When I was first introduced to the film industry, one of the roles that seemed interesting to me was Concept Artist (aka the live-action version of Visual Development based on some google research). In fact, because of that introduction, I took a product design major for my BA because I thought I could be a prop designer for movies, and then I realised there was no such industry back home. Now fast forward to today, I learned about visual development artists for animation, which sounds more fun because of the wide possibilities of animation production.
What intrigued me about this role is the idea of building and creating a world to tell a story with a compelling visual that you created based on extensive research is just sounds like an amazing thing to do. But I have to admit, I actually didn’t really know specifically about the role because every time I go through an art book, there is just an extensive amount of images, visuals, and design. So I wasn’t really sure who does what and what is the limit of what visual development artists do.
So based on my research, visual development usually covers:
- Characters and creatures (or sometimes the role is specifically called a character designer)
- Environments
- Props
- Interior and Exterior
- Color palette
- Clothing
- Lighting
- Creating the look of the story.
In my last post I talked about Production Designer, I think the difference is Visual Development (which is under the Art Department) focuses on developing the visuals as in, their job is to keep creating. While Production Designers is in the boat with them, usually they will create the key visual and feed them to the art department. After that sometimes production designers will keep creating and other times, they will only do the approving (mainly because they have a lot to do), but essentially to guide the art department (which consists of the visual development artists) based on the director’s vision.
In the art department itself, sometimes they will have multiple art director that focus on specific things. For example, the one that focuses on lighting, environment, etc.
So based on my research, one of the pieces of advice that usually will be given is to know your niche, while at the same time, being versatile and adaptable style-wise. What this means is that if you want to do props, then do it plenty in your portfolio that shows the recruiters that prop design is what you are aiming for. But at the same time give them an example of something else to let you know you are versatile and can adapt.
And then here are some skills that are important to have and develop:
- Draftsmanship – show that you are really good at drawing.
- Figure drawing and life drawing.
- Understanding of colour theory.
- Painting.
- Great thematic visual research.
- Try out different styles to be more versatile.
When I researched the topic of visual development artist and production designer, I noticed that many of production designer was once a visual development artist, and sometimes they switch role. And I found out that sometimes the director or the show creator will choose a production designer based on their taste or style, and they will hold the key for the visual development team to follow. It is not always the case, but it’s interesting how flexible these roles seem when the main focus is how to serve the story well and give the best to the audience.