Concept Art 101

The journey to becoming a professional concept artist is not an overnight success, but a long arduous uphill climb for many years depending on your level of art proficiency. So staying motivated to continue to work hard and grow as an artist and sustain that energy over a long period of time can be tough, especially if you are learning on your own. It is easy to stay motivated when everyone around tell you how great you are at art. That ended once I left high school. When I got to Art Center, this was a different league. Most of the art students there were quite advance in art. My high school art cred didn’t help much. I became the little fish in the new pond. Everyone in my classes was so much better. They were beasts with a mission.  Again, when you get a head start in this game, you get to be ahead of everyone and everyone look up to you for inspiration. It is easy to stay motivated when there are positive reinforcement from your peers. But, that wasn’t me. I was a crappy a...

The giant red spaceship looking thing with the Ferrari logo is where I worked for two years.  Ferrari World is a theme park in Abu Dhabi, an oil rich country that is about an hour drive from Dubai.  These two Emirates are so filthy rich with their black gold from the ground, they truly know how to make it rain. Futuristic, luxury, and cultured; they are the most beautiful countries I have been to.  The best time to be in the United Arab Emirates is during October - March when it feels like spring in Los Angeles. Which is perfecto! Any months outside of that is hot as a devil butthole after three bowl of Thai chillies.   Muslim religion is the predominate religion in that region and once a year, they have a holy month called Ramadan. During the holy month, part of the tradition is to not consume both liquid and food from sunrise to sunset. Which pretty much translate to no one is eating or drinking water when the sun is up. Everyone is expected to do...

One of many benefits of being a concept artist is having the opportunity to travel and work.  I had the opportunity to work abroad in Singapore, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. If you’re like me that like to travel and work, especially early in your career you should focus your portfolio towards film or theme park industries. Typically, these companies will pay for your relocation cost (air travel, moving cost) and your living expenses (hotels accommodation, rent, car rental, etc).  On top of that, the company will have many other perks to sweetened the deal to woo you to work for them. If you are adventurist and adaptable to new environments and cultures, working abroad will broaden your horizon. 

Hello world, It has been a long time since I added a new entry.  I started this blog back in 2013. The initial goal was to help inspiring concept artist to get started in their journey. By providing some resource, motivation and general guidance for absolute beginners to help them get up to speed.   Fast forward to now, 5 years later I have gain tremendous experience in the workforce as a concept designer, I feel more confident to share my experience and on how to find success in this business. In the past few years, I have travel the world, and worked on multi-million dollar projects and with amazing people. I will get more into this in the upcoming blog entry.  Stay tuned!

There has been some request for tutorial videos. I 'm glad that there is an interest in my work process, but I won't be doing one any time soon. For several reasons, and one is that there are already a plethora of great free tutorial contents on the web by amazing artists like Feng Zhu, Scott Robertson and Bobby Chui to name a few. Second, the core goal of this blog is to help direct you guys who are starting out to the right direction with useful information. Third, I also wanted this blog to focus not only on how improve artistically, but also to develop as a strong fountain skills as an individual. I truly believe the stronger your foundation skills, the further you can go in your career and the happier you will be down the road.  So what are foundation skills? Foundation skills in a nutshell comes down to how you can efficiently utilize your mind and body and how the two can work together to produce peak performance.  You are a biological ...

There 's a saying that goes like, it 's not about who you are now, it 's about who you can be. Every famous musicians, artists, and athletes were not born with that title, they have to earn and become the person they want to be. So don't be who you are now, be who you want to be. 8 years ago, before I knew concept design was a career option, I wasn't who I am today. Had I stay who I was back then, I wouldn't had the chance to work on so many cool projects and meet so many great talents. I wouldn't got the chance to travel oversea to work and experience different cultures. I wouldn't be making good money and be financially stable. There are a lot of things I would have missed out on had I been myself rather than to strive to be who I wanted to be, a concept artist. The choice is up to you.

Just a quick reminder, the goal of this blog is to act as a beginner ‘s guide to break into the world of concept art.  Because ambition by itself is not sufficient and hard work alone in the wrong path will slow your progress and can get you nowhere.  The information on this blog is design to help guide you to the right path by providing key information that will help you from making the common pitfalls most beginner concept artists make.  The goal is to save you time and get you up to speed with the basic steps and requirement to get you started in the right direction. I ‘ve been very lucky in many ways along with hard work and persistency to be in a position to do what I love as a career. It’s important to nurture the act of sharing and giving back. You can do the same by sharing this with others. If you find this helpful, it is the only thing I ask in return is to share it with another friend who can benefit from it. I am so confident that i...