Portfolio brief (FINALLY CONCEPT ART!!)

For this brief I was asked to create a realistic concept art scene that tells a story. Focusing on story telling props and atmosphere.

I started by trying to thinking of a story/subject matter that could be shown visually. I wanted the image to be visually strong, using high contrast and an interesting composition.  I listed a bunch of life events that different people go through day to day, some more mundane then others. I also split them into good and bad; happy and not so happy moments. I oddly found the more negative choices more interesting (I’m not that morbid honest) So I selected 4 scenarios that I saw working as a story telling image. Below are the 3 first thumbnails I came up with.

Out of those I personally preferred the empty flat thumb, as I felt it had the most atmosphere and felt rather haunting. The story behind it was a man that committed suicide by jumping off his balcony after his partner left him. (please keep reading, it gets chirpier honest) After getting some feedback and trying out new compositions. I began to lean more towards the train station scenes. The story of a couple saying goodbye at a train station. Below are the further compositions based on this theme.

After more feedback I decided on the second thumbnail and began to flesh out the scene. I decided to make it more populated to make the scene seem a little less alien, but had to keep in mind that it mustn’t distract attention from the couple who are the main subject matter. For me adding colour is the most difficult part of this piece. The real world is too full of greys!! So going a little bit abstract with the colour is something I felt was necessary for this scene.

The main story telling elements are the train and the backpack. It was hard to think of other assets to add to the scene that would drive the story, but the characters I feel make the story most prominent. This was something I really wanted to try to avoid and let the scene/props do the story telling, but I feel the final outcome worked well. Below are the props in more detail and a 3D layout which would be used to help the environment artist model the scene.  

In conclusion, yes, this scene is still on the sad side, but I find it more profound than anything else as I can relate a lot to the scene I’ve created. I may go into this more to make it portfolio standard, possibly adjust the colour and add even more detail and more props such as posters, rubbish bins, more luggage etc. but for hand in I feel it answers the brief, its realistic in style and it tells a story through its visuals.