How to Make Game Concept Art and Character Designs with AI
A step-by-step guide to AI concept art for games: brief, explore, refine characters, lock a style, plus which tool fits each step and what to avoid.
Arcyn Find Editorial
Oct 31, 20266 min read
By the end of this you will know how concept art is actually produced, broken into steps, and which AI tool to reach for at each one. The single most useful takeaway: AI is best at generating lots of rough options fast, so use it to explore widely first and only then narrow down to a consistent style. Beginners who try to get a finished, perfect character from the first prompt waste most of their credits and end up with a pile of images that look like they belong to different games.
What this involves
Concept art is not final game art. It is visual problem-solving: figuring out what your characters, places and props look like before anyone builds them. Studios do it in a predictable order. First a brief that says what the game feels like. Then thumbnails, which are many small, rough images exploring different directions. Then refinement of the few directions that work. Finally a style guide and character sheets so every later image matches.
Keep reading
How-to
How to find an old note you barely remember using AI search
A step-by-step way to track down a half-remembered note with AI search, which tool fits where your notes live, and the mistakes to avoid.
