Your Artistic Workflow

Hello fellow artists!

Well, everything I know about the creation of character design, concept art (using photoshop) color blending etc.
Is all something I've taught myself. I've had no special education whatsoever like I know some of you have :) And as much I would like to take such classes, my real passion lies within motion picture directing. Hopefully in one year or so I will attend one of these 3 film schools AFI and UCLA and Cal State in Los Angeles.
Considered to be the best film schools in the world :)

Regardless, what I'm real interested in right now is your workflow methods when it concerns concept art creations.
What tools do you use, and how do you use them? etc.
What is the first thing they teach you in art school?

I think this is the way most professionals does it.
By all means, please correct me if I'm wrong or if my wording is inappropriate.

• Get an idea (or a job =P)
• Make a sketch
  • Quick figurative drawing
• Lineart
  • *Polished* clean artwork. You get the general idea of the concept.
• Basic Color Overlay
  • In order to get the *composition* right as a whole.
• Detail & Final Touch-ups
  • The final piece. Lightning, shading & details etc.

Yeah, thats generally it.
Though some skip the lineart step and go straight into color.

i do drawing as a hobby too, as i study to become an engineer.
My dream is to make "proffesional" movies in my free time tho and progress to pro state if possible. But all these art things are just my hobbies and i enjoy alot.

I dont have the ability to do sketch coloring for good composition, tats wat im training.
My flow is usually: idea->fast sketch->detail drawing->color part by part of it (eventho im trying to color all but i always hang up in 1 spot... cus im a perfectionist :/ ). Thats about tat :P
In movies i usually get idea, draw the story/sketch board, think of dialogues, do test animations (low quality rendering) and then do a full render of it later.

BUt all in all my knowledge is really poor, i just know average of each :P

Actually most professionals do a black and white drawing after the line art, that's basically how they like to get the values right before adding in color i.e. they apply color to the greyscale which is something different then adding it onto the existing drawing by brush strokes.

Pssshh who needs detailed linework anyway? I just skip that. I usually do start with a line-scetch, not that good yet with a value-scetch, i'm a line-orientated man.

Then i proceed to overlay colors and values on top of that, and when i'm content with the results start "makin' it pretty".

Oh god, how I hate that workflow. I tried it several times but it feels so bullshit to me. I think in colors, I draw in colors, I just can't do it in b&w first...though it's amazing how many people do it. What can you say if it works for them...

Drawing is something very personal and can't be defined by a "standard" workflow, I personally consider my style as a "comic penciler", and I love to leave them in that way. I tend to draw without any clear idea in mind and then I add or use the drawing mistakes to modify the drawing shape.

The workflow you described seems more applicable to general illustration and such (imo). Concept art puts more emphasis on the conceptualisation stage so the sketch part might be the more important one. Feng Zhu sketches out dozens of small thumbnails of potential designs and then selects a few that he deems good and then proceeds to sketch something more elaborate from the thumbnail and goes on to ink and marker/color stage if needed.


OT:


Is that true that those are the best film schools in the world? Cuz I'm interested. I intended on maybe studying cinema overseas (France) after graduating in design but if the states got the best then I wouldn't mind lookin there too!