Work in an animation house and study in a Fine Art Academy helped me to realize the differences between Concept Art and Conceptual Art. This two art movements often create confusion for their names. Although they contain very different characters. Here is an elaborate discussion about both Concept Art and Conceptual Art and their Impact on Animation Movies.

Preface Concept Art and Conceptual Art – A Comparison:

In this vast background of globalization, technology & post modernism gives us freedom of experimentation. History of Conceptual Art has started from 1960’s and Concept Art emerged since 1930. We all need to know first what these Conceptual Art and Concept Art are! Conceptual Art is a form of composition in which the concepts or ideas involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. “Concept Art is a form of illustration where the main goal is to convey a visual representation of design, idea, and mood for use through movies, video games, comic books, add campaigns, or out of home media before it is put into the final product.” (- Anonymous)

Conceptual Art referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation. In Conceptual Art ‘idea’ is the main and most important element rather than ‘finishing’ of the art work. “It is not always entirely clear what ‘concept’ ultimately refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with ‘intention’ (By Mel Bochner, 1970)

It is an Art for Art’s sake.

People get confused between Concept Art and Conceptual Art because of their time period and both of them are producing an ‘idea’ which is not very deeply rooted. These international art movements have their roots in earlier 20th century European art movements. As we start to comparison between Concept Art and Conceptual Art we should first know that those are completely new phrase & where it comes from. Now the question is whether conceptual art and concept art are different or similar.

Impact of Concept Art on Animation Movie:

Outstanding growth of the technology, pattern, & designs of animation with Concept Art affected and will continue to affect millions of people. Concept Art usually generates pre production ‘idea’ with the help of graphic tablets, graphic software & fine arts media. Photoshop, Corel Paint, Alias Sketchbooks are the name of such softwares. Sketching, acrylic & oil paints are few fine art media used in this art. The traditional animation industry is using Concept Art since 1930’s, which is relatively a new designation. Concept Art is also referred to as “visual development” in traditional animation. The term was later adopted by the feature film & games industry. These illustrations used in pre production offer a great outline in developing visual properties & characters. Our understanding of the effectiveness and impact of concept art for animations is still limited from a theoretical perspective and the experiments are still continuing. This paper synthesizes and integrates several experiments on Concept Art in the history of animation industry from the year 1906 to 2008.