Animation / CAPE_AGD / Game design

What Is Concept Art? How to Create Concept Art for Your Animation or Game Project

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Concept art is artwork made early in a project to explore and explain ideas for characters, environments, props, creatures and mood before final production begins. Its job is to solve design problems and communicate a vision to the rest of the team, not to be a finished picture. In animation studios this stage is often called visual development.

What concept art is, and what it is not

  • It is a tool for decisions. Artists produce many options quickly so the director or team can choose a direction.
  • It guides other artists. 3D modellers, animators, level designers and background painters build from it.
  • It helps sell the idea. A few strong images can make a pitch much more convincing (see How to Write a Synopsis and an Elevator Pitch).
  • It is not the same as illustration. An illustration is a finished image for an audience; concept art may be rough, full of notes and never seen by the public.

Types of concept art

  • Character and creature concepts – body shapes, costumes and variations.
  • Environment concepts – locations, architecture, mood and lighting.
  • Prop and vehicle concepts – objects characters use or ride.
  • Keyframes (key moment paintings) – important scenes shown with final lighting and mood.
  • Colour scripts – small paintings of every scene in order, showing how colour and mood change through the story.
Painting of a small character in a wide hat sitting before a mossy stone statue with candles
Figure 1 – Concept art for an imaginary video game, showing a “save point”: a small shrine where the player can rest. The painting shows the mood, colours and scale of the location.

The concept art process

  1. Brief – what is needed, for which genre and audience, and any limits (for example, “must be easy to animate”).
  2. Research and references – collect photos and notes into a mood board. Study real animals, buildings, clothing and cultures.
  3. Thumbnails – many small, fast sketches or silhouettes, often in minutes each.
  4. Choose and refine – pick the strongest ideas with feedback and develop them in more detail.
  5. Variations – try different colours, materials and textures on the chosen design.
  6. Final concept with callouts – a clear version with notes and close-up details.
  7. Hand-off – follow up with turnarounds and model sheets (see How to Draw a Character Turnaround).
Sketches of an antelope-like creature with different skin patterns and reference photos of rhino skin
Figure 2 – Creature concepts for the game Ryzom. One body design is tried with jungle, lake and desert skin textures, and a photo of rhinoceros skin is used as a texture reference.
Five panels showing a creature head going from rough sketches to a 3D model
Figure 3 – A concept design workflow: quick sketches of several ideas, shading and refining, choosing one, then building and refining a 3D model.

Colour and texture in concept art

  • Start with values – block in light and dark in greyscale first; if it reads in grey, it will read in colour.
  • Use a limited palette that matches the mood (see Colour Theory, Texture, Composition and Layout).
  • Suggest texture with textured brushes, scanned paper or your own photos of surfaces such as bark, rust or fabric.
  • Try simple 3D modelling – a quick block-out in free software such as Blender can help you test shapes, lighting and camera angles.
  • Respect copyright – only use images you made yourself, or openly licensed images with credit (see Ethics, Copyright and Intellectual Property). Free tools are covered in Environment Design and Digital Artwork.

Concept art for your own project

For a school project or portfolio, aim for at least: your main character, one key environment, one important prop and one keyframe. Keep your process pages (thumbnails and variations), because they show your thinking as well as your skill. Label each page and store it in your e-portfolio.

Example

Brief: a keyframe for Mangrove Rescue showing the player’s boat arriving at the scarlet ibis roost at sunset. The artist gathers photos of mangroves and scarlet ibis, draws twelve thumbnails of different compositions, and picks one with a low horizon and the flock against the sky. Three colour variations are tried (golden hour, pink dusk and stormy grey), and the team picks golden hour because it feels hopeful. The final painting has callouts for the boat design, the water colour and the ibis silhouettes.

Hear a professional game concept artist describe how concept art moves from 2D design to a finished 3D game asset:

Exercise

  1. In two or three sentences, explain what concept art is and how it differs from a finished illustration.
  2. Make a mood board of eight to ten reference images for your project, and record where each image came from.
  3. Draw twelve thumbnails for one character, environment or prop.
  4. Refine your best thumbnail into a colour concept, then make three colour or texture variations of it.
  5. Add callouts (notes and close-ups) to your final concept and add the whole process to your portfolio.

Next: The Production Bible for Game Design and Animation (With a Reusable Template)

Syllabus link: This post is relevant to the CAPE® Animation and Game Design Syllabus, Unit 1: Fundamentals of Animation and Game Design, Module 3: Story and Character Development – Specific Objective 10 (“explain concept art”); Specific Objective 11 (“create concept art for project”).

Attributions to media used in this post:

2023-03-30 Concept-art-for-a-fictive-video-game-Save-Point by-David-Revoy.jpg – David Revoy – CC BY 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Creature Ryzom with texture variations.jpg – Ryzom – CC BY-SA 2.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Concept-design-2.jpg – ProkopHapala – Public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)

© 2026 Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved.

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