What is a concept artist?

What is a concept artist?

A concept artist is a sub-section of illustration that generates images for either a design or idea for either a video game or film to help in the production pipeline, generally they have strong backgrounds in drawing or painting, they create the look for said movie or video game.

So what is the difference between a concept artist vs a fine artist?

What is a Concept Artist? A concept artist  is not a fine artist.A concept artist is a designer or illustrator that uses artistic license to design a product for a client or business. Concept artists have strong artistic skills but the difference is they use their skills to design or illustrate, where as a fine artist does not. A fine artist uses their abilities to creating an image that has a deep meaning or is something personal to the artist first, where as concept art, does something different entirely.

A concept artist is given an idea or guideline from the art director to design, and what a concept artist does is to create a design that fits within parameters of the art director's idea, this is where the artistic license comes in, the concept artist creates the idea but use their own unique imagination to create their own design or "art" that fits within the parameters given, and hopefully the design will be used by the client and or business.Generally a Concept artist starts with just drawing traditionally with pencil and paper and just learns art fundamentals just like any other artist would but, after that is when they go to specify into their said field.

here are some more sources to read more up on the topic:

Pickthall, J. (2013, November 6). Just what is concept art?. Creative Bloq. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://www.creativebloq.com/career/what-concept-art-11121155