Before Indiana Jones had a whip to crack or Iron Man debuted his on-screen suit-of-many-armaments, someone had to dream up all those intricate particulars; not just the objects themselves, but the look, the very mood and texture we associate with those characters and their worlds.
This task belongs to the realm of the concept designer. Whether it is industrial design (the world of planes, trains and automobiles) or entertainment design (film, television and video games), one of the first stops is the drawing board -- literally.
Bringing that back story to the forefront has been concept designer Scott Robertson's sideline for the last few years. He launched Design Studio Press to showcase this integral albeit not widely known part of the imagining process: Design Studio Press In six years, he's already published nearly two dozen titles. While some volumes highlight the craft itself, others provide a showcase for the designers -- their range of interests and expertise as artists working in various disciplines and mediums. Those mediums include evocative pen-and-ink renderings, private sketch books, intricate character design, cartooning and painting -- in both computer and traditional forms.
Quiet as it's kept, says Robertson, "The front end of any industrial design process is doing a bunch of fun, crazy concept sketches." And when it comes to film, he says, concept designers are called in often before there's even a script. "It might be a meeting just with a director who pitches some ideas -- 'We'll need this, and this and that' -- and you do paintings that show these narrative pitch points. They take those paintings and pitch the bigger concept, often with no real story yet." If a script already exists, says Robertson, the key points are highlighted and then the designers set to their task of visually articulating the desired characters, environments, vehicles and props.
"The big dilemma," says Robertson, is that artists don't always have the goods to show for all the time they've spent. "So many of these guys have been out working for 10 years, and they have no personal artwork to show for it. About 90% of the time, studios will never release the rights to the artwork to be shown by the original artists. Studios own everything."
