(All art in this post was created by me)
I am a freelance artist but I am also the lead concept artist at Razor Edge Games (An indie company). Being a lead concept artist, and learning from my own mistakes as a freelancer over the years, I've learned a thing or two about the kinds of artists that are out there. So here are some things you can do to up your game and maybe get a leg up on others you are competing for work with.
1. Characters
So on my team at Razor Edge, I discovered something VERY interesting. Everyone has some relative degree of competence when it comes to character design. If your goal is to become a character design concept artist, honestly, you probably do not stand a chance. You will always, at least in my experience, be up against someone better than you, when it comes to characters. The market is saturated with people who want to be character designers, and if you want to design cool and interesting characters for games and film, you need to offer something MORE than JUST characters in your bag of skills.
Learn to design hard surface items like weapons, props, vehicles, and mechs. Become competent at designing environments and other such items. Learn to sculpt and model in 3d and learn programs like Maya or ZBrush. Add something MORE to your tool bag than just sound and passable character designs. If you can do more than just characters, you will have a higher chance of being hired because they can count on you to cover more areas of the project rather than just one aspect of it. And if you are freelancing, that means more work, plain and simple. If you want to design characters, you must be willing to design other things beyond just characters. Finding a job where you will just be at a desk designing awesome character designs is almost impossible so do not get your hopes up that this is possible. It doesn't exist on my team and it rarely exists on bigger and more established ones as well.
2. Environments
Environments are something I am always struggling with in finding skilled people for my team. Like I mentioned above, most artists trying to break in are fantastic, or at the very least, passable at characters but lack the knowledge required to design the locations these cool characters will exist in. Really, the environments are what sell a character and a location can be a character in and of itself as well.
Learn to use perspective. Learn how light plays on objects placed in a scene. Learn how to create the needed textures in order to sell the scene for what you want it to be. One way to improve your skills are to perform "Virtual Plein Air" paintings. Go to google street view and pick an interesting location and paint it. I have a tutorial video here on how I study with this method.
If you can create believable, well designed environments, you will have a much better chance of landing a job than the person who can only paint characters. Study and get the needed mileage in your art skills to become a master of environment design.
3. Hard Surface Design
A well rounded and competitive concept artist must also be able to design props, vehicles, and other man made objects. This requires some understanding of mechanics as well as the ability to draw accurately in perspective and really see things in 3D (really any good artist worth his/her salt should be able to visualize in 3D). Admittedly, this is my weakest area and something I have been trying to improve (with some success). If you can do everything I have listed previously including possessing the ability design vehicles and props, you are on your way to being incredibly competitive.
Watch movies. Watch videos on how things work (Such as tanks, cars, and so on). Learn, absorb, and sketch. Thumbnail mechanical but loose drawings.
Things like vehicles are a little different than many other things I design. I will often use pen and copic markers to sketch out ideas like the one above. And I will do numerous amounts before I settle on a design and move forward with the final rendering of something. For some reason, I find designing mechanical man made things in pen to be the best way to design.
4. Learn Other Skills
As I said earlier, learn to texture in Substance Painter. Learn to sculpt in Z Brush. Learn to model in Maya. Pick something and add it to your skills. I am currently late to the game in this, unfortunately. I am trying to learn how to sculpt in Z Brush. The thing is that this makes you more usable to art directors in the development pipeline as well as can give you new and creative ways to create your 2D concepts. Perhaps you need to paint a portrait but feel like starting the portrait in Z Brush and importing it into Photoshop so that you can paint over the top. This is a perfectly acceptable and viable method for the creation of concepts and designs. Maybe you want to design a tank in Blender and do the same thing. The fantastic thing with this is that you have a model to include with your finalized design that can have screenshots from every angle of a basic model. The modelers down the pipeline with thank you for such clear planned views of the item they are designing.
5. Be Professional
What do I mean by this? I mean have a portfolio site full of concepts and finalized pieces that are comparable to the work you would be doing in the field you want. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT send a company your portfolio if it is full of your furry-anime-sonic-the-hedghog-fan-erotica. I get stuff like this from time to time at Razor Edge Games and not only are such portfolios and artists not hired, they are made fun of. Have a clear and concise portfolio that shows your possible future employer all of the diverse things I've just mentioned above. Use your name. Avoid making your portfolio overly weird, off putting, or political. Yeah, you may think you are selling out and not staying true to the "heart" of your "art", but if that is how you feel, you have no business being a "professional" artist in the entertainment industry. Leave the sonic erotica fan art for you devianart page. As an example, here is my art portfolio site:
It really does help to have a domain name too. It looks more professional than "www.sitename.yourname.com/portfolio....". Again, be as professional as possible.
6. Have the Ability to Work in Traditional Media
Have the ability to paint or work in traditional mediums. Learn to paint in oils, acrylics, pencil, gouache, watercolors, or whatever it is you fancy. Just learn how to use them and get good with them. Learning how to work traditionally keeps your skills sharp in the digital mediums. You learn to have more control over color, contrast, and design choice when you are skilled in traditional mediums. Most job postings list skills in traditional mediums like oils and others as a "bonus" skill they desire from possible hires. It makes you a better artist and gives you a set of skills and knowledge that can put you over the top when compared to the less driven artists you are competing against.
7. Study!
Why are you still here? Go study!
Study the primitive shapes that make up pretty much everything. Study some anatomy. Study animal anatomy. Do some virtual plein airs (or real ones like the one below here).
Do some Gesture drawings!
Do something. Learn and absorb everything you learn like a sponge. On top of all of that, don't be afraid to mess up. That is what studying is for. There really is no secret to this. I have been at this since 2012 (studying art seriously). I have spent about 2 hours every day outside of client work studying something. And it has helped. I used to draw like this:
That is a legit "drawing" I made back in 2012. Now, I'm drawing stuff like this:
There is no secret here. Just discipline, study, hard work, and laser focus on my goals. If I can make such improvements, you can too.
If you like content like this, please upvote and check out my youtube channel where I regularly update with process videos and other such content.
https://www.youtube.com/c/JonTorresconceptartist
Thanks for reading and happy painting!