Atomhawk Art Competition 2022 - Forgotten Creation

[Carlosan]

Source...

Talented concept artists are encouraged to enter with fantastic prizes up for grabs

Award-winning studio Atomhawk – known for creating worlds of wonder with some of the greatest game developers around – is on the search for the brightest upcoming artists to get involved in what will be its 6th art competition.

This year’s theme is ‘Forgotten Creation’, and artists will need to express what this means to them in their own unique way through their creative art. Those who want to get involved will have until August 7th, 2022 to submit their forgotten creation.

Prizes for the winners of the competition include art equipment, games consoles, and subscriptions, as well as the return of the Rising Star Mentorship for the second year, where the winner will win a Wacom Cintiq 22 and 1-on-1 sessions with an Atomhawk artist to level up their skills.

[Max Funkner]

What are the best tools/software they use in order create such concept art?

[cookepuss]

I'm going to save you YEARS of heartache and waffling on this issue. It's simple. Skills, not software. Apps come and go. Apps break. Skills are portable. Skills are perpetually upgradable. Skills last a lifetime.

You can make amazing concept art with as little as Photoshop or equivalent (eg. Affinity or Gimp). You can go super complex and can toss every app in creation at the subject being rendered. The bottom line here is that, without the skill (and patience) to follow through on your vision, you're probably just going to produce rubbish.

Focus on core skills. Lighting. Anatomy. Volume. Texture. ETC and so on. You don't have to be a great 2D artist to create great art. In fact, you don't even have to draw; It certainly helps to at least know more than stick figures, but it's not strictly necessary. No. You DO need a firm understanding of classic, non-digital art skills though. Paint? Clay? Chalk? Photography? Anything like that. The skills you learn there are applicable to digital art.

Look. Old school big budget movie matte artists used to create AMAZING backgrounds with as little as paint and glass. In the 1930s movie Wizard of Oz, the tornado effect was just a wind blown stocking. In the pod racing scene in the Star Wars prequels, the long shots of the crowd were just colored qtips blown by a hair dryer. Creating amazing art doesn't have to involve taking out a bank loan or attempting to master 20 apps at once.

There are people who will say, "Use the right app for the job." That's a perfectly valid way of thinking. However, here's how that works out in practice. Let's use the example of a sci-fi hero posed in a rocky wasteland with, maybe, a mountain scape in the background that you might use in realtime and polished, rendered states.

Raster Image Editing - Photoshop
Vector Image Editing - Illustrator
Core 3D Suite - Maya
Sculpting - ZBrush
Cloth Simulation - Marvelous Designer
Terrain Generation - World Creator
Procedural Materials - Substance Designer
Texturing - Substance Painter
UVs - Rizom
Realtime Rendering - Marmoset Toolbag
Third Party Render - VRay
Compositing - Nuke

Without trying too hard, I just ballooned that pipeline up to 12 apps. Maybe you've got a swollen bank account and can afford them all. However, if you're a (relative) newbie, what are the chances that you'll be able to master them all at the same time and to the same degree of proficiency? Like the old saying goes, it takes about 10k hours to master any one skill. That's about 4 years of college. Even then, that's just a start. With CG, you're learning new stuff all of the time since the art form is constantly evolving.

IMO, focus on your core skills. That's it. Back in the day, I was making CG art with as little as Photoshop and trueSpace. Over time, my pipeline got crazy. Crazier than my example. You pick the best apps for the task, but somehow manage to find a way to create sub-tasks and then specific apps for them too. Before you know it, half of your work is just switching between apps and data interchange.

These days, for me, it's all about KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Get more done with fewer apps. You might have to use some addons or come up with creative solutions that dedicated apps might already exist to solve, but you gain so much more in terms of workflow fluidity. Using fewer apps, imo, forces you to master more of what you already have on hand. At one point, I had a crazy 15+ app pipeline. Today? 3. Affinity Photo. Blender. 3DCoat. That's it. Anything else, as I said, is accomplished through creative solutions or 3d party plugins. (I try to keep those to a minimum too, fwiw. Plugins come, go, and break too.)

Don't over complicate it. Seriously. Go look at ArtStation. Browse a bunch of images. You'll find that some people are using 10 apps while others are using just 1, yet the quality between the two end products is the same. Software is a means to an end, not the end itself.

Edited July 8, 2022 by cookepuss

[Max Funkner]

Thank you, for your detailed answer. I have learned something new today!

[cookepuss]

On 7/9/2022 at 2:24 AM, Max Funkner said:

Thank you, for your detailed answer. I have learned something new today!

Not a problem. Happy to chime in.

I wanted to add something to my post that I didn't make clear, unfortunately.

While I do feel that software is just a means to an end, I don't want to diminish the importance of software choice. Whenever you're working for yourself - whether you're a hobbyist, freelancer, or run your own studio - your pipeline length or choice of apps is really nobody's business, but your own. However, when somebody else is calling the shots (eg. employer), the choice is out of your hands.

Consequently, what apps you end up using is really situational. As such, you may be totally comfortable and productive doing everything in just Blender, 3DCoat, and Affinity, but if your employer - prospective or current - demands proficiency in Maya, Photoshop, ZBrush, and a half-dozen other apps then you just have to go with the flow. When somebody else is signing the checks and making the decisions, personal choice sometimes takes a backseat to compliance.

On the plus side, if you've already mastered the relevant skills and techniques in one set of apps, moving them over to another is infinitely easier. The terminology may change from app to app and the UI/UX may be different than what you learned, but all of these apps are fundamentally the same relative to another in that category. So, even if you've made Maya your home for 5 years, the process of moving to 3dsmax or Blender becomes more about figuring out where they "moved the furniture" and, maybe, why.

To put it another way, having learned to drive on that Nissan Altima that you've had for 4 years doesn't mean that you need to relearn how to drive just because you've bought a Tesla. Own a dozen cars in your lifetime and none of the broad strokes of the experience or process change from one vehicle to the next, only the finer points and creature comforts. (I can't even tell you how many apps I've had to learn, work with, and/or master over the past three plus decades.)

Focus on skills and techniques. Understand where you want to be as an artist, personally and professionally, at some point in the future. Don't lose your mind if you started to learn, master the "wrong apps" in your studies; You can always change apps once you've gained a degree of mastery in what's been on your plate.