Call for Papers:

Concept Art and Character Design: Critical and Creative Perspectives
July 18, 2025
University for the Creative Arts (UCA)
Farnham, England
https://cacd2025.edublogs.org/

Deadline for submission of abstracts and bio statements: May 30, 2025

The School of Games & Creative Technology at UCA, Farnham, is delighted to be hosting a one-day conference on Friday 18 July 2025, exploring the role of concept art and character design in the culture industries.

Concept art is gaining increasing cultural, creative and academic recognition. This once-invisible aspect of development and production is acquiring increasing presence across many branches of the entertainment industry, including animation, videogames, comics and theme park design. Volumes containing concept art have become staples of games publishing, while multiple paratexts provide insight into the production histories of successful properties and franchises. Film studios, games developers and production companies frequently open their archives to public appreciation across a variety of curated platforms.

The rise in courses teaching concept art reflects the burgeoning interest in this craft, and the importance of placing such traditions in historical, cultural and creative contexts. Character design is also increasingly significant within many branches of the culture industry. Toy companies have long drawn upon licensed characters to produce expansive ranges of collectable action figures, soft toys and plastic animals. Multiplayer videogames attract users through the squad of quirky avatars available to play. Within critical studies, the bodies of animated princesses, digital adventurers and anthropomorphised animals have attracted significant scholarly attention.

Concept art and character design connect many features of popular media production and consumption, being the locus of multiple creative, affective and commercial motivations and interests. Promotional material for games often centres on off-line graphic representations of characters and environments. Branding and merchandising places mascots at the forefront of their respective products. The craft is an essential part of the worldbuilding process and has lasting impact on the visual identity of long-running multimedia franchises. Concept art functions as a means of maintaining the visible coherence of intellectual property across multiple platforms, while the circulation of such material confers an aura of artistry and authenticity on commercial products.

This conference aims to explore historic and contemporary approaches to concept art and character design from multiple critical and creative perspectives. Potential topics include:

• Concept art as art
• Histories of concept art and character design
• Concept art in games and animation
• Character design and comics
• Virtual concept art and character design
• Worldbuilding and concept art
• Character design and mascots
• Diversity and character design
• Concept art and painting, portraiture, sculpture, architecture and/or costume design
• Transmedia storytelling and concept art
• Character design and avatar theory
• Fan art, cosplay and the furry community
• Concept art as paratext
• Theme parks and concept art
• Concept art and AI
• Character design and/in live action media
• Teaching concept art and character design

Please send 200-word abstracts for 20-minute presentations, accompanied by 50-word bio, by the extended deadline of Friday 30 May 2025 to: ewan.kirkland@uca.ac.uk.

This is primarily intended as an in-person conference, but the organisers do have some programme capacity for on-line presentations. Please indicate in your submission if you would like to be considered for this option.