Concept art is an art that is used to show a concept through art. It is overall the artistic vision of a project.
Concept art is used for the initial idea or the final product of a project. A concept artist takes the initial idea of something like a character or weapon, etc. And makes a design for it. The artist doesn’t just help bring the element to life through animation or visual effects, but they create the overall artistic vision for that piece of the project. To communicate the idea, the artist will typically show the element from different viewpoints or in various poses, so the artists have a great understanding of how it should look from every angle.
Projects like animated films and video games can bring loads of unique artists who cooperate to create the final product. Producing concept art ensures that all artists agree before they move forward with the project. You risk creating inconsistencies within the project if you don’t do this. While the script may describe a character’s physical appearance, two artists would interpret that description differently. If you let them move forward individually, you would end up with two completely distinct characters, and you’d have to go back to the drawing board to make the character consistent across the entire project, which is a costly mistake to fix.
As an example of a concept for a character, someone used images of insects for inspiration for the characteristics of their character:
This is the concept they made of their character:
Since I already have made my characters for my project, I will explain the development of each character and where the ideas came from.
Shockwing
Let’s start with my main OC. When I first designed Shockwing, I originally wanted to make an electroid mixel based on the two official mixels, Flurr and Slusho. This was the first design I made of him by using existing Lego pieces:
I felt like what I was making was a failure, as the model I was making was too similar to Flurr’s Lego model. I then had the thought of making it look like the pokemon Dragonite. I thought this was a brilliant idea as I had seen no other mixel OCs that looked like it.
I then tried to draw the Lego model I made here:
As time passed, I disliked the design more because I saw that it looked weird, mainly because of the wings and the head. One day, I remembered my original intention of Shockwing’s design and then I redesigned him to fix the problems I had with the old design and to follow more towards my original intention by changing the wings to being pure electricity and making his body structure and head different. His arms, legs, and tail have stayed the same. I have not changed Shockwing’s design since as I like how this turned out.
Shockwing’s redesign also has its own Lego model, as shown here:
Shockwing’s old design wasn’t scrapped entirely but was recycled for a new OC named Flamewing, a member of the Infernites.
Freezy
When I first designed Freezy, I originally attempted on mixelizing a character I made called Leggy
This was my first attempt at making it. I made it a frosticon mixel as they are blue like Leggy. I gave them legs of ice to show the frosticon aspect of it.
Since the design I made looked boring and didn’t resemble a mixel enough, I remade him to look more like a mixel by giving him a different body and arms, it worked as it made him a more complete character. I then finally gave him the name “Freezy”.
Sweepuff
When I first designed Sweepuff, I wanted to make a mixel that had a head covered in hair and he was originally named “Ampuff” and was an electroid mixel.
Since the overall design didn’t exactly fit the electroids that well, I made him into a member of the trashoz, as his head resembled a brush. His name was then changed to “Sweepuff” to fit the new tribe he was in. Ampuff is still canon to Sweepuff as him changing his tribe is part of his story.
Where did I first make Ampuff? On Roblox!
