How does concept art work?
Before a film builds a single set, someone paints it. Design a robot auto-rickshaw from twelve black silhouettes, paint a monsoon street in greys then colour, paint over a 3D blockout, and draw a forest spirit from every side.
▶ Play with it · Read the 60-second explainer · Watch the 40-second video
- A design document for the whole crew. Concept art decides what a film's world, characters and objects look like before anyone builds them. Carpenters, tailors, 3D modellers and the director all work from the same pictures. A design moves from a written brief to thumbnails, roughs, a final painting, a turnaround and a model sheet, then gets built.
- Dozens of tiny black shapes. Artists start with thumbnails: quick, stamp-sized sketches, often solid black silhouettes. If you can tell a design apart from its outline alone, it will read on screen even far away or in the dark. Clear negative space and one big idea make a silhouette readable.
- Value first, then colour. Painters plan the lights and darks in greys before choosing colours. Low sun is orange, about 2,000 to 3,500 K; high sun is near white, about 5,500 K. Haze makes far things paler, bluer and lower in contrast, and leading lines guide the eye to a focal point near a rule-of-thirds crossing.
- Block out in 3D, then paint over. Environment artists often build a quick grey 3D blockout of a set, pick a camera and paint over the render. Parallel lines meet at vanishing points: one-point looking straight down a street, two-point when the camera turns, three-point when it tilts up.
- Every side, at the same scale. Once a design is chosen, a turnaround shows it from the front, side and back without perspective, so everything can be measured. A model sheet adds the height next to a human, proportions in head-heights and colour codes: the page a 3D modeller builds from.
- New tools, same thinking. Pencil and gouache gave way to Photoshop (1990), layers (1994), pen tablets, Procreate (2011), 3D paint-overs and photobashing. The job is still design. In India, concept artists work in VFX, animation and game studios and film art departments, and a small portfolio of original work gets them hired.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Concept art | Drawings and paintings that design how a film's world, characters and objects look before they are built. |
| Thumbnail | A tiny, quick sketch used to try out many ideas fast. |
| Silhouette test | Checking that a design can still be recognised as a solid black shape. |
| Value | How light or dark a colour is, ignoring its hue. |
| Atmospheric perspective | Far things look paler, bluer and lower in contrast because of the air in between. |
| Vanishing point | The point where parallel lines seem to meet in a picture drawn in perspective. |
| Paint-over | Painting on top of a rendered 3D view to add colour, light and detail. |
| Turnaround | One design drawn from the front, side and back at the same scale, so it can be built. |
| Model sheet | A reference page with views, proportions, sizes and colour codes for the builders. |
120 years from a magician drawing his own moon sets to whole worlds painted on tablets before a single frame is shot.
- 1902 · A magician designs his own moon (Georges Méliès, Montreuil, near Paris, France)
- 1935 · The words "concept art" appear (Walt Disney studio (attributed), California, USA)
- 1937 · A storybook look for Snow White and Pinocchio (Gustaf Tenggren, California, USA)
- 1939 · The first "production designer" (William Cameron Menzies, Culver City, California, USA)
- 1950 · Mary Blair's bold colours (Mary Blair, California, USA)
- 1955 · A film planned in a sketchbook (Satyajit Ray, Calcutta (Kolkata), India)
- 1975 · Paintings that sold Star Wars (Ralph McQuarrie and George Lucas, California, USA)
- 1982 · A "visual futurist" designs two films at once (Syd Mead, California, USA)
The full story, with 28 moments, charts, people and 35 sources: glassbox.how/e/conceptartclear/history. The data lives in history.json.
Made with the Glassbox studio from this box's storyboard (window.glassbox.director). Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
| File | What | Size |
|---|---|---|
glassbox/reel.mp4 |
Reel / Short, with captions and soundtrack | 1080×1920 |
glassbox/video.mp4 |
YouTube video, with captions and soundtrack | 1920×1080 |
glassbox/slide-1…10.jpg |
Instagram carousel | 1080×1350 |
glassbox/thumb.jpg |
YouTube thumbnail | 1280×720 |
glassbox/cover.jpg |
Share card and repo social preview | 1200×630 |
glassbox/history-reel.mp4 |
“History in 10 moments” Reel / Short | 1080×1920 |
glassbox/history-slide-*.jpg |
History carousel | 1080×1350 |
glassbox/post.json |
Post copy and schedule used by the publish kit |
This box has no accounts and no ads, and it ships its own fonts and libraries. When you run it yourself it sends nothing anywhere. On glassbox.how, the site's /bar.js also loads Glassbox's analytics: Google Analytics to count visits (it asks first in the EU, UK and Switzerland, and stays off when your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track) and ClickTrust to detect bots.
It remembers a few things in your own browser only, and never sends them anywhere:
| Browser storage key | What it holds |
|---|---|
conceptartclear.v1 |
Which chapters you have opened, your best quiz scores, and sound on or off. |
Exactly what each one sees is at glassbox.how/privacy.
- Code: MIT. Use it, change it, ship it.
- Explanations, text, images and videos (
glassbox.json,glassbox/): CC BY 4.0. Credit “Glassbox, glassbox.how/e/conceptartclear”. - Third-party parts keep their own licences: three.js (MIT), Geist, Instrument Serif (SIL OFL 1.1).
- The Glassbox name and logo aren't covered by either licence. See the terms.
Found a mistake? Open an issue. Corrections happen in public.
It's plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No build step and no dependencies. Run locally, it contacts no other website.
python3 -m http.server 8000Three.js and the fonts ship in vendor/ and fonts/, so it also works offline.
Then open http://localhost:8000.
| File | What |
|---|---|
index.html, css/app.css |
The page and its styles |
js/app.js, js/stage.js, js/ui.js, js/kit.js |
The shared Glassbox 3D engine: chapters, 3D stage, controls, quiz, video director |
js/chapters/*.js |
One file per chapter: the 3D model, controls, text, key terms, quiz and video scenes |
js/art.js |
Shared parts: the procedural monsoon-street painter (sun height, colour temperature, haze), Tikku the robot rickshaw in 2D and 3D, Kaavu the forest spirit, silhouette readability tests, boards and props |
glassbox.json |
Title, question, explainer beats, key terms, browser storage and credits shown on glassbox.how |
reel in each chapter |
The storyboard the Glassbox studio records into short videos |
glassbox/ |
The published video, slides, thumbnail and post copy |
fonts/, vendor/three/ |
Self-hosted Geist and Instrument Serif (SIL OFL 1.1) and three.js (MIT) |