This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. C4-DE Bot (talk) 04:53, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Concept art galleries
With the discussion over infobox galleries underway, I figured it was time to go all in and give image fans a feast. I want to open up discussion around galleries finally being allowed in IU articles, specifically to showcase concept art, storyboards, and other forms of development artwork. This is a part of the development process that cannot be adequately explained simply through prose, and I think a gallery is the only way to do it justice. I have two examples of how I imagine these would look here and here.
These are the rules I had in mind.
- These galleries would be exclusive to the Bts.
- The images should be organized to the best of our ability in the order in which the art was created during development. This is to best capture the process of development.
- If all the available images can be worked into the Bts without a gallery, they should be, and a gallery should not be used.
- If some of the artwork can fit in the Bts, but not all, then still use some images to illustrate the Bts, but use all of them, including the ones already in the Bts, in the gallery. This allows the Bts prose to be illustrated while still allowing for the full development process to be shown in the gallery.
- All info in the image captions should be properly cited.
A couple things to discuss would be ways to improve the {{gallery}} template and additional fields to add. Those more familiar with Bts content may know of more types of conceptual artwork. There is also placement within the articles. I'm leaning toward allowing a section just for concept art galleries or including the galleries within other sections in the Bts, depending on the content of the Bts. The two examples provided above show one of each.
What are everyone's thoughts? Master Fredcerique
(talk) (he/him) 05:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- Just to be clear, would this require that, for a status article, any and all of the existing development images are to be uploaded to the site for use in said gallery? Imperators II(Talk) 07:12, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
- This would definitely be optional, same as indexes. Master Fredcerique
(talk) (he/him) 12:43, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
- Ah OK, got it. Looks good either way. Imperators II(Talk) 20:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
- This would definitely be optional, same as indexes. Master Fredcerique
- Those look amazing! Very excited to imagine one for Mustafar. Having separate galleries for each project (Episode III, Episode IX etc.) but putting them under a specific gallery section is definitely the way to go.
- Regarding the types of conceptual illustration and their production order, for A New Hope at least, we have 1) concept artwork in the sense of Ralph McQuarrie's paintings, 2) character/costume and vehicle design sketches, 3) storyboards, and 4) process plates (that ILM use to put different film elements together, and they're sketches that kinda look like storyboards but they've got extra boxes around it for various production numbers). At some point in the process, we also have matte paintings, which aren't really concept art but they get inserted usually in the background of shots—not sure if we want to label them separately or put them (somewhat inaccurately) in the general concept painting/art field, but I do think they're worth including in the gallery somewhere. I probably missed something, but I'm fairly confident that these are the main ones.
- For anything beyond the original trilogy, due to the transition to digital I don't think there are process plates, and their function is mostly replaced by pre-vis animation—I don't think we should cover those in the gallery though, cos they're not really pretty anyway but important stuff like a screenshot of a deleted sequence can just be put amidst the prose as normal along with production pictures.
- We also have concept artwork, usually digital illustrations, for video games along with what I'd call concept designs, which are basically digital assets designed for the game that artists like to put on e.g. ArtStation, which may or may not be worth featuring in the gallery too.
- With some more detailed "Art of" books from the sequel trilogy, various concept illustrations are specifically labelled "character design" or "lighting concept," but in my view they don't need to be separated within the gallery given that they are just made to focus on certain visual aspects and, especially with Star Wars, are quite often made all throghout the project, from pre-production to filming to post-production. Last thing I'd like to raise is that there are occasionally (photographs of) models/objects used in production design—scale paper models to inform set-building, details of the sets themselves, armor props, clothing, miniature landscapes that are actually used for filming etc., and the question is, do we want to include them? OOM 224 (he/him/they) 11:32, 20 September 2024 (UTC)- The reason I feel like we should allow them to be placed either in their own section or included in other sections is because if the Bts is very large, it might make more sense to have the concept art within the Bts section that covers the development of that piece of media. As for the different sections of the gallery, how about Concept art, Design sketches, Storyboards, Process plates, Matte paintings, Concept illustrations, and Models. Then for video games we'd also have Concept designs. I wonder if we can get the template to hide any sections that aren't used (I'm sure we can). Master Fredcerique(talk) (he/him) 22:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)
- What is the difference between concept art, concept illustrations, and concept designs? SorcererSupreme21 (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
- That is a great question that I will defer to OOM on. Master Fredcerique
(talk) (he/him) 19:21, 22 September 2024 (UTC)
- Semantically, they are the same thing. I just wanted to say that there is a difference between concepts made by artists working for a director to inform the cinematopgraphers/costume/prop-makers in terms of how a director wants things to look in motion picture productions, concept art made by costume/prop-makers/VFX crew themselves to figure how to dress a character or ship, and what function as video game assets. I suppose the difference between these terms are a bit meaningless if just put in templates as parameters, so perhaps these are better suited as descriptors that we use in the image captions instead. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 15:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think that's best so we can prevent a dozen different parameters in the template. Master Fredcerique(talk) (he/him) 16:01, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think that's best so we can prevent a dozen different parameters in the template. Master Fredcerique
- Semantically, they are the same thing. I just wanted to say that there is a difference between concepts made by artists working for a director to inform the cinematopgraphers/costume/prop-makers in terms of how a director wants things to look in motion picture productions, concept art made by costume/prop-makers/VFX crew themselves to figure how to dress a character or ship, and what function as video game assets. I suppose the difference between these terms are a bit meaningless if just put in templates as parameters, so perhaps these are better suited as descriptors that we use in the image captions instead. OOM 224 (he/him/they) 15:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
- That is a great question that I will defer to OOM on. Master Fredcerique
- What is the difference between concept art, concept illustrations, and concept designs? SorcererSupreme21 (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
- The reason I feel like we should allow them to be placed either in their own section or included in other sections is because if the Bts is very large, it might make more sense to have the concept art within the Bts section that covers the development of that piece of media. As for the different sections of the gallery, how about Concept art, Design sketches, Storyboards, Process plates, Matte paintings, Concept illustrations, and Models. Then for video games we'd also have Concept designs. I wonder if we can get the template to hide any sections that aren't used (I'm sure we can). Master Fredcerique
- That seems like a worthy idea to pursue. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 12:14, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, here's my current proposal. Thoughts? Master Fredcerique(talk) (he/him) 01:39, 10 October 2024 (UTC)