Introducing Artbook series from China

Leewiart
I have been included in some of artbooks published in China. Here is a sample pages from one of concept art book series. Leewiart is like Bluecanvas.com- features members artwork and also invite artists from the rest of the world as well.

The Tale of Igor Series is Coming

Section Games

Couple Sketches for our 2nd game

Here are some idea sketches to design some of the running levels for our game.
Actually we wanted to set up a camera looking down slightly 3/4 view but we would had to compromise to bring the camera to more like behind angle to our main hero "Igor". It's going to be pretty stylized architecture and BG- as we are experimenting with more simple black/white VS painted landscape style..

Storyboard Demo / Gnomon Online Session

So here I post couple drawings that I did for one of Gnomon's online class. Justin Yun's Intro to digital painting class that I had to substitute for Justin one night, students asked me to do some storyboard lecture. 2nd image was one of students asked me to come up with snow scene in Starwars setting,

Intro Cut Scene Storyboard

So the story had to make sense since we are making 3 games that are connected in  story, character development and location and etc.. Our coin game was the first of three, and it had a simple set up where you are basically trying to regain your treasures / prizes from enemy intruders who seized your kingdom and yes..,all your treasures. They are known as Cicada- infected buggy like creatures and they are many as army. Our hero prince IGOR is the one you are playing as- and he is coming back home to save his castle and his legacy. So here I am posting a quick storyboard I did for the intro which was done in Maya and it's really short and simple but at least it serves a purpose as an opening scene. 

Igor's CoinQuest

So we submitted our 1st game to appstore last week. There will be some adjustments we need to do but most likely it will be available in next couple weeks. Here I have one of the early sketches that became a foundation for our game. We learned tons about making a casual IOS game... it was a lot of fun.. experimentation and lots of errors, as a start-up company and being a first title, yes.. we learned different aspects from each others and now we have a solid production pipeline. I can talk more about story, Igor franchise, our next 2,3 4th titles we are planning this year. Although I worked in gaming biz over 1 1/2 decades, casual mobile market is completely different beast and I can say.. I am still learning.

Bluecanvas Contest

Bluecanvas / LAAFA Contest

Hi everyone! We are accepting artworks for this contest.. submit and win $10000 scholarship program LAAFA/ Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art offers.

Each applicant must submit five different traditional two-dimentional artwork pieces and five different two-dimensional or three-dimensional digital artwork pieces. Images of work should be in JPEG format. Images should be as close to 800x1200 pixels and 72 DPI, and emailed as an attached zip file with your first and last name. The JPEG must also be large enough to show your entire piece (do not crop your artwork). Each JPEG must be labeled with a number and the artist's name. Include a list of portfolio works with your submission. Include numbers corresponding to the images submitted, as well as title of work, descriptions of piece, concept and/or subject matter, size, medium, and completion date. Submissions are limited to original artwork only, completed within one year of the entry date. No Master copies allowed.

Judges:
Cecil Kim, Justin Yun, Bill Perkins and Robert St. Pierre.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions regarding this contest. LAAFA offers great traditional portrait, landscape painting classes as well as entertainment classes.

Marina Demo

Contest from Bluecanvas Magazine

All artists out there! Art Contest is open to everyone- cash prizes and also free admission to CGMW workshops.
It's still a month away from deadline, plenty of time to crank out some paintings, contest theme is "Journey"

Bluecanvas Contest Page

The Making of Alcazar Part 1

My company Section Studios' 1st game development workshop is available for purchase on CGMW website.

It's part 1 of 3 lecture series. IOS game franchise "Alcazar" has interesting story and 3D graphic.

It's about 2 hrs long- covering some of the beginning ideas for the game concept and also story development.

It' also has some character designs and I also talked about how these creatures were created. It also has painting demos done by Cecil Kim and Randolph Williams. Here is the link:

CGMW Workshop "Making of Alcazar" Part 1

Gnomon Gallery : Forge Artshow

Gnomon Gallery : Forge Artshow

Next weekend 29-30th Oct, At Gnomon school of visual FX, there will be 2 days workshop. It's a revival of gnomon workshop series that were pretty popular 4-5 years ago. I was invited to come in and do my talk, demo this time. Also Travis Bourbeau, producer at Gnomon put together a group show with speakers altogether. I have all my recent stuff still under NDA, so don't really have any new stuff but I will have some artworks at the show along with some of heavy hitters, amazing talents in game, film industry... so come by and meet all of us. Thank you,

Artpark in Russia this weekend

I am going back to Moscow,Russia to do some lectures at Artpark festival. It's 2 weeks long art festival covering cinema, fine art, digital art and etc. I have met some great people last time I went there to do a workshop at Mail.Ru company. Something about people there, highly educated and serious artists... it's a mega size country and sure it did feel like a biggest metropolitan city I have ever been in my life. Last time I figured out their subway system so I am anxious to go out there again and experience their culture and enjoy hearing what history has to say.
As an educator myself, it's important for me to share my past and future as an artist and what I learned from working with artists in US. I have 4 sets of lectures, Each ones are 1 hour long focusing on game dev experience at Sony, Bluecanvas as my mission and long term goal to inspire people to embrace, love art and Section studios' alcazar production and lastly.. just 1 hour digital painting demo.
It's already low 50 degrees over there so I need to cover myself warm...
Thanks to Konstantin, Alina, Victoria.
Here is the website :  Artpark Moscow

Touching up students film Pitch Comps

War movies are always entertaining and all time favorite..so for my Practicum for Concept Art Class at Otis, as 1st assignment, Nathan Ota and I came up with war theme concept paintings.
Here is week 2 progress. Mostly correcting main hero's pose and composition.

Students Work Highlight

Hi everyone, so I have been teaching this fun class on Saturday morning at Otis. "Visual Development for Animation" for sometime now, It has been a lot of fun and students come up with their own interesting stories. Here are some character development stuff, key frame illustrations. Thanks to
Maria, Ashton, Audrey, Hana, Danny, Daniel, Martin, Cecilia,Luke and others who took my class..

Here are some of my past students work.

Art of Journey Book

Hello!

Bluecanvas Publishing and Section Studios published 1st art book project and the book will be hitting the shelves in couple weeks. A good friend of mine, great producer at Sony- Eric Koch came up with an idea of making art book for popular Playstation Network Game "Journey'. We designers at Section Studios have a lot of experiences in graphic design, page layouts and even website design. So our BC art director Ben Michaels and also Rebecca Rhee designed beautiful art book with Journey art director Matthew Nava.
It was super short of production- unheard of- from design to printing, we had about less than 2 1/2 months. Thank you everyone at Sony for having trust on our capability and thank you our awesome designers and producers. Scott Hitomi, Justin Yun and Nozomi Ficklin for staying on top of the process..!

Bluecanvas  "Art of Journey" Article

My company Section Studios are offering a series of workshops. Justin Yun and I will be talking about our design process and birth of beginning concept for our 1st game project. Below you can find a link to sign up for a free introductory webinar which is scheduled to be live online- this Sat 3pm PST..

It's quite nerve breaking to announce what we are going to do and how we are going to do..!
But all the fun is in creative progress, bad decisions and mistakes, oversights.. and not knowing how to do things in first place. But... we see this as an opportunity to get motivated and inspired from everyone as well. So we can kick our own butt..Everything is still very early in production but we've got some stuff to share. So sign up and see what is this all about....and why is it so hot in LA, I miss working in Santa Monica!!

CGMW Section Studios Behind the Production Webinar

Killspenser Bluecanvas Interview

Hi-
Louis Vitton for Men? Premium bags using Parachute materials, men accessories designer Killspenser did an interview with Bluecanvas magazine. His factory/ Studio is located in Toy District in Downtown... It's interesting and inspiring to see someone who studied product design in Art Center and taking on entrepreneur path with his dream of bringing quality men bags. Not to mention he draws out all his ideas on his sketchbooks.. his interview will be on our issue 13. Available now. Check it out here.

Augmented Reality Convention on Queen Mary, Long Beach

One of the leading AG companies- Daqri is hosting 2 days convention on the ship- Queen Mary in Long Beach. It's free but you would need to send in your RSVP to get a spot. One of my buddies back in Art Center- Jeff Morgan is Creative Director at Daqri. It's new thing- what they call as 4D, which will be soon very popular in games, mobile publications and toys..etc.

http://voxsummit.com/

Some Idea Sketch

I had an idea /story about this kid robot going on adventure..

Hi everyone, Here is one of the art contests BLUECANVAS is a sponsor. Justin Yun from Creative Director of Section Studios is one of the judges. They need more artworks to be submitted and deadline is in a few weeks.. Painters and artists.. enter and win some cash and prizes. 

Jeanie Madsen Gallery in Santa Monica 

San Diego Comic Con 2012

My first ComicCon experience was about 3 years ago- when I was still working for Sony. I didn't have any agendas or personal goals- Thank to John Hight and Kevin Brown for generous offer- I got on Amtrak from Downtown LA to San Diego and I remember it was a quite enjoyable train ride. This time I was supposed to check it out and see who I can meet on artists alley but I remember seeing huge crowds so I just picked up a couple graphic T-shirts and I didn't want to stay much longer. It was super quick and easy. This year, I went down there with Justin Yun (my business Partner) and we set up a booth with LAAFA (Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art) -LAAFA was generous enough to let us share their booth.Thanks Holly! I was down there for 3 nights and 4 days. Justin had to stay all 5 days..that's just crazy..As for us being business owners (Section studios) our first year of running business together- we wanted to check out all the conventions- that are related to visual art, entertainment industry. So far we have been to CTNx (Burbank), Wondercon (Anaheim), GDC (SF) and E3 (LA). Each expos and conventions have different characteristics and demographics, we learned that it is important to being out there and mingle with industry pros and also potential buyers/Investors of our services and products.

It turns out to be- ComicCon is one of the best places to promote your own projects and ideas. Not like GDC or E3- where most of exhibitors are big companies, ComicCon felt more geared towards to single artists and various small vendors. We sold a good amount of prints and Section art booklets- enough to cover most of our business expenses- but more importantly I was able to talk to many friends and other professional artists about our business and our own project. I've met some of my old students that are working hard in industry, reunion with classmates from Artcenter and Orange Coast College and even bar hopping with our current clients.. It's definitely clear reflection of American pop-culture and solid proof of how positive future we have in this industry by seeing a wide age range of attendees soaking up creative energy and having good time in beautiful SD. They say what-like 200k people came? that's almost more than twice of E3....good times.

Interview on Lenta.Ru (Russian Media)

From my last visit to Moscow (for master workshop with Mail.ru / Scream School ), I met a couple media reps and here is one of the interviews. It's in Russian...I can't read them either..

Lenta.Ru