Collab Productions Concept Art Pipeline.

Collab Productions
Artists Pipeline.

1000 words

Concept Artists have the power to dictate and perform a style or some sort of visual identity for a game with characters, environments or machinery. Concept art starts at the beginning of the development pipeline. And I want to specifically talk about the position the artists has in the pipeline and its importance. It isn't just concept artists want to talk about but Illustrators who produce art along side the main product to promote it. This can come in the pipeline anytime after concept art is done. Once you have the concept done, Illustrators can use the foundation of the concept artist work to illustrate. So, I can appear anytime after. Finally I want to mention production artists. And they work within pre production stage of development. They work as second art directors and they work closely with art directors as well. They mainly do Movies and Television and not games. 

Figure 1. Sonic concept

Let's start with Concept Artists. Concept Artists as I previously stated starts at the beginning of the projects and are key for the stylisation for a game. Concept artists usually work with both digitally and with pen and paper. And they work closely with the art director to produce a suitable concept which can be taken further into the pipeline like with illustrators and 3D modelling the main assets. A famous concept artist is Naoto Oshima who designed the incredibly iconic Sonic the Hedgehog. Oshima was developing Sonics design for 3 years in the design department. (Damien Mcferren, 2018). It taking three years to design Sonic is the massive extent of concept art being one of the most and first and important things you would have to do. But Sonic is an example of amazing concept design. It's instantly recognisable with its primary shape being ovals. The difference between being a concept artist compare to the other two I'm going to talk about is it's position and affect it has on it's product. It's key to the gaming industry to have these concepts in place so everyone in the pipeline can work with them and doesn't matter where in the pipeline it helps people coding knowing the characters hitboxes, how they move and what mechanics the concept has entailed. I think it's the most crucial out of the three and that why most people want to be it.

Figure 2. Sonic w Chilli Dog

Next it's Illustrators, do gloss over what I said they promote the product in particular, Illustrators don't always have to be in a pipeline or with a team. Being an Illustrator just means making Illustrations that you can sell to an audience or promote a product through art to an audience. For examples one of my favourite Illustrators is Yuji Uekawa. I'm going to use Sonic as an example to keep it consistent. Illustrators can comes anytime after the concept is made. And the example of an illustration I'm using comes from a website called Sonic channel where they post art to just promote Sonic without actually no product or game to sell. What's the point of this illustration? Well it promotes Sonic as a brand and as if they almost saying we have amazing artists and we are always doing stuff for our company. The difference between this and production artists is that production artists is concept art for Tv and Movies. A production artist has more control of the product than a Illustrator. Same goes for concept artist compared to an illustrator. Yuji Uekawa has worked on concept art as well. Making the two roles of concept artist and Illustrator a lot of the time are crossed into the same job. Intertwining with each other making it feel like a team or making one person do both for consistency. The same with production artists making promotional art for the movie and especially animated movies.

Figure 3. Tyson Hesse Concept.

Finally production artists. I'm keeping a theme of Sonic and using the image above to show concept art for Sonic in his movies. The role of the production artist is to overview like a second art director and produce concepts for the movie or Show. I feel the importance of this job could vary depending on the project but for Sonic it's kind of key to the whole movie. In 2019, there was a sonic design for the movie and it looks disgusting and horrible. And I feel everyone knows what I am referring to. So, Tyson Hesse is came in and redesigned sonic making him look more like sonic. Personally I feel I don't think production artists are always necessary but having one makes a difference to the product. The same can be said about all three of these though. Production artists are able to bring the product together to make it cohesive and that's what I think Sonic redesign did for the Sonic movie in 2019. The usual pipeline for this would be right at the start but when I comes to Sonic 2019. It came around about late in production because Sonic because of the fans backlash towards the design. So, they had to go back into design to redesign him. I think concept art can always continue after pre production and it's clear with the Sonic movie.

Conclusion:

Concept, production artists and Illustrators kind of intertwine with each other making it hard to tell them apart. They have similar but different roles they play and where they can be found. Hypothetically If i had to chose one of these three I would be a Illustrator. Not that I would hate to do any of them but being commissioned to being a illustrator. I would feel too unconfident to do either one. I used Sonic as an example because Sonic is a multi media mascot now and he could fit into all three categories. All three of these types of artist share simularities and intertwin work a lot like production artist having to take concept art from a game and the reverse of that.

Bibloraphy:

Damien Mcferren, 2018. Oh boy Sonic the Hedgehog was almost human. [Online] Nintendo life. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/02/oh_boy_sonic_the_hedgehog_was_almost_human 10th June 2025 (Figure 1)

Sonic Fandom, 2025. Yuji Uekawa [Online] Sonic Fandom.https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog/Gallery?file=Sonic_Channel_Sonic%27s_birthday_2020.jpg#Other 10th June 2025 (Figure 2)

Sonic Fandom, 2025. Sonic the Hedgehog film gallery [Online] Sonic Fandomhttps://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(film)/Gallery?file=SonicParamountConcept.jpg10th June 2025. (Figure 3)