diiusys:

I can’t seem to edit the previous post and I feel like I may have misunderstood part of your question so I just want to add that if you’re asking if Alchemy trains people to be lazy and just pull shapes to come with designs I’d say that’s not a huge concern…

Most professional concept artists already do this via silhouette painting (if you’ve ever seenFeng Zhu design anything… you’ve seen this) and like I said, I draw this way in real life, with no pull shapes tool or vector shapes.

Most of design is just experimentation and being able to identify what works and what doesn’t. If you can look at a shape alchemy made and imagine what it might be then there’s nothing stopping you from making shapes yourself on paper and mashing them together. Alchemy simply does it faster. It lets you burn through tons of possibilities in a short amount of time.

In my opinion this is much better than trying to design shit out of your head. Most of us are already so inundated with other peoples designs from video games and movies which often results in MORE derivative work, not less as we rely on what we already know and like. Pretty much all modern sci fi for example doesn’t look much different today than it did 30 years ago when Syd Mead pioneered the “gritty” sci-fi look in Bladerunner and Aliens.

Being able to experiment with NEW shapes rather than relying on what you already know is often the difference between creating an original design, and creating a generic one.

I don’t know if this was any more relevant than my last response but figured I’d add it…

this pmuch just expresses everything i ever want to say about alchemy/design in general.

(Source: diius)