Martin Sawkins is an Art Director for video games and has been in the business for more than 15 years. One of his posts on conceptart.org, seemed so pertinent that I thanked him and asked if I could quote it on our Blog. Here it is:

“One of the lucky and unlucky things about being an artist is that your
portfolio is all that matter’s when it comes to getting a job, nobody is
going to care where or if you went to art school. This is not to say you
should or shouldn’t go, it’s just that when you are being assessed by the
Art Director it’s going to be your work that he looks at.

As for what type of course to take, well I’ve hired and worked with
concept designers who have mainly come from Industrial Design or
Illustration educational backgrounds. Generally speaking, and of course
there can be exceptions, I would avoid game design courses if you want to
become a concept artist, for the most part these course will not give you
full time study in concept design and will not have the best instructors
for concept design/illustration.

What do we look for in concept designers? Sometimes companies hire for
specific projects in which case they tend to like concept artists who have
the same style or can adapt to that style, but in general the broader your
skill set is the more appealing you are to the employer. If you have a
broad portfolio that shows you can handle characters, vehicles,
environments, mood paintings, storyboards in a wide variety of styles then
you become much more employable than an artist who has a portfolio that
shows only fantasy monsters. There are many, many things that contribute
to what we look for, personally once the basics have been covered,
design, perspective, color, proportion, anatomy, the biggest thing that I
look for is, can this artist give me things I haven’t seen before.”
I’m happy to say that Max the Mutt’s four year Diploma Program In Concept Art for Animation and Video Games includes courses that teach (in depth) all the skills Martin Sawkins has stressed. This is not a school that teaches game design. Our focus is entirely on teaching drawing and painting skills necessary for traditional fine art and illustration. In addition, we teach concept specific courses that help students learn to think creatively, find and execute concept ideas. Computer applications come last! Best of all, Max the Mutt’s commitment to trying to keep tuition as low as possible without compromising your education, means tuition is lower than other schools

I just couldn’t wait a week! Please leave me comments. I’d enjoy hearing from you.