Captain Disaster Concept Art by John Atherton

#1 I've done a lot of concept art, so I'll give you some general advice:

- If the background is not part of the concept, don't waste time on it.

- It is essential to have the lineart perfect before coloring - you should add a step to your process where you revise you lineart, possibly by using a lightbox to loosely trace over your first attempt onto a clean sheet of paper, correcting shapes and proportions.

If you would like to take a look at my gamedev developer journal, several of my entries talk about doing concept art:
members.gamedev.net/sunandshadow/journal/
(start reading at the bottom)

#2 Thanks for the tips, Mare.
The journal entries were also helpful. It's hard to find good art lessons at all, and even harder to find them online. Hopefully I'll be able to make some better concept art next time around, whether I post it or not.

#3 This is the process I follow:


Keep the sketching real light and fast at first... don't go into details until you have a basic form roughed out, although it's tempting to stop at areas and make details... once that's done, add the details...and then, if everything looks good, start step 2. and solidify everything and get all the details worked out... and go ahead and start shading... *do not add colors*.... just get a balance of shades... then step 3. add colors over the shades and place highlights whereever they should be.

What I have learned is, it's best to work in stages like this, or layers... that keeps everything more manageable and you end up finishing faster too.