Daily Art: Discarded Concepts

Day 50:

Today is my 50th day of Daily Art.

I should have something really special to share to celebrate that, right? Well how about this: Rejected concept art from my first paid job doing artwork for a film.

That's right. I got my first freelance gig from someone outside of my own circle of friends and family!

The work isn't either high profile or high paying, but I don't care: I feel like I'm on the way now. As much as I truly appreciate compliments on my artwork from my friends and family and anyone in my own circle of acquaintances, it's been difficult to keep my dream of a creative career intact when no one outside seems desirous to pay for my work. Then I got a call from a friend of a friend whom I'd never spoken to before this, and now I'm being paid to do artwork for set pieces in a film.

I spent the last two days after I finished editing my Gecko video drawing concept sketches for the artwork that the director wanted, and today she made her final selections. I will not be posting the concept sketches that were chosen or any of the closely related variations on the ones that were chosen because of their direct link to what will be in the finished film, but the sketches here were just free-flowing ideas that I conceived to depict either trauma or fantasy. They have no direct links to the plot. There are, of course, elements in them that tie into the film project, but it won't give anything about the film away to share them. The main ties are things like color scheme or the emotions being conveyed, and you can't put a copy-right on that. In fact, I like the top three images so well just as fantasy scenes that I'm considering doing full versions of them with just a few minor tweaks as portfolio pieces in the future. (Then again, maybe more than just minor tweaks on the far right one: I want to play with the composition of that one a bit more...) I'm especially fond of the top left one - I already have the paper and media picked out for it and everything.

So, here they are: rejected concepts from my first professional freelance art job: