My last client was not happy with the images their AI concept artist created. They didn't know why, because the images looked great on paper, (lighting is there, anatomy looks correct), but the character on the left felt more like a superhero than the “sci-fi detective in a dystopia” they wanted.

So what happened? Pressure amounted from their board of directors to make their pitch work, and they decided to reach out to a professional for help.

In the next parts of this blog post, I’ll cover what AI does wrong, and why a Human Concept Artist is needed for a vision.

I’ll also share my chapter on design research for free. This tool gets you unstuck, helps you think deeper and avoid clichés, whether they come from AI or Humans.

One of these images prints money, the other burns it.

I painted over the base they had and fixed the following:

I removed most decorations that AI tries to add for flash in exchange of realism, thus improving the story.
The moustache looked cartoony and unprofessional, more akin to craft beer pub owner than a police officer. I trimmed it to make the character look more like a professional cop.
I changed the blue parts of the jacket to grey because they didn't have any real purpose.
The shoulder and arm decorations look like military vainglory. This isn’t a costume, it’s a social contract in fabric. I removed those.
Utility belts are are tools, not trophies, I integrated the ones he'd need into the jacket design; and tailored it his job, rather than something generalistic that he'd pick up at a shop.
Removed the extra pouches, if they have no purpose, they were looking vulgar. Our character isn't supposed to catwalk, they are the embodiement of civil order.
I changed the character’s shape to make him look more in charge and confident. Made the silhouette more masculine.
Minimal seams. Added a wristwatch.
I suggested to add authentic references such as ACRNM for the techwear they wanted, and 1900s social academia movement.

This was the first image I made for them before they considered me to lead their art team. One image here prints money, and the other burns it.

How Do Concept Artists Solve Problems?

The client knew they wanted something that looked like a mix of academia and techwear; it was a "scifi dystopia" after all, but also had fantasy and magic in it.

It's important to use our sources correctly when we reference information.

To create something unique in graphic design, it's essential to draw inspiration from real sources instead of relying on digital effects and templates. If you want a vintage Super 8 or Kodak film look, rent a real vintage camera instead of just using a filter. For a grunge design, use actual dirt textures from outside.

How did I make this work in my process? It's concept art, not graphic design. Nowadays, I focus on authentic references still. I suggested to this client that we could use ACRNM and Vienna’s Academia movement from the 1900s to help expand our reference library.

How can "Pretty but not Practical" Be Avoided?

Creating and analyzing are two different steps of the work we do; it’s a mistake to try to do both at once with AI tools.

One of my Miro mind maps can be accessed here for free.

Immersion in games is found in visual elements that build a virtual human connection, which means your world-building needs to have this, too.

The key to standing out is a perfectly tuned story that uses culture, fashion design, product design, and cinematography to problem-solve new solutions in a strategic way to deliver an experience for players to engage with.

It’s a mix of appeal and function, which is, of course, the hard part. (Always has been!)

This is why I point a lot of my clients to a good research process, before we start any work, because unlike an AI databae that tries to repeat what other people perceive as good, the research phase will find what is your edge amongst the competition, for you, it'll find what you want to say and that only you can offer, so you virtually have no competition.

Great projects do this.

Deux Ex is a Renaissance period with a sci-fi skin on top.

Fallout is a Cold War era period with a sci-fi spin on the Atomic Age.

Witcher is a medieval fantasy supported by Slavic folklore.

Wolfenstein is WW2 with historical drift.

Great projects have authentic roots. It's what makes them believable and touches people, builds community, and of course, sales.

The Best Strategies for Concept Art

It's almost a religious habit now to avoid looking at other concept artists' work when I'm creating something new. I've gotten comfortable with this way of working so much that being influenced by someone else's final product makes the process harder for me.

When designing robots, I look at the latest developments from Boston Dynamics, Open Bionics, and ASIMO.

When designing dragons, I study bugs and lizards.

Art imitates life, and it's hard to design while looking at the world through someone else's viewpoint, trying to copy experiences that are theirs and which I haven't lived.

About a third of my clients are people and studios that tried using AI for art but ended up needing my help. When I start working with them, I often find they have issues with basic design rules.

Creating something new can be tough, especially when it hasn't been done before. I focus on design theories that have worked for centuries. For instance, I'm a fan of early modernist designer Adolf Loos. HHe wanted to get rid of unnecessary decorations during a time when people were surrounded by fancy but useless designs (Victorian Period). Loos believed in making spaces comfortable for people first and then adding the right decorations to fit their needs, social statues, or narrative.

“The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.”

— Ten Principles of Good Design by Dieter Rams, 1976.

Like this interior design with ample space to a family to live with no obstruction, natural lighting, and then visually tailored to communicate its upper mid class social status, with the focal points of gold chandlier framing the center, leaving space for a painting to tie the room together and using the best materials, most durable to empower the space with quality, rather than trying to show off this family's social status for vanity.

The frescos on the top provide another layer of rhythm and frame the image further. Loos was not against decoration; he was against decoration that didn’t serve design.

Research is needed for any good project to last, and immerse the players, just like in the golden age of video games, when gamers couldn’t get out of the game, so immersive it was. Such as the early games from Bethesda, like Fallout 3, and Skyrim, and the ones from Obsidian like Fallout New Vegas, who made such a good job at making the world feel believable due delivering an intricate social structure with philosophical grey areas to stimulate players intellect, rather than dumbing them down, along with a vast open world to explore, for the player to be involved with and build a paralel virtual life.

How does this Inspiration Drive Impact in our Artistic Vision?

Here’s how we started: with another image I got that didn’t “seem right”, and I helped them and led it into a new direction. In reality, it wasn’t only design lacking, but also awareness of social structure, hierarchy, and ergonomics, as well as the fundamentals of architecture.

Here’s how it went: The final image I designed and painted over from their AI files. A shot of a heavenly plaza on for high social class utopia.

The AI image may look nice, with good lighting and materials, but it doesn’t have real meaning.

When I design spaces, I often ask, "What would Adolf Loos do?" because his ideas are important.

When I design through color and shapes and need people to react, I often ask “How’d David Carson design this?”

What is it that I know, that can solve this problem?

Consider the Angle AI Doesn’t - Nature is The Best Designer, not Humans.

Here’s my Free Character Design Chapter on Research - for you to start.

You’ll find a few filters I use to go through a design brief before I look at any images at all.

Because in this day and age creative has to be more than just software or looking good, it has to be about supporting the idea and tailoring to the identity of who plays it.

It’s about saying the right thing with images, not just anything as long as it looks flashy.

If you’re building a game right now, is your game immersive, and building a story or, getting lost and copying trends?

Many new clients contact me because they’re unhappy with AI-generated images.

They often get excited by all the hype and end up paying for both an AI artist and a real artist.

You can also find some of my concept designs of other sci-fi characters, here, with no AI bases, made by a human who analyzed trends, fiction, mythology and depth-pscyhology, over this case study.