Planning and Concepting

Why you should plan things ahead.

Firstly I would like to share my non-professional opinion – The way I do things here.

Well, first things first when given a brief, reading it through and out we have to get in the mood right? Well what’s a better way to get in the mood than making a mood board? Get it..? *Awkward Laugh*

*Ahem* Well the way I start things anyway is by organising a mood board, the research and so on, brainstorming and finding inspirational things is crucial for me, otherwise I always end up going in circles. I need to give myself a brief idea what direction to go after the acknowledgment of the topic. I will often just start with researching the topic, whenever it is pictures from Pinterest and google, blog and forums, to other peoples’ work and how they have tackled the theme.  

Doodling things out is always helpful and it is a good form to get initial ideas out, before proceeding to more serious concepts, but hey I am running ahead of myself here. I cannot stress enough how important time planning is, which is something I absolutely suck at, big time. I’ve been better recently since purchase of a whiteboard, calendar, 3 pocket diaries and planners, installing sticky notes onto desktop and writing stuff on hands with permanent markers. However this will mean nothing if I am not going to get into right mentality of starting something earlier and spacing it throughout time well. It will leave me with more time on my hands to fix existing issues and possible improvements of the work and less stress. 

Kids remember - TIME MANAGEMENT!

Anyway, back to concepting.  The fun side of things. Grab a pencil, tablet whatever and draw, write things, hell, get crazy; have a bottle glass of wine and sketch out all the possibilities.

Remember green is not a creative colour.

It is important not to play it safe I found, get rid of anything restricting you, and get creative. Also it is important to get constant critique when heading towards the stable concepts (not the doodling part), sometimes when sitting too long on things we start to lose sight of what is good and bad in our work, if you don’t have that special someone to bash your work without constrains get away from sketchbook/ computer, give it a break and come back to it with clear mind.

In the industry you will have people to help you with that, which is nice. Speaking about industry, let’s get to what more professional than me people do.

Well, in terms of planning there are pipelines. Yaaaaay.

There are also professional briefs, nailing everything from start to finish so the concept artist, tech artist, animators, FX artist, directors to janitor can get it. And the timetables, everything is timed in the professional environment, it is crucial for development of the game, advert or a movie.  When people go over time, the companies face losses. And lastly, what is planning in terms of games (or anything really)?

The purpose of planning is to ensure that we are working on the most valuable things at all times. As much as we would like to, planning is not about predicting the future. Even the best, most thought out plans need to be continually refined. They require continuous and constant feedback to be useful.

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