Combat UNIT Hi VIZ sketches

Some secret project I was doing for some secret client. I choose flat brush to mimick the marker shapes and yeah... These has to be super tough build yet super agile fighters. A lot of fun.. no more secret anymore. :)

CDA In-Class Demo

God of War 3 E3 Demo

Demo Gameplay shown at 2009 E3Sony Press Conference.
Introduction by Jack Tratton (SCEA President) followed By
Stig Assmussen (Game Director) and Todd Papy (Lead Designer)

Watch full 720p size clip from Youtube.

CDA In-class demo

Gun Tower

New Class

Thanks to Jung Ho Park for having me co-teach "Environment Design" class at Kevin Chen's Concept Design Academy. Unfortunately the class got full as soon as it got announced, I guess there was a waiting list already from James Paick's popular painting class. It's a 10 weeks course and I will be teaching by-weekly and I am very excited to go back to Pasadena area- it almost made me feel like I am going back to Artcenter. Since I graduated, for my entire career I end up staying at westside, away from San Bernando Valley and I think it's time for me to go back to where I started and hang out in lovely Pasadena. Hmm,, I miss those tree canopies..and tree smell.

Train Wreck- Tutorial

OtisDemo-Sphinx Challenge

Last Saturday IP class, We had a speed painting challenge session for about 40 mins. The topic was "Sphinx Concept" and the very top image was what I came up with during the class.
Then I spend little more time at home to bring it up to the bottom piece.The flying ship needs more love.. Thanks!

Hovercraft

Los Angeles Metamorphosis

Tutorial - Drop ship

USS Santiago (CTN-85)

Laid Down: 12th February 2059

Commissioned: 12th July 2062

3rd Generation Minitz Class Assault Aircraft Carrier

Length: 809 Feet

Propulsion: 8 X A4W Nuclear Reactors

Aircraft Carried: 140 Fixed drone wing and Bombers

Motto: Seek and Destroy

Nickname: Anvil

Range: Essentially unlimited

Here it is..

Everything runs on the game engine. We had a press anounce earlier this week and some screenshots and the interviews are available for you to check out online. This trailer is all done in-house and every art assets also in-game models. Things that I am excited about GOWIII is that we are introducing so many new gameplay mechanics that were initially pitched during the production of God of War I,II. And of course some were designed by talented GOW III level/combat designers.

Some ideas being too ambitious to be executed years ago, only remain in our heads. Now I see Kratosdoing things that were from our wishlist, wow, we came a long long way to make this one all come together. This is what the game making is all about and how it's different from other forms of entertainment I think. It takes years to step closer to make things happen, and when it happens, You get to play it. Looking good is another thing, it needs to play better first, and I am just blown by how much stuff we are packin in the game.

So here are the links:

IGN God of War III Preview

Kotaku God of War III Impressions

Stig Asmussen God of War III Game Director Interview

Big Apple - Tutorial

yup, I was watching Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Untitled

Another fun piece that I kept in my "everyday" folder and I get to touch it little more last night.
It's still loose and sketchy, suggestive shapes and all that but it was good study.

Futuristic City

Psycho 5-0 Concept Sketches

Psycho 5-0 was a project that I worked on during 2001-2 from Sony. It was 2nd internal development IP from us- Sony Santa Monica. It was a combination of Cop/Car combat with some shooting and intense scripted action sequences. We had it going for about less than 2 years, during that time, I have created modern stylized urban world with some whacked out criminal characters. Here are some sketches that I found on my old portfolio so let me know what you guys think..

Cemented Minds

Resistance in Ancient World

Happy New Year Everyone

Laputa AD 2419

Earlier this year I started to work on this image remembering the castles and hazy atmosphere from "ICO" then as I started to figure out the actual surface designs of the castle itself I began to think about "Gear of War".. I guess I am thinking what if their awesome military tech designs to be set in glorious ..fairy tale like ICO setting? hmm... waterfalls and pure tranquility with just a sound of wind breeze..

Laputa (Wikipedia) is a fictional place from the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Diamond Head-Am I evil?

So this album got released in 1987 and have influenced me and Metallica heavily, ( i was 15 and I was deep into metal back then) but more so... the image of gigerish train just stuck in my head like a bad nightmare so long, I did attempted to do my own version of it so here it is. This was done last year for Nucleus GOW book signin artshow.

I hope metallica play the song this thursday at Western Forum.

Listen to the "Am I Evil" original

Tundra

This is one of the few images that I wanted to put in my friend Jinhyung's tutorial book. I don't even know what the book is about..Just a pure imagination and didn't really wanted to indicate any designs nor shapes to specific time or era and wanted to leave everything as just a part of the landscape.

Final Fantasy IX- Lindbulm Castle

Ok! It seems like some people remember this game as one of their favorites. So here I have some more drawings for Final Fantasy IX. Lindblum Castle was a pretty important location in the game- had about 89 BG maps (fully rendererd CG plates) and it was a lot of fun and a big challenge for me because I had to figure out how each locations are connected and how the castle looks with all the things laid out inside. Click on the top image and it will take you to movie clip from the game.

A long long time ago.. Final Fantasy IX

I found these old stuff while I was cleaning my hard drive. These were done in Hawaii when I was working on Final Fantasy IX in 1999. I was originally hired as a concept artist doing lots of environment concepts then towards the end of the production, myself and Christian Schuerer and Bela Broszek had to touch up about 200 something 3D rendering plates in Photoshop.

It's not exactly same as Matte-painting we know nowadays but back then-when we were using SGI-Alias software to do these hi-res background: dirt, snow, crack, flags, even torch lighting took too much time to realize in 3D-so we faked them in photoshop. Even though this game was made for Playstation console, these BG end up looking better than most of PS2 games because the game wasn't played in real-time. Final Fantasy VII, VIII were done in the same fashion. I thought this is such an old history and how things were done were quiet different back then, at least 3D artist had no limitation on geometry size or texture size because it would be baked and rendered as 2D template when it's done.

... I miss working in Hawaii.

Cecil

Interesting Blog on Modern Art / Futurism

Perspective drawing from La Citta Nuova, 1914 - Antonio Sant’Elia.
hayley gilchrist’s weblog

This blog talks about all the great things on Post-Modernism that I always wanted to know more. I came across the site looking for Russian Futurism that once heavily dealt with architectural abstract-subdivism which made a huge impression on me while I was at Artcenter. I wanted to share with you since we all came from where these guys took their work so seriously that still influenced us in many ways.

P . o. r. t. a. l

A Tribute to another great game. Portal from Valve Software. Damn, that puzzle game made my brain hurts. That ending was so sick... Cheers to the great level designs... Think out of the box.. well I felt like a little rat trying to get out of the box covered with neons and white walls. I am not so much of a PC gamer however Portal was probably the best PC game experience I had for what I paid.. and some. I think Johnny Hawk would be a perfect designer for the game with rat traps...haha

Cecil

E I N H A N D E R

This is my tribute to the game "Einhander" Einhander is also what I use as my ID on some of Art Forum- that means "one hander" in German. It was also the title of an awesome Sci-Fi Shooter game Square published back in 1998 for Playstation. Stunning graphic and boss fight but the game was relatively too short!

Yearbook cover for a PreSchool

This sketch was done for my long time friend-Shannon Studstill who hired me at Sony back in 2000, I really appreciated that the team I have as a family, I wouldn't met them without her.
Now long stretch of 8 years in my career, I can't ask for any other place that I can feel more home than Sony Santa Monica. That's a long time, isn't it? as a concept artist work in the game industry, 8 years sound pretty long time. It's not just about commitment for me, it's a sort of "I want to finish what we started together. God of war III will be completed with my buddies here. Anway, here this sketch is for her daughter's yearbook cover. This is the actual preschool.