whether the game is going to be stylised or realistic, Ibrahim says he’s often free to explore ideas early on.

“Most of the time, people tell me they don’t want to influence my creative process, so you have total freedom to go crazy,” he explains. “After the first iteration, [the directors] can reel it in, making adjustments, and you might start getting more specific.”

Paul adds that it’s not dissimilar to painting, which also starts with very loose interpretations before the details start being added in. But while game concept art can often appear more impressionistic, to the extent that some people may feel there’s a disassociation between the concept and final product, the reality is that the former actually has to be much more specific and detailed in order to serve the artists realising that in 3D.

Concept art skills: a broad skillset for specific tasks

Creating assets is one of the most labour-intensive and expensive aspects of game development, and as such, the most cost-effective way of making changes and iterations is through concepting first.

For instance, Ibrahim explains that when designing the protagonist Zau, he initially gave him a long scarf until during production, when the animation lead told him it should be cut above the knee due to deformation issues in 3D.

“It’s safer and easier to make a concept with one or two iterations with a quick turnaround before sending it to 3D.” It’s especially true of cinematics, typically outsourced and which Canavan has also worked on in his career, including trailers for Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2.

“A lot of concept work is identifying what textures things might be because we’re working with 3D artists, so we’re trying to ensure they understand what we’re doing,” he explains. “Cinematics cost an astonishing amount of money, so studios have a lot of creative control because it’s the first thing people usually see of their game in trailers.”

Conversely, the most important aspect of concept art is in the most technical and specific art, referred to as model sheets, when it becomes much more of a design role.

“These are basically technical drawings that are given to the 3D artists so they can sculpt exactly what a character’s face looks like, or their props,” Paul continues. “Much of the artwork in games is outsourced, so a lot of the concept artist’s job is trying to make designs as clear as they can to give to a 3D artist they’ve never spoken to, who might speak a different language, so they can look at this character and their templates, and then go ahead and start sculpting.”

From there, a concept artist’s role can get broader still in other 2D assets, such as designing posters, labels, menu screens, or even the in-game achievement icons. If you’re in a small indie studio, it’s all the more essential to be getting hands-on in different aspects rather than specialising. Another job for concept artists that occurs near the end of a project involves paintovers.

“A concept artist will refine the work already available in the engine, by painting over a screenshot that was taken in the game editor,” Maxime explains. “This enriches the visual to help guide the 3D artist in further refining their work. Complex games require this phase to ensure the best quality of the project in its final version."

Communication in concept art

While working on concept art obviously requires good technical ability in drawing, there are no limits on tools to go about this, whether it’s sketching, painting, sculpting or Photoshop. Despite being considered a 2D field, Paul says 3D software is often helpful too. “It makes sense as we’re dealing with designing spaces, so having some kind of blockout makes it much easier for us,” he adds.

“When I worked on Destiny, I’d do blockouts in 3D that were absolutely terrible. But I would be able to pass them across to the environment team so that they could at least understand what I was doing.”

What’s most important, as is often the case working in other roles, is maintaining good communication. That’s not just with providing detailed model sheets to external artists, but also in regular meetings within the development team, ensuring that the concept art is aligned with the narrative and gameplay, and also the work of other artists.

Speaking of his time working on Zau, Ibrahim recalls: “We’d usually have team meetings every week, where we would share all of the artwork with the rest of the team and feedback is welcome. Then there’s also constructive criticism on the designs so that artists can go back and act on them.”

In a healthy working environment there would also not be competition between artists, as usually they will be allocated different tasks, while any problems that arise can involve having another artist pitching in to help.

So what can aspiring concept artists looking for a way into the games industry do? Maxime highlights the importance of building your portfolio. “Practice by mimicking projects you’d love to be part of,” he says. “Imagine yourself as part of the team, and work on tasks that you know are necessary for such projects, like developing a location, its props and surroundings. That’s a way to remain inspired and it gives you clear goals as to what to practice to increase your chances of attracting attention.”

Concept art is ultimately about the process more than the final product, which is something Ibrahim stresses as being important to share in your portfolio. “Don’t just show the pretty pictures, but show how you get to the pretty pictures,” he advises. “Most recruiters are the directors, so when they look at your portfolio and see your referencing, ideation and sketches, they can be like, ‘this is how this guy thinks’.”

The stage of concept art that people don't see

Paul told me about the unglamorous side to concept art that doesn’t get seen by the public. Concept art runs from the absolute beginning of production all the way to the end, but the job shifts throughout production.

So in the early stages pre-production is basically blue sky – go off and design what this thing looks like, what characters look like – and it’s often very ugly. People rarely see any of this work because it looks like garbage, and it’s often photobashed and using assets from other things.

“Honestly, that’s the biggest misunderstanding people make about concept art. It makes sense because that stuff isn’t sexy so we don’t put it in our portfolios very often. A lot of what you see in concept art is actually called key art.

"Take all those really cool paintings that you see in Guild Wars 2, or any game where the loading screen is this gorgeous piece of art. That’s key art, which is sat in this weird space between concept art and illustration.”

How to become a concept artist

I asked Maxime how he got into game concept art and how the role differs from working on other jobs.

“I’ve always liked video games. As a teenager I read an article in a French magazine about how video games were made, and that’s when my passion for them translated into the excitement of making visuals based on and for games.

“Starting with pixel art back in the 90s, it gradually led to making artwork for technical demos and game prototypes, and allowed me to get my first contract with a game studio as a general artist for textures, 3D levels and VFX. I switched to concept art later down the line when the artist’s task started to become more specialised so that I could keep working on the different aspects of environment design.

“Where concept art in games can differ the most from many other forms of concept art is that we design assets and locations based on the game world and its thematics, but we also need to consider the gameplay component in the process. That’s because of the navigation of the player and how enemies will occupy the world, how much space is needed for them to move around to fight, and so on.

"It’s also important to consider elements that are recognisable and that will serve as a beacon for the player to not lose track of their bearings, like having landmarks or specific structures.”

Authentic inspirations in concept art

I asked Ibrahim about where he finds inspiration for concept art, and he told me about how he approached designing an African world in Tales of Kenzera: Zau

“The biggest inspiration we originally had was from Ori in terms of the map design and the kind of colours we used. Then most of the time we’re gathering references from different African tribes.

“At that time, we had a fantastic art lead in Michaela Dawn, who went above and beyond to guide us in the right place to look to gather information. We took that, watched some videos, and looked at how the different tribes lived their life, hunted, what they wore; everything. That gives us a really strong foundation to start our work and make sketches, ideations and variations.

“Coming from an African perspective, I have a bit more of an advantage because I’m in Nigeria, so I can go out to the local museum or check out photos. But that doesn’t mean everything I see will actually fit with other tribes in Africa.

"You don’t want to make that kind of mistake, as the game is actually focused on Bantu culture, which is more East African. So you have to look at that region, do your investigations and research, and then come back and present your ideas for concepts.”

For more concept art inspiration, see our piece on how to create concept art from a Marvel Studio artist and our round up of concept art fundamentals.

You might also want to take a peek at concept artist Alida Pintus's sketchbook and Sathish Kumar's article on why it's important to tell a story in concept art.