Aye but what makes you, and admittedly the vast majority on Nexus, think "concept art" is some ideal that games then try to live up to? It's nothing like that and depends on what & how much you're told, which is often not much and can change while game ideas are being bounced around, and you have no idea how close those images are to what the artist intended, let alone what the game designer meant at that ultra-early conceptual stage, and let alone how close to what they ultimately decided they wanted to achieve.
Look at the Memory Den - sure all that purple is pretty and plush but totally unrealistic in gritty Goodneighbour. Look at the vertibird - totally ridiculous notion that the guy could stand out there like that (let alone his mutt). Look at the city cinema exterior (pic 6) - that helmet is ridiculous, impractical and not connected nor connectable to the suit. Look at the ship - no way is there the draft nor beam for such a large dreadnought to reach that bridge, let alone be stuck in it. Look at the Prydwen - no way would it have all that 18th century hanging rigging - and dangerous with vertibirds trying to dock.
Indeed, the Prydwen is possibly a good example of progression. Maybe the designers initially imagined they wanted rigging, then later thought "oh crap that's stupid". Yet you can be sure, based on that artwork, some dumbass modder will plonk a ton of dangling rigging onto it to "complete what Bethesda didn't bother finishing off in their rush to get the game out" and some equally no-nothing gamers will suck it up and bemoan Bethesda (or whoever) in the process. Same for other concept art mods, and some cut-content.
Game desingers don't keep re-commissioning to update & perfect paintings as ideas & plans solidify until they reach an ideal which they must try to match in the game. And I simply can't fathom why so many gamers seem to think that's essentially what they are.
As someone who's worked on this kind of stuff I think both of you need to understand this. Concept art is actually used mostly in the planning stages of the production cycle and then used as a guideline by level designers once all the assets are made. See you'll concept out an area with 4-5 sketches, maybe a couple of higher res finished pieces to give the 3d guys stuff to work with then it gets approved by the bosses and the 3d artists go make a few specific parts of the scene, like a particular awning, a phone booth, or a unique sign, door or set piece. then it goes to the level designers who put it all together while looking at the concepts and plans for the location, sometimes they might ask 3d guys for some more changes or make some on their own. The rest of that space is pieced together from generic props and scenery which has been created for re-use purposes. Sometimes areas get reworked once missions/ quests etc get pushed into the locations and sometimes one of the leads is like, no I want it to look like this.
In the end, we are at the mercy of time, money and what bossman says is how its gotta look. We would often love to get a scene much closer to the concept work but that's not actually what concept art is for. its more of a style guide for us level designers and 3d artists to use to craft the same look within the game engine.
Anyway, that's roughly how concept stuff works. a lot of the time its done years before anyone even makes a game engine, quite often its used for marketing or turns up years after production in someones portfolio, other times its stuff some other artist has done after the fact of a location they really liked. Alot of the concept work I've had to work with has been literally sketched out on a sketch pad or slapped together with the brush tool in photoshop in like 5 mins. :) the really cool stuff is often so modellers can create a particular set piece and see how it would slot into the world.
:) thankye for reading and streetyson, i don't think the majority think that at all lol, some people just want games to look better and us devs love it when fans make what we did look better ages after we are done working on a thing. (no not involved in Bethesda, mostly indie stuff here)
This is great! I've never seen some of these before. I've been using this mod to inject concept art into loading screens for quite some time and I'm always looking for more artwork to add to that one. Would you be willing to divulge where you found the images that you used?
Well I got most of my images from that mods own image tab, but for the others I used artstation and searched for fallout concept art, that's where I got this awesome image from
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i forgot you need to encode the file as bik and change the file extension to bk2, file should be fixed now
This is how games should use their concept arts - fans want to see this stuff! Even if its just black and white
Look at the Memory Den - sure all that purple is pretty and plush but totally unrealistic in gritty Goodneighbour.
Look at the vertibird - totally ridiculous notion that the guy could stand out there like that (let alone his mutt).
Look at the city cinema exterior (pic 6) - that helmet is ridiculous, impractical and not connected nor connectable to the suit.
Look at the ship - no way is there the draft nor beam for such a large dreadnought to reach that bridge, let alone be stuck in it.
Look at the Prydwen - no way would it have all that 18th century hanging rigging - and dangerous with vertibirds trying to dock.
Indeed, the Prydwen is possibly a good example of progression. Maybe the designers initially imagined they wanted rigging, then later thought "oh crap that's stupid". Yet you can be sure, based on that artwork, some dumbass modder will plonk a ton of dangling rigging onto it to "complete what Bethesda didn't bother finishing off in their rush to get the game out" and some equally no-nothing gamers will suck it up and bemoan Bethesda (or whoever) in the process. Same for other concept art mods, and some cut-content.
Game desingers don't keep re-commissioning to update & perfect paintings as ideas & plans solidify until they reach an ideal which they must try to match in the game. And I simply can't fathom why so many gamers seem to think that's essentially what they are.
Concept art is actually used mostly in the planning stages of the production cycle and then used as a guideline by level designers once all the assets are made.
See you'll concept out an area with 4-5 sketches, maybe a couple of higher res finished pieces to give the 3d guys stuff to work with then it gets approved by the bosses and the 3d artists go make a few specific parts of the scene, like a particular awning, a phone booth, or a unique sign, door or set piece.
then it goes to the level designers who put it all together while looking at the concepts and plans for the location, sometimes they might ask 3d guys for some more changes or make some on their own. The rest of that space is pieced together from generic props and scenery which has been created for re-use purposes.
Sometimes areas get reworked once missions/ quests etc get pushed into the locations and sometimes one of the leads is like, no I want it to look like this.
In the end, we are at the mercy of time, money and what bossman says is how its gotta look.
We would often love to get a scene much closer to the concept work but that's not actually what concept art is for. its more of a style guide for us level designers and 3d artists to use to craft the same look within the game engine.
Anyway, that's roughly how concept stuff works. a lot of the time its done years before anyone even makes a game engine, quite often its used for marketing or turns up years after production in someones portfolio, other times its stuff some other artist has done after the fact of a location they really liked.
Alot of the concept work I've had to work with has been literally sketched out on a sketch pad or slapped together with the brush tool in photoshop in like 5 mins. :) the really cool stuff is often so modellers can create a particular set piece and see how it would slot into the world.
:) thankye for reading and streetyson, i don't think the majority think that at all lol, some people just want games to look better and us devs love it when fans make what we did look better ages after we are done working on a thing. (no not involved in Bethesda, mostly indie stuff here)
These artworks never gets old.