What’s all this then?

As Skywind has progressed, we’ve not been very successful overall in maintaining all of the concept art created to guide the look-and-feel of Skywind. The result is that ideas get lost, and work of value in its own right gets overlooked.

This project aims to rectify that.

What's the benefit?

Firstly, we end up with an easy reference when designing 3D models.

Secondly, nothing gets lost to the sands of time.

Thirdly, we make sure even the earliest concept artists get proper credit for their effort.

Finally, we're able to present this data - maybe as a huge gallery, or even an e-book showing off the concept art that laid the basis for Skywind's look and feel.

Should I help?

Anyone with a basic understanding of the below can pitch in and help the Concept Art Reclamation Project.

• Image resolution (bigger is better)
• Image quality (less compressed or distorted is better)
• Basic website usage (sometimes the best quality image is hidden under a download button or through on another page)

What should be captured?

We need to look for the highest-quality versions available of each piece of 2D art we “reclaim”. If there are multiple iterations that display progress, we should keep them all.

This allows us to later reference, curate, update, and potentially even publish the work with as little ambiguity as possible. Including WIP art lets us show off the process, which is just as interesting as the end product and well worth preserving.

Before you start reclaiming art, you'll need someone to set you up with edit access to Trello and Google Drive. Contact your team leader about this.

If you've joined Skywind's concept art reclamation team, your job is to find Skywind concept art across the web and bring it home.

1. Find Skywind concept art on the web 🔍

Where to Look 👓

You'll need to be an internet detective to find art from across the years - other team members might have ideas, but you'll need to use your brain too. Look everywhere that our team has saved or shared our work. This includes but is not restricted to:

• The existing "To Do" list on Trello
• The Morroblivion forums (formerly TESR forums).
  • Note that sometimes you'll find links or search results going to tesrenewal.com that return a 404 - in these instances, replace the domain with morroblivion.com and you should get a result.
  • Likewise with embedded images.
• Discord
• Trello (Modeling/Texturing Department)
• Trello Archive
• Social Media
• Our own Google Drive

Collections of Artwork 🖼

Lots of concept art will belong to collections: forum threads, artist portfolios, etc.

• When you find these, it's best if you log them on our Trello under "To Do". Feel free to add sources here for someone else to pick up.
• If you're ready to start processing that collection, assign it to yourself and move it to "In Progress".
• If you're stopping half-way through, update the card with how far you got.
• If you're abandoning it, move it back to "In Progress".
• If you've saved everything, move it to "Done".

2. Make sure it's new 👬

It's not a big problem if you upload artwork that's already on the Drive, but it's a bit of a waste of your time.

1. Head over to the Google Drive CARP folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OVU1053-triFx59A1vW5kmGRDjMrns1u
2. Search or browse for the concept to see if it already exists.
3. If it already exists, check that the existing resolution and quality are good, and that all versions/views are included.

If not, you've found something to reclaim!

3. Find the best version of that artwork 🌟

Nice, you found some artwork up upload! But is it the highest quality that exists? If the result was from sharing sites like Pinterest or social media sites like Twitter, probably not.

Use reverse image searching and web searching to look for higher-quality versions if the one you found isn't very high-res.

Reverse image searching ◀

Some search engines can find other versions of an image. Copy the URL of the image and try pasting it into:

• Google images: https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en (click the camera button in the search box)
• TinEye: https://tineye.com/
• Bing images: https://www.bing.com/images/trending?FORM=ILPTRD (click the focus button in the search box)

If you can find extensions for your browser to reverse search, this process will be much faster.

3. Save the artwork 📥

By now, you should know a fair bit about the image: who made it, what exactly it's meant to be, etc.

Time to store it!

Get Ready to Upload

1. Download the highest possible quality/size version.
2. Keep the web page(s) you found it from open for use in a moment.

At this point there are two options:

(Either) Upload Quickly with the Form

1. Navigate to the upload form (you'll need to sign into Google): https://forms.gle/obwbvKquLVcrKwg8A
2. Follow the steps to upload your file.

(Or) Manually Upload on Google Drive

1. Head over to the Google Drive CARP folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OVU1053-triFx59A1vW5kmGRDjMrns1u
2. Find a sensible folder to save it to:
   1. Browse to find the location that other similar things have been saved to.
   2. If there's no good fit, create a new folder in the relevant location.
      1. Directory name: the category it falls under
      2. Subdirectory name: what it depicts generally
      3. When unclear, try and follow the UESP pattern - search for the place/object/armor and see how it's categorized.
3. Upload the file.
4. Save all the info about the file to make it easy to find and source:
   1. Filename part 1: what it depicts exactly
   2. Filename part 2: who made the piece
   3. Filename part 3: the concepting stage of the artwork
      1. Only bother with this if you know there are multiple iterations to upload.
      2. Use one or two words to describe the state (e.g. sketch, thumbnails, turnaround, final)
   4. Filename part 4: when they made it
      1. Use YYYY-MM-DD date format for better sorting)
      2. Only provide what you know .
         1. If you don't know the day, just use YYYY-MM.
         2. If you don't know the month, use YYYY.
         3. If you can't work out even the year, that's fine,.
   5. File description: where it was shared
      1. This is easy to forget, but it's important: edit the file description from the right-hand pane to include the URL(s) you found the image on.
      2. Hint: in Windows 10, the Win+V paste shortcut is very handy for copying and pasting multiple bits of data, like the URL and description, all at once.
   6. For example: Bonemold Bow - Swiper - Sketch - 2016-08.jpg