There are a wide variety of extras that I love to get along with the media that I enjoy. From commentaries to behind the scenes information to appendixes, there is so much extra content that I love to see included with releases. However, an area that I would love to see more from would be concept art, an extra that I would consider to be highly underrated.
First, let’s discuss what concept art is. Concept art is artwork that is produced for a wide variety of creative mediums such as animation, graphic novels, video games, live-action media etc. These concept art will develop ideas for characters, settings, technology etc. and will tend to go through several iterations as feedback, both creative and practical, is received. Concept art can be used for a variety of purposes from advertising to refining the product itself to even seeking funding from investors.
Having explained that, it’s surprising to me how rarely it seems that we get to see these original concepts and how they were refined into the final product. Looking at behind the scenes footage on discs, you occasionally see concept art pop up to emphasise the point the speaker is discussing but, even then, these are quite often fleeting and heavily cropped, not allowing the viewer to appreciate them. While artbooks are sometimes released that will include a variety of concept art within them, it surprises me how infrequently I see concept artwork included as an extra.
One of the best examples of concept artwork that shows the way the art was changed and reworked over time that I’ve come across is related to an indie hit game called Stardew Valley. I was recently playing multiplayer Stardew Valley with a friend of mine and I was consistently going to stardewvalleywiki.com to research various pieces of information that we needed. When it came time to romance a denizen of Stardew Valley, I popped onto their character page to see what items to give them, their schedule, how to trigger events with them etc. and saw something I couldn’t believe, that being a series of images that saw successive designs from concept to the final product. It was one of those moments where you realise that you’ve wanted something without knowing what it was. “If Stardew Valley can do this, why can’t other media?” I remember thinking.
Something like this shouldn’t surprise me but it does! I love Anime Ltd, a UK distributor of anime, and many of the little artbooks you get with their collector’s editions but their artbooks tend to mainly cover completed artwork that you’ll see in the show. Occasionally you’ll see some original concept art but I can’t recall a single piece that covered the transition from the original concept art to the completed one. Don’t feel that this criticism is specific to them by the way. As I mentioned before, concept art is hard enough to find for a lot of media as a consumer and the vast majority of media that I’ve experienced are far more likely to show the original and completed concept art rather than all of the artwork in between.
I truly love to be able to see concept art as it almost feels like I’m getting insight into the minds of the creators and reinforces the idea that media isn’t something that suddenly comes into being, rather it’s something that is continually refined by the creators until they feel comfortable showing it to the general populace. Not only would I like to see more media willing to show off their concept art but I would absolutely love to see successive concept art in a vein similar to the Stardew Valley artwork. Let me know your thoughts on why I love to be able to see concept art, whether you also like to see concept art, your thoughts on successive concept artwork just like the Stardew Valley example I gave and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!