Color the 12 level drawing in order to plan the colors, lighting, special effects and textures
- CA takes the 10 –12 piece of concept art per level and paints the color and lighting into them before the textures and lighting for the levels are done. AD oversees this work
Once all the detailed pencil drawings are done the Concept Artist works with the art director to determine the colors for the level. In this case it is late afternoon in Rohan, and set out on rocky plains. The Art Director in this case says ‘use lots of pale yellows for the grass and warm earth tones for the buildings, and use a cyan blue for the fog. The light from the sun should be an orange yellow and the ambient light should be a pale cyan blue (see figure 8).’
Figure 8
If there are effects in the level, such as fire, smoke or magic portals and the like, the Concept Artist paints them into the correct position as well. This will tell the programmers that the game needs realistic smoke and fire that blows in the wind and around objects like buildings. They can add this task to their priority list. This tells the lighting artist there is going be flickering orange lights placed at the fire locations, and it tells the particle affects artist where to place the fire, smoke and heat distortion emitters. He can add this to his task list now too. The environment artist now can see where the smoke is going to blacken the geometry and can create damaged models too.
