Concept art talk from Codemasters

An image of one of the 'cutscenes' from Formula 1 Race Stars (Source 1)

A couple of days ago I attended a talk by Mitch Small and Stephane Stambolouis, two concept artists from Codemasters. It was an incredibly interesting talk and helped me to understand more about what the world of concept art is all about.

First Steph talked to us about the different types of concept arts that go into a game, from environment to clothing design. This was very interesting but looked incredibly difficult, especially the amount of time and designs it takes to get to the final game. We got to have a look at his art and this was incredibly interesting as he had also worked on comics in the past as well as some very interesting concepts for DC and Marvel characters in a Mortal Combat game. This was probably my favourite of his work as I love comics and games and mixing them together is always inspiring.

We then had a talk with Mitch, a former student from the DMU game art design course who was talking about one of the games he recently worked on 'F1 Race Stars'. This was incredibly interesting for me as I have had the honor of trying out this game at the Eurogamer convention this year so I could begin to see how the game I have played was made. Some interesting points were made, especially the ones about how strict they have to be at following exactly what needs to be put into the game, for example Formula 1 stated that they couldn't have any images of cars crashing or being on fire but one of the parts they had to include in the game was the ability to be able to pick up items and throw them at other racers in order to slow them down. Because of this the producers had to come up with a way of being able to throw something to put other racers off the course but it had to be in a friendly way. This was very interesting for me because I hadn't realised how much thought had to be put into a game in this sense and how long it then takes for ideas like this to be seen in the final game.

It was also interesting to see how many concept art pieces are done before the final game and just how quickly they have to create these concept designs which looked very difficult and challenging to produce that amount of quality in such a short amount of time. It was also interesting to find out that the 'screenshots' on the back of game boxes aren't in fact shots from the game but are actually just painted by the art team. This was something I had no idea about.

Finally, I got to see the miniscule things that took a lot of time, effort and designing to produce the final design, such as the pickup pads. This was very interesting as I wouldn't imagine something so tiny in a game would take that much time to produce.

All in all the talk was incredibly informative and gave me a better look at what the industry is really like, especially as Mitch was a former student from my course. I hope to attend more talks like this in the future.

Source number	Source	Comments
Source 1	http://media.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/files/2012/07/F1-Race-Stars_CorkScrew-AbuDhabi-hi-res.jpg - Image of Formula 1 Race Stars	An image of one of the cutscenes on the back of the game box (which was actually just drawn and not an actual cutscene).