[djha-skin]

> In the near future I want to become a concept artist in the games industry

Worst industry ever by all the accounts I've heard. Part of the compensation package is that you are working in the gaming industry. Long hours, lousy pay, ill treatment. Go for the art mate but pursue a different industry.

[aiappreciator]

Its also literally the worst type of artist to be. Concept art is the most vulnerable type of art to AI. AI already does concept art way better than humans, 1 concept artist can now do the job of 10. Because AI is good at variation and creativity, bad at detail/coherence, concept art favors the former, needs less of the latter.

Why doesn't OP MAKE games instead of being a mere artist? If you can program, and have a passion for art, you can just make indie games, think of the undertale legend.

[dumpsterdiver]

I have to agree. I couldn't think of a worse time to be getting into concept art. I subscribed to Midjourney's rendering service not too long ago just to test the waters, and I've already seen it improve dramatically twice.

I don't use the service often, but sometimes I'll spend an evening experimenting with prompts to generate images that I might use in existing or future projects, and it feels really cool having those images "in the bank" in case I decide to use them later. Even if I eventually wanted to hire a human artist to create the final product (for instance, to avoid potential copyright issues), the generated artwork is an amazing help for shaping an ideal scene.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm not worried about competition from "AI art" — am I just stupid and ill-informed?

Pursuing game concept-art though appears to me to be a drag simply because of the sameness of it. I know the author of the article thinks it's become a wide open field for creativity but my eye stills see the same fantasy-super-hero-manga genre that probably keeps computer games from being seen as deserving of being called "art" to society at large.

[dumpsterdiver]

The thing I find frightening about AI image generation is the speed of iteration. Some of the images generated by Midjourney within seconds would take a human artist quite a long time to create. You can take a complete work from a paid human artist and run it through some prompts to get closer to the result you were looking for while retaining most of the original work.

Even if AI don't completely displace concept artists in the immediate future, it will certainly displace at least some portion of a human concept artist's workflow. I think the "detail work" for concept art is a good candidate to be offloaded to AI. Why pay an artist to paint every blade of grass when you can just take their rough draft and apply a series of "incredibly detailed grass texture" (etc) prompts to it?

Imo, the writing on the wall is pretty clear. While I'm sure that human concept artists will continue to find work, I'm pretty sure they'll be fighting an uphill battle, and probably won't feel very valued after awhile.

[Fricken]

As Artists gain the ability to do more with less standards and expectations will change. The arrival of the printing press, the photograph, and the rise of digital effects were all ineffectual at putting artists out of work.

[dumpsterdiver]

While I agree that human artists will always find their way to fashion, you also have to consider that ten years ago there were a lot of people looking for good-enough concept art. Good enough just won't make it anymore.

[odessacubbage]

>the sameness of it.

the skills required to do entertainment design are broad enough that they give you access to a pretty wide range of jobs across multiple industries. if you get bored of being a render monkey, it's really not hard at all to switch to something like storyboarding or color scripting.

[paxys]

Yup. And it's common for a large studio to do mass layoffs after every release. The entire industry is a front for exploitation of those who get into it because they are passionate about gaming. Go work literally anywhere else, and enjoy video games in your free time.

[jayd16]

Concept artists are usually contractors early in dev, not part of the death marches at the end.

But also in general it's not that hard to work in games and avoid crunch. Just respect yourself and don't let the trappings trap you. There's always other studios that will treat you better.

[odessacubbage]

concept art is fine just as long as you go in with the right expectations for what the job actually is. also if you already have a technical background there is nothing stopping you from finding a marriage between both of your skillsets and working on smaller, more creatively fulfilling games.