How to Create Iconic Key Art

Recently, we explored the 2D concept design process for our mascot, Athena, in our blog, 'The Art of Athena: Crafting a Modern Icon.' That article delved into the inspiration and character design steps behind bringing Athena to life with a modern, sci-fi design language. With our character art ready and approved, we embarked on a new project: overhauling our old website to better represent Athena Productions as a film and game art outsourcing studio.

Our initial focus was the homepage, a crucial component in defining the look for the rest of the website and creating a memorable first impression. We chose to feature our mascot, Athena, in a high-quality key art piece that captures her heroic and powerful nature, setting the perfect tone for our newly revamped site.

In this blog, we'll take you through our film and game art production steps - from initial sketches to the final polished artwork - sharing insights into the artistic and technical steps involved in creating the stunning key art now proudly displayed on our homepage.

Making a Start

Before diving into the key art, we used a wireframe from our UX design team to guide us. The challenge was to craft an image that not only aligned with the new layout but also enhanced it, creating a striking first impression. Our goal was to ensure that the key art seamlessly integrated into the overall layout, rather than redesigning the website to accommodate the art.

As always, our art team began by gathering references from diverse sources—real life, movies, video games, and other inspirations. Collecting references is step zero in starting a project, as it allows us to communicate ideas, set boundaries, and identify potential challenges. Managing constraints and technical requirements is a common aspect of commercial art projects, and our talented artists must always be aware of the boundaries.

Additionally, references help in planning and organizing the project into manageable steps, especially for larger projects like game art design, which can prevent overwhelm. Without references, much of the process would involve guesswork regarding direction, goals, and quality. In short, references are an absolute must for quality art creation!

Let's Get Sketching!

The first step in our process was sketching. We aimed to depict Athena as regal, legendary, and effortless. We wanted her to embody the heroic figure we envisioned. At this stage, the goal was to explore as many ideas as quickly and loosely as possible to capture mood, posing, storytelling, and emotion. We deliberately avoided focusing on details or time-consuming aspects like armor, color, materials, or elaborate FX during this phase.

Our team of artists employ a flexible approach to sketching, by blending 3D modeling and 2D techniques as needed. Utilizing 3D tools allows us to establish accurate lighting and perspective, while 2D art techniques enable us to add dramatic effects without investing excessive time in 3D. Antoine, one of our skilled concept artists, blocked out the environment and posed the character in Blender before transitioning to Photoshop for further refinement. Speed was crucial at this stage, as many ideas can be discarded, so spending too much time on a single sketch is impractical.

Initial sketches as we explore different ideas for our Athena Key Art. At this stage, speed is key.

Crafting a Powerful Yet Simple Environment

By using a basic 3D character model for Athena, we sped up our workflow by locking in the camera angle and lighting early. Although a more complex model would be created later, early decisions on mood, lighting, and camera angle allowed us to identify where to invest time on details and what didn’t need prioritization. For instance, we knew the back of Athena wouldn’t be visible, so we did not need to spend as much time detailing those areas.

Using Blender, we can quickly establish the environment, mood and camera angle.

From the initial sketches, we had a solid idea and foundation for the environment, but we needed to add more detail by breaking apart the architecture and rocks. Antoine had already modeled the architecture during the sketch phase, but by using destruction physics tools in Blender, he could accurately fragment the model, introducing an interesting visual element to the scene.

Using destruction physics in Blender, our artists can create a realistic effect with architecture.

Always Refining

Given the complexity of Athena's design and that she was to be the focal point, we opted to use 3D to push her outfit with greater fidelity. Our Senior Concept Character Artist Augusto, utilized ZBrush’s modeling capabilities to create a highly accurate and detailed model of Athena to be posed and integrated into the scene.

Using ZBrush to model out the character, allows us to have more accuracy with lighting, materials and perspective.

The models don't need to be perfect at this stage, we just want it to be as informative as possible.

While a perfect 3D game-ready model isn’t necessary for concept art, having an informative model greatly helps in determining perspective, lighting, and material effects. This approach saves time and contributes to achieving the realistic, high-quality art look we aimed for. It can also be a great help to other teams further down the production pipeline—such as 3D modelers who can use these models as bases to work off of.

Bringing All of The Art Assets Together

Once the character model was ready, our Senior Environment Concept Artist, Titas, integrated Athena back into the 3D environment in Blender. 3D packages proved to be a powerful and efficient tool for this project’s process. Given the variety of materials used in Athena's design, which react differently under various lighting and color conditions, 3D allowed us to accurately and swiftly address these questions. This efficiency enabled us to focus on more important aspects of the image.

Once ready, Titas rendered an accurate base image for further refinement in Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, we applied various layer effects and adjustments to enhance the image. Titas used photos of different FX—ranging from northern lights to interesting camera effects—to enhance the magical effect and light around Athena. As we got closer to finishing the project, we concentrated on finer details, pushing the image further and addressing any issues that arose.

Final Thoughts

Crafting standout key art that grabs a target audiences attention is no easy feat, especially in the competitive gaming industry. But with years of experience in game concept art services, our in-house team of talented artists is more than up to the challenge.

If you’re looking to elevate your game art design - whether that be art direction, character concept art or Unreal Engine environment concept design, our concept art studio is ready to bring your vision to life with exceptional design, emotion, and storytelling. Discover how our team can help today!