Revolutionizing Concept Art Studios: A Manifesto of Creativity and Excellence

Introduction: AI is here and if it taught us anything yet, it is that among all the great art it can do, in our timeline at least, real organic creativity still reigns supreme. You may be thankful for that, in this context, your quest for the perfect concept art studio begins for real design solutions that aren’t obfuscated by artistic discourses used as smoke screens (pretty concept art doesn’t equal good concept art).

Your project vision needs a partner who not only understands your vision but can elevate it to unparalleled heights, through digital, analogue and intuitive methodologies. Welcome to the concept art revolution led by Menog’s Creative Crew, where artistry meets excellence.

The scope of debate is shrinking, it must expand.

In here, you can find an old artwork of mine, below, the Wicca’s summon of a pentagram through holographic tech, was one of the few pieces of artistic philosophy I tried to infuse in my personal work, in my free time. I had toyed with the idea of juxtaposition of elements such as: spirituality, cybernetics and street-culture.

I had long thought that religion and spirituality, as well as cybernetics were contrasting concepts, those who are practical in nature, don’t often try to solve or otherwise dismiss any happening in our world as simply God’s will or God’s doing. In fact, the deeper we go into our human timeline, the more we stop assigning hurricanes, thunderstorms and other natural catastrophes and happenings to God or a Divine Identity, but as science taught us, it’s a clinical process, and a natural one, which has less to do with a divine force but just the way our world is mathematically architected.

Usually, the other way around is also true, scientists and atheists tend to find reasoning and sometimes actually dismiss the power of the abstract of our world that is not yet defined by worlds and is beyond our limited three-dimensional human experience and comprehension, as simply jokes or misfortunes.

This debate will never end, and it’s likely a good thing, as anything serves as reference. Trying to construct an essay on this would be more effort than simply drawing it, and this is where the abstract world can render dialects and philosophies into an easier way to digestion of our mindscape: Art.

Humans have always been attracted to art, since cave man times, and this hasn’t ended, nor has any sight of ending on the horizon.

The attempt here was to mix cybernetics, spirituality and street-culture, not because it looked cool, but because I wanted to have a living, breathing organism that’d stir debate and spark philosophical discussions, whether spirituality and religion would be important in the future or not? Or would we simply mesh with both concepts?

Graffiti is no accident in this composition, it’s akin to modern day caveman paintings, and will likely still stay with us, even in another millennia to come, it never left us, it was simply remade from caveman times to what it is today: Tags, graffiti, bombing and throw-ups.

The contrast of elements served a purpose here, to bring unity of several concepts into playing an oracle who’d see into the future, through means of art.

I don’t believe in shutting off AI art as simply an abomination.

It’s here, it will stay with us forever, there’s no way to uninvent it. While it's true that concept art is more than just making pretty pictures, it's a misconception that's often repeated.

For this reason, I’m still puzzled of why people in games industry dislike it so much! It’s true, that taken the factor of it being trained in data it just grabbed off google images with no consent, is enough of an argument to go full-stop. When someone isn’t comfortable with a tech giant (or anyone for the matter) coming in and taking their stuff, the artist (or anyone for the matter who owns anything) should have a say. This is the concept of personal boundaries. No one should even attempt to debate what are (artists) or others comfortable with or not. No means no.

However, we shouldn’t be quick to dismiss it without it being subject to debate.

Myth or fact? #1: Concept Art is more than just making pretty pictures.

In essence, yes. I subscribe to this 100%. There are many things an artist or human, can do, that an AI will never be able, at its current state, to do. I’m no (serious) programmer, I only tinkered and struggled with Algorithmics class in high school, and have survival skills with the dead language of ActionScript, essentials of HTML and CSS3… but to my limited understanding, AI is just almost as smart as a dog. It can play fetch fine, you can train it to get your newspaper from outside to it being delivered to your lap, but that’s it, the AI itself is hardly “intelligent” as it doesn’t quite know what a newspaper is, it knows what it looks like, recognizes a pattern, knows the master is giving the command to deliver it, and it does. Just like with a dog, it can be quite frustrating, at this point, we all tested AI art and ChatGPT and all its cousins to know that AI doesn’t have a clue of what it’s talking about, it simply recognizes patterns and delivers on those patterns, sometimes successfully, sometimes, not so much.

Concept Art is about design, about the summoning of not only philosophical contexts, but creating atmospheres in which people, players, gamers, movie-goers, can live on, and be fooled to think, even for the slightest second, that their fantasy land they are being presented with, is real, the hero on screen is real, and their struggles are real too, and thus, relatable.

Design is about empathy, about seeing more than a fatter wallet, it’s about the recognition of vulnerability and the struggle of everyday individuals and recognizing what they want and need. It’s about experiencing the world of Red Dead Redemption, and its untamed old West, it isn’t just a cowboys game, it’s an experience of lawlessness, adventure, wanderlust, liquor, crime, it’s a live show of rock and roll, baby - and that, my friends, is empathy, it’s delivering the experience, AI can render the cowboy hat pixel-perfect, but it can't capture the essence of what it means to be in the Old West. AI cannot craft experiences, as of the time of writing this, it can only play fetch and pretend to know what it’s doing. In essence, Concept Art is more than just painting pretty pictures. Don’t get me wrong, AI can generate impressive images, but they're often derivative of existing styles and don't capture the unique vision of a human artist about their own perception of what Old West was/is.

Myth or fact? #2: AI will take our jobs!

I fully agree with this, it most likely will.

Wait, what? But I thought Concept Art was more than just painting cool stuff!

This is true, but with recent reports of NetEase replacing most of its staff with AI art; and the illustrator’s job market in China going down 70% - what gives?

Well, my friend, the video-games industry is hardly creative, this surfaces an issue that has been breeding under the hood for ages. Studios are conservative while taking risks, specially big studios, they are not only fine with regurgitated art solutions from what’s generic, they are also happy with it, it’s what they want, they don’t want to re-invent the formula of success, otherwise, Hideo Kojima would still work at Konami.

So let me get this one straight, and I’ll say it as raw as I can: Concept Art as of today isn’t creative, it isn’t mean to awe and inspire like Kojima did with Metal Gear Solid series, the video games industry is a highly impersonal and corporate one, I’m often surprised at how corporate and disconnected it can be, even more than graphic design industry, but it is what it is, the game industry company committees, which claim to understand the needs of the mass audience, create thought-free cultures, passion-free products, mushes that will drive profit, they will drive profit, because they won’t be loved nor hated by anyone. The industry is free from ideas and creativity, individual passion, and the role of art and design is one of servitude to the corporate.

It’s no wonder that creative people work for the bottom-line. Layers of paid executives, accountants, advertisers, lawyers, and research specialists, will vet scripts for movies or games, to determine if they are dumb enough for the “lowest common denominator” to understand and be amused by. Film endings are tailored to please the target audience. All cars look the same. Film is dead, it is now popcorn business.

It didn’t use to be like this, creative projects were more than just fattening one’s wallet. Wealth used to be a mean, not an end, and creating a brighter future used to be the end goal.

The solution? There will be creative entrepreneurs who would otherwise be just like you, a lunatic, passion-driven individual, who seeks change, when you find them: that’s your client. AI won’t replace you on their project. I guarantee that.

Myth or fact? #3: AI will do just fine, even if it does a worse job than a human artist, I’m still saving money with it!

I’m sorry, my love, wrong. Do you want me to prove it? Here is it, the live case study: I don’t use ChatGPT to write my blog posts. Hey, I’ve tried! The sweet symphony of free labor? Writing blog posts for me to drive SEO and traffic to my site? Getting clients to find me? Helping the industry with insights and tips and tutorials?

Unfortunately, when something looks, sounds and smells like snake oil, it is snake oil. AI cannot do a good job at writing blog posts, and the way to prove I actually wrote this myself, is to point above, where I called you “my love” in a condescending way on purpose. AI is just too nice to even consider doing that.

I wouldn’t care, it got you to read, and you’re still engaged with this, because it made you feel something, where’s AI won’t make you feel anything. (Unless you count catfish and being click baited to read posts by an AI that tries to sell themselves as a human author, as a feeling.)

If I convinced you that ChatGPT cannot be your copywriter, and I’m yet to draw the parallel to convince you that Bing, Midjourney and whatever other’s pop-up, can’t be your concept artist, here’s the analogy:

Have you ever hired someone to design for you, only to find out, post-excitement, project-wrapped, all done, checklist crossed… that you don’t like the design? You don’t really love it nor hate it, and it wasn’t impactful with your audience during Alpha and Beta tests. No one was hot nor cold about the character they designed for you. That’s where you lost money.

I can relate, I did this mistake myself as well, I tried to get ChatGPT to write my blog posts, remember? I’m actually glad that didn’t work out, I do love to engage with my audience myself, write my marketing emails, engage with customer support myself and draw myself for my projects.

Myth or fact? #4: AI will do just fine still, I, as director, can just pick apart the results of AI art, and it’s as if I’m directing a junior artist.

This is somewhat true, although when you tend to hire concept artists for their ideas, and want to stay away from your own biases, you need someone else’s vision, and not just someone else’s, someone’s vision, an actual artist with emotions and a style. That’s why you process and pre-select candidates and portfolios, that’s why I got hired for Battlefield 2042: Season 4. Not because I’m better than the team at DICE, not because they can’t handle it, but because they wanted more than their own anecdotes, they wanted to see someone else’s perspective, my perspective, my own take on the Battlefield franchise. This isn’t a trade secret, many artists have been hired for work like this over the years, people like Piotr Jablonski have done their own take on Destiny, hired by Bungie itself.

Again, if you want to hire an artist to take their wrist and draw instead of let them draw, that’s great, and it fits, but if you want to collaborate with someone, AI won’t collaborate with you. It’s just not smart enough for that, it’s not even smarter than a dolphin or monkey, and it’s barely as smart as a dog. (It can play fetch with you and get you some of what you ask, but has no conscious capability to understand the nature of the request, elaborate on it, or have its own take on the matter and develop it further.)

Let’s talk production, creativity and collaboration

With these caveats out of the way, how does great work manifest in collaboration with clients? How can AI be used and where it shouldn’t?

Obviously, AI shouldn’t be used to fill gaps that humans are better suited for, but understandably, not everyone has the budget to do this, AI art has provided indies and low budget organizations with some fuel for their dreams, and some generalist and soulless copywriting or illustration, is still better than none, right?

Our core values at Menog Creative Crew:

1. Creative Vision Clarity: Communicating your artistic vision can be challenging. Misunderstandings can lead to costly revisions and delays. We hear your frustration.

We use bullet-proof design thinking systems to lay out all our goals, metrics from the start, we always have a clear road map of where we are at and where we go next. These aren’t rocket-science and not secret intel. We wrote an article on “how to setup goals and actually achieve them” before.

2. Quality and Talent: The search for skilled concept artists who align with your project's style is a daunting task. You need a team that not only delivers, but excels. But what’s excelling even? How do we know what’s good? How do we plan for success?

Authentic work and an honest avenue for communication has always platformed good content, we focus on what people want, and are not getting, so it’s as simple as fulfilling a need in the market.

Let’s have an example: Let’s suppose we have a futuristic show that missed out on depicting something in our modern day society, like corruption, screen addiction, the way our society disconnects, the emotional unavailability that we have between each other and how phones and devices disconnect us more than connect us. Add some drama in, plot-twists and say… another ingredient we don’t often get in any TV show often: bad endings, or at least endings that are irreverent to make people feel good or bad. Wait-let’s add philosophical questions: “Do we have too much tech? Maybe Silicon Valley should chill and hit the beach? I mean, do we need this much stuff? It’s not making our lives better, or is it?” There’s no one doing this-or wait, there wasn’t, that’s Black Mirror for you, and I believe its recipe for success is because it delivered on what people weren’t getting, like, at all. It communicated with people, it spoke their language, their dialect, and it was smart enough not to tell the audience its agenda, as if they were too stupid to understand it, but did not hide it from them either. It was gracefully authentic to its genesis.

Here’s another way to put it, when we design a character, we don’t pose it, we use body language, we add drama to its movement. We find our own reference, shoot it, and it’s unique to each project.

3. Budget Constraints: Balancing quality with budget can feel like a tightrope walk. You seek exceptional art without breaking the bank.

4. Integration Challenges: Bridging the gap between artistic vision and technical implementation can be tricky. You require a seamless fusion.

Our Solution: Menog’s Creative Crew is more than a studio; we're the architects of your dreams. Here's how we can reshape your journey:

1. Crystal-Clear Vision: Our art director is the compass guiding your artistic voyage. They capture your essence and translate it into mesmerizing visuals. Your vision becomes our obsession.

2. A Dream Team: Our lead concept artist sets the tone, inspiring a team of skilled artists who bring your ideas to life. Your project gets the attention it deserves. We’ve worked in such IP’s as EA DICE’s Battlefield, Ubisoft’s The Division, Amnesia Rebirth, to name a few.

3. Budget-Friendly Excellence: We believe exceptional art shouldn't be exclusive. Our competitive pricing ensures you get more value for your investment. You also only get sold what you need in our opinion.

4. Art and Technology Harmony: Our technical artist bridges the worlds of art and technology, ensuring your vision becomes a digital masterpiece. We’re equipped with all we need and more, no need to ship anything overseas, like you would for any remote artist.

Why Choose Us?

• Trusted by industry giants such as EA, Ubisoft, Google, and Blink 182.

• 75% of our artists are seasoned professionals with over 7 years of experience. The rest? Recruited by the best, ourselves, we know talent when we see it, we recognize their journey in our own.

• We constantly train our staff in digital platforms for e-learning such as Domestika, and others, and are always up to date with the latest Concept Art trends.

• Our transparent project management ensures deadlines are met within budget and style. Our pipeline ensures you know what’s happening, when and what’ll happen next and how.

• Two decades of combined design experience means we assemble specialized teams tailored to your needs.

Conclusion: It's time to transcend the ordinary and embrace a new era in concept art studios. Menog Creative Crew stands as the beacon of creativity and reliability. Let us be your partners in artistic revolution.

Explore Our Portfolio - Contact Us - More about us!