SCAD Senior Concept Art Projects

This year we have several graduate students going into concept design and animation. They have submitted some images showcasing their senior projects. Here is a gallery of their work:

Lily Cho

Project: Gumiho

The story follows Katsuye, the only odd person out of her family since she wants to be a warrior rather than a waiting lady. On the day of her younger sister Masae's thirteenth birthday, Masae reveals herself as a fox demon who has been in disguise for thirteen years before killing Katsuye's family; Katsuye is the only survivor. Joined by her avenging uncle, a guilty priest, and a aloof warrior, Katsuye vows revenge on the Fox Demon while going through their inner struggles.

Nick Palmer
Project: Silver Crown

The story is named Silvercrown, after the graphite-colored mineral with markings upon it resembling teeth or a ‘crown’. Humans seek out this material in the far reaches of space from their four occupied planets, Earth being the first of these. Bryza Vastian, a young woman born on board a massive O’Neill cylinder craft, works in a hydroponic lab, languishing for the adventure of a lifetime – that of setting foot on a planet for the first time. The O’Neill cylinder is on its way to claim its share of silvercrown that scientific explorers discovered recently. Unfortunately, not even the vast reaches of space can quench humankind’s thirst for more than it needs, and the pirates demonstrate this tendency most. After arriving at Insolitus orbiting around 4 Septiphicus G, Bryza’s community of miners, scientists, and police forces behold a vicious attempt on their lives, even before they set foot on the planet. The attack is the product of a brutal band of high-tech pirates who seek the O’Neill cylinder tools for acquiring the precious resource that powers all major ships and that people will pay millions for – the silvercrown.

Jeff Yu

Project: Think Fast

Think Fast follows a disgruntled private eye named Chevy Ford Carter in an alternative history, science fiction American town of Buckysville. Chevy's career of helping Ms. Margaret find her "missing" apple pie takes a spin when an attractive actress named Karen Day asks for his help to catch a killer. The murderer, a Beatnik entertainment robot gone rogue, has been killing high profile actors, and now it is targeting Karen. As Chevy delves deeper into the mystery, he uncovers an underground world of corrupt show biz dealings, shattered dreams, and a faint glimmer of hope.

Back on the road!

Time to shake off the dirt, oil the rust, and kick things back into gear because the concept art factory is starting back up again! We had to take a hiatus because many of our members have been focusing on senior projects. We want to congratulate all summer 2012 Graduates of SCAD, you all are about to embark on an even greater journey. We wish you lots of luck and our blessings as you venture forth into a new phase of life!

That being said, we are pleased to showcase senior projects related to concept art produced this school year. If you are a SCAD graduate who wish to have your work uploaded, please send your submissions to conceptartfactory@gmail.com with your name, title of the piece and no more than a paragraph describing you project (NOT EACH PIECE).

We have a few things in store for upcoming challenges. First off, we will have an exquisite corpse silhouette design event where all students start the initial silhouette drawing, then after a few minutes, the students hand them off to the student to their left. The next student will take the already existing design and just add on to it. This will continue until each design has been worked on by every student. At the end of the event, each student will take the design they are given and start fleshing it out with value before moving on to color studies.

The exquisite corpse is a technique developed by the surrealist movement to help artists "see" objects defined by shape. Our eyes have a tendency to draw connections between forms to create something recognizable.

So that will be our first upcoming challenge- stay tuned because there will be more!
Have a safe and wonderful summer!


-Concept Art Factory

Winter Break Character Design Challenge

Hey everyone, I hope everyone is having a wonderful winter break! We have a series of projects in queue and we hope you can all join us in redesigning some well known characters. We start off the break with Hades. He is the god of the Underworld in Greek Mythology. However, remember that he has multiple roles and that he isn't just some grim reaper. He was also ruler of all that is beneath the ground including "gemstones and all the riches". Some motifs that are associated with Hades are, Cerberus the three headed dog, sacrificial goats, Persephone, Cypress Tree, Pomegranate, the Fates, and the Narcissus plant.

Here are our current submissions:

Nick Palmer

Jeff Yu

Lily Cho

Next will be Persephone, and then the Ninja Turtles! XD so stay tuned for more!

Fall Quarter Meeting 10/7/11

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone had a great summer! It has been a while since the last update but we finally got the meeting up and running again. Woohoo! We meet every Friday after 6pm in the SEQA room 347.

Nick, and I have been discussing how we proceed with the club because it seemed that we were doing mostly digital painting which gave us little time to focus on actual design during our 90 minute challenges. Soooo, we thought it would be helpful if we started on silhouette sketches for a while then progress to speed paints because polished works would be considered final renders but not actual concept art. Concept art is for communicating designs, granted you need technical skills in rendering but a good designer can communicated designs in any medium from cut out paper to paint. So this week we are continuing the silhouette studies before we take them into value studies and finally into a colored digital painting challenge. You can use any medium like photoshop or ink on paper. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us at conceptartfactory@gmail.com-- We appreciate your input!

So this week, our topic is "Warrior" from any time period you want and any culture. Just make sure the time period you choose is consistent with the other designs you are doing. If you decided to choose 1860s Plains America, then all your designs should reflect that concept. Again you can use any time period and culture so long as it's a warrior. We had 90 minutes to do the challenge and add in tweaks and edits. For silhouettes, you have different approaches. One way is to take a large brush and just block in large shapes altogether. The other is to use gesture lines to create random strokes which create certain shapes which you can then use to develop more shapes like a gestalt. Be sure to have at least 10 character designs when you send it in. Good Luck and Have Fun!

-J

Jeff Yu

Nick Palmer

Jeremy Cropp

Week 14, Value Study Exercise

Yo, welcome to the week 14 Concept Art Factory design exercise! This week we are taking the silhouette of characters from last time and developing it farther by adding grey scale to define the shapes that would articulate a design that illicit emotions. If your character is evil, maybe use some jagged shapes and asymmetrical proportions. If your character is an anti hero, maybe mix rectangles or circles with triangles to represent moral ambiguity. Bottom line is, you have to communicate the personality of a character by using value. Do 10 value studies for your best silhouette.
Next week, we will do 5 color studies for your best value study design.
                                                                 
                                                                 Nick Palmer Value studies

                                                     Protagonist competition class mechsuit

                                                    Antagonist  competition class mechsuit
                                                                     

 Jeff Yu Value Studies

Smuggler Value Studies

Lawman Value Studies

Week 13, Design Exercise

Hi everyone,

This week for the concept art club we have decided to work on a different aspect of concept art. We are starting from the most basics which is the Silhouette design where we use black and white shapes to show the personality of the character, the environment the character lives in, and other things that would aid viewers in understanding the character's nature. Members can select ANY theme or idea they want like "my little pony in space" or "Medieval Judge Dredd" and they have to come up with a story, choose 1 protagonist and 1 antagonist to design silhouettes for. During the challenge, members are allowed to create as many silhouettes as they please as long as they read clearly, makes sense functionally an ties in with the story theme they have chosen.

Nick Palmer chose to do a theme with battle robots for children.

 

  Protagonist Competition Mech  

                                                             Antagonist Competition Mech

Jeff Yu decided to do a Sci Fi space western set in the Pleiades.

Protagonist- Smuggler

Antagonist- Lawman

Speedpaint Week 11

Hey everybody, let's hear it for the 11th week of the SCAD Concept Art Factory! This week's speedpaint challenge is the epic 3 HOUR CHALLENGE! We combine vehicle, character, environment, and environment. So, our theme for this week is... "Fungus native versus cyborg crustaceans in any location you want to create."

Jeff Yu
                                                                                                                                                                     

 Nick Palmer 

Chris Lane

                                   

Speedpaint Week 12

Yo, it's another edition of the SCAD Concept Art Factory! Since we have been ordering our members to complete ridiculous 3 hour challenges involving more than 3 subjects, we have decided to simplify things to just 1 subject at 2 hours instead of the usual 90 minutes. This way members have the chance to pump out better quality work. At the moment, we are focusing specifically on design before we work on actual painting techniques because the design process requires a lot of research and familiarity with different subjects.

This week, our speedpaint challenge theme is... "fantasy, flying, pleasure ship of any culture and location". As for "pleasure", you may interpret in whatever way "pleases you".

Max Currie

Jeffrey Yu

Lily Cho

Nick Palmer

Arielle Smith

Nick Zimurio

Speedpaint Week 10

Ok concept art club members, your artistic contributions to this blog are always welcome! Feel free to go in and do an older challenge if you have a hankering to do so.

Nick Palmer

This week's challenge was Guardian, Futuristic and Alien, Insectoid with accompanying vehicle. The mood could be cheerful, antihero/badass, optimistic, etc. Enjoy!

Speedpaint Week 9

Yay, It's Summer!

Since Irene is going to be busy for a while, she has agreed to delegate some of the site maintenance responsibilities to the other officers, Nick, Annick, and Jeff. Even then do not let that discourage you from participating and submitting art work to the Concept Art Factory. On behalf of the club, I want to thank every member who came to club meetings and contributed to the continuation of the club during the Spring Quarter.

For those of you who are still around for Summer, you are welcome to participate in our weekly sketch challenges. It is hard to coordinate things until school starts after the 28th of June, but we have ways to keep in contact like the Concept Art Factory group on facebook. Also, we converse on Skype periodically so you are all welcome to join in the fun! If you have any questions, please email us at conceptartfactory@gmail.com and we will try to get back to you.



I wish all of you a wonderful summer and I hope to see you again real soon!


-Jeff

This week, our sketch challenge is a continuation of the Baba Yaga theme which we started with a character and vehicle concept. This time we are doing an environment and architecture concept. Contributors are welcome to design something for any of the characters from the Baba Yaga Mythos.

                                                                       Nick Palmer

Jeff Yu

Chris Lane

That's it for now, stay tuned for next week's challenge!

Speedpaint Week 8

It is week 8 already, and we have NOT fallen off the wagon!! XD

First, thanks to Jeff and Nick for taking over the speedpaints. We are changing up the structure of the sketch challenges slightly in order to up the difficulty of these challenges. We'll still rotate between our list of concept art categories, but we will all try to add more elements to each painting; for example, a prop or a creature should be included with a character.
This week's topic was either to paint a knight or the European folklore character Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is basically a witch-like old lady with metal teeth that flies around woodlands on a giant mortar and kidnaps children as a hobby. She also lives in a hut that for some reason stands on chicken legs. Though she is usually a stock antagonist, sometimes she is consulted by heroes for her wisdom too. Amazing job again, everyone!

Also, our website header is finally up! Hopefully it's a nice showcase of how far we've come this quarter and how hard we kick ass in general ;)

Annick Huber

Jeff Yu

Nick Palmer

Irene Strychalski

Keren Philosophales

Lily Cho

Speedpaint Week 7

This was an exceptionally hectic week for everyone, since the actual meeting was cancelled in addition to it overlapping with some school events; but it's nothing to worry about! I know a few people are still catching up to their Week 7 speedpaints, so we'll look forward to seeing those, and thanks for everyone who is still sending in stuff.

The topic this time was "Dragons blowing up in any time or place". 

Club meeting changes!

Hey guys, just to keep everyone updated, seeing as many students were out of town or sick, the meeting this Friday was canceled. Also, since I have just started a new job and can't get back to SCAD until at least 7PM on Fridays, I regrettably won't be available to run speedpaint challenges anymore.
I believe that either Nick or Jeff have mentioned that they could take over the Friday meetings; nomatter who ends up taking charge of it, we can still continue to get together every Friday and paint. I will still head to SCAD as soon as I'm off work to collect the speedpaints, and I'll continue to moderate this blog.

Sorry for the sudden change, guys! These speedpaints have been a great experience for me, and I'm sure we have all visibly improved because of them. I really hope we won't fall off just because it's the end of the quarter.

With that said, meeting or not, we still have a painting topic this week!! We are doing creatures, and the subject is "Dragons blowing up in any time period or setting". Everyone will have until next Friday to draw something. Lets continue to blow this shit up (pun intended), guys! ;)

-Irene

Speedpaint Week 6

Hey all! We were sadly missing a few people, but still got a load of smashing submissions. Since it is week 6, we're starting the topic cycle over again. Our subject today was a "futuristic, underwater military transport going to war".

Remember if anyone wants to touch up this weeks challenge, you still have a week! Thanks guys.

Max Currie

Jerrell Drakes

Chris Lane

Irene Strychalski

Nick Zamudio

Jeff Yu

Keren Philosophales

Jeremy Cropp