Artist Research
Firstly, they asked me to look into artists that do both illustration and concept art and even if I don't like their particular style, I should comment on how they present their work and how they prevent confusion regarding their different roles.
When searching for, 'illustrator and concept artist', it comes up with a lot of random pages that are all asking the same questions. What's the difference between being an illustrator and a concept artist? Are they two different jobs? What does each entail? There's obviously a lot of confusion over the matter and from the looks of things, people do try and pigeon hole the two into different boxes, rather than having them mixed.
Artists that come up when searching for the term tend to be concept artists first and foremost, and don't tend to have any illustrative work on their websites. Such as Peter Chan[36], who was one of the first to come up.
His website is very minimalist and simple, not distracting from his work at all. His front page rolls through his work and it's all concept work he's done.
His gallery is all films and games he's worked on, showing his sketch work and how he conceptualises the characters are environments. It's very traditional, and he uses a lot of sketching instead of digital work. It's really interesting to see that concept artists are still working in this more traditional way, because people tend to try and do things that would end up being the fastest and easiest method, to try and cut down on the time frame of creating the movie, but it did surprise me he still works like this on modern films. It does give a different, more classic feel to his work.
Now to go on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we have Noah Bradley[37] who is incredibly digitally minded, has a busy and personality filled website and creates much more adult styled artwork. It's not exactly my style, but I appreciate the amount of effort, time and energy it must have taken to get to such an amazing level.
He starts with a lot of information about his many different exploits in the artistic community. He mentions a lot of what he does, what he works on and has his upcoming shows and such on the right hand side. It's interesting to see how different this website is to the previous one, as it is pretty much the polar opposite of it.
I think I prefer the cleanness of Peter Chan's website, and how everything is sectioned off rather than having this huge section of words on the top of the page. He almost doesn't have any artwork on the first click of the page, which could possibly be detrimental to anyone wanting to hire him, because people like to be captured upon first click, and not have to scroll to find his artwork.
His work is so different to mine, but I do really enjoy it. It's beautiful and has such depth and interest. I do really love the feel of his images and he has a consistent style throughout all his work. But again, even though he describes himself as a concept artist and illustrator, I only really see concept art on his website.
I think what I've learned about this exercise is that there's a tendency to need some form of separation between the two different artistic worlds. I feel like perhaps there is no real differentiation between concept art and illustration, and they're pretty much just one and the same. People using the same style for everything they do, and not caring about whether it fits in a certain category. The community may try and pick it apart but at the end of the day, concept art and illustration have the same roots: They both tell stories. They both show characters, environments and where a story is living. So to try and separate them is perhaps not the way we should be going, but embracing they're one and the same.
This may cause confusion to some people, but I think presenting a website full of high quality work of the same style to a client is basically all that is needed. Especially with work like mine, where it could be construed as animation concept art or children's book illustration. The artwork would pretty much look the same either way.
Finding My Career
After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that I would love to be an illustrator first and foremost, and also try to be a Jack of all trades as well. I would like to get represented by a children's book illustration agency, and perhaps tell them of my loves for both book illustration and animation concept art, and if they get any work associated with animation, they could help me with that. I definitely would like to get an agent, as finances and contracting scares me to death.
I have a slight mental disability called Dyscalculia. This is something I have lived with all my life and have only in the past couple of years learned what it is, because it's not very well documented and nowhere near as well known or researched as Dyslexia. What Dyscalculia means to me is having difficulty with my rights and lefts, an inability to do mental arithmetic under pressure or remembering times tables and answers to questions I've just done, a difficulty reading long numbers such as phone numbers and card details, and a hard time with time management and budgeting, to name a few. It is mild, and usually flares up when in a pressured situation, but university has taught me how to manage my time even with this disability, and has given me confidence in my abilities. But I do still feel I could perhaps slip up and calculate something wrong, or mess up my time management, so having an agent would negate most of those worries and allow me to focus on myself and my artwork and personal finances instead of everything all at once.
We will see how this turns out, and how my career blossoms in the next few years. I hope to be represented by an agency in the next few months and living off of my illustration, as that would be my ultimate goal.
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