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Concept artist on Call of Duty: Black Ops, Boom Blox (Spielberg Wii), Boom Blox Bash Party, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Mercenaries 2, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent.
Aftermath is the subject for this week's sketchnight.
Funny idea Toby and I came up with at work.
Is Boom Blox too cute?
I'm so angry with myself. I just spent a couple of hours painting this thing up. Saved it out low res for the web.....only to find I saved over the wrong file. My high res version is completely lost forever. Dang. I would have loved to print this sucker out too.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 1:50 AM No comments:
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Boom Blox in Japanese
Here's the temporary Japanese site for Boom Blox. They have a really cool Japanese trailer up. http://boomblox.jp/
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 12:51 AM No comments:
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tonight I thought I'd explore making some pretentious art. It's actually quite fun. You can pretty much read anything you want into this piece. The id finding the super ego. The substitution of self through the delusion of reality. Lost love and distant memories. A study of golden section constructs. Blah, blah, blah... I was basically painting with an open mind and arranging abstract shapes, but I guess you could a read more into it than what the author intended. I guess it'd be pretentious to assume that anyone would even see this piece in the first place.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 12:48 AM 1 comment:
Friday, May 23, 2008
Boom Blox Flash game
Those wacky Europeans have made a flash game version of Boom Blox. It's great fun and highly addictive. If you like this flash game, the Wii version is like 100 times more fun. Here's the link. http://boomblox.electronic-arts.de/
I've also been hearing a lot of complaints online about how the throwing motion of Boom Blox has left many people with sore arms. For those, like me, who are hopelessly addicted, I'd suggest you try throwing the ball in an underhand throw motion. This is less strenuous in my opinion.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 12:26 AM No comments:
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
BOOM BLOX is in stores!! Buy it today!
Whoo-hoo! Boom Blox is finally out in stores today. Go buy it and play tonight. I've worked so hard on this game for the past year and it's great to see that work finally pay off. The critics love this game! But more importantly, if you get this game I bet you'll love it too. This game appeals to adults and children, male and female, casual gamer and hardcore gamer. Parents should play Boom Blox with their kids. Fraternities should play it like a drinking game. Kids should play it with other kids (sorry kids, it's not a drinking game for you yet). Haha! This is truly a game for everyone. But don't take my word for it. Read the reviews from Metacritic. Buy Boom Blox baby! http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/wii/boomblox
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 11:21 PM 2 comments:
Friday, May 02, 2008
NEW BOOM BLOX SITE IS UP!!!!!
The NEW Boom Blox website is up and running!! It looks really awesome! Check it out, here's the link. http://www.ea.com/boomblox/
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 6:27 PM No comments:
Yahoo Games loves Boom Blox
Yahoo games has several articles and videos about Boom Blox. They love it!
Here's a direct link to a video which explains Boom Blox . http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/boom-blox/boom-blox-original-featurettes/1209469
Here's an article from them about 5 reasons why you should get Boom Blox.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 1:45 AM No comments:
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Boom Blox Level Editor
My good friend Joe Fielder explains Boom Blox's level editor in this IGN article. http://wii.ign.com/articles/870/870720p1.html
As you can see, the level editor also known as Create mode, is simple to use, but lends itself to an infinite array of possibilities. You can make games. You can make comedic gag sequences. You can make a virtual art project like building the Capitol Building using Blox. I would recommend this game to all of the aspiring game designers of the world, even to you "hardcore" gamers. There are many aspects of game design which can be learned from using the Boom Blox Create mode from physics puzzles to simple AI usage to pathing to pacing. Like I've said before, this is an actual game. I believe that in a day and age where games are trying to recreate reality without much consideration for the fun factor of something like Pac Man, it's a breath of fresh air to see a game like Boom Blox out there that isn't afraid of being a game. That means having goals, a set of rules, and lots of fun! Imagine that.....FUN!
The guys at IGN also got to play around with the Boom Blox level editor. They've written an article on their impressions and also showed some cool videos of them making their levels. Here's the link http://wii.ign.com/articles/871/871124p1.html
As you can see, the editor is really simple to use, and creating levels in a world with physics is practically a puzzle in itself. You really have to think about gravity, balance, and the amount of weight involved in building puzzles. It's a true test in critical thinking and depending on how complicated you want to make your puzzles, you may want to plan them out ahead of time. I can't wait! May 6th (the release date) is almost here!
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 1:43 AM No comments:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A bunch of guys at work and I pick a weekly topic to sketch and this week was my choice. The theme is "The Jungle Cruise". I quickly drew a couple sketches in my sketchbook and added some tone to it.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 11:16 AM No comments:
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Boom Blox is Game of Summit According to Gonintendo.com
Wow, I just finished reading this article about Boom Blox impressions from the Nintendo Media Summit. Gonintendo.com really loves our game and calls it the "Game of Summit". Basically saying that Boom Blox stole the show. Here's the article. http://gonintendo.com/?p=40262
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 5:54 PM No comments:
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
More Life Drawings and Sketches
I just realized that I'm talking a lot about Boom Blox, a game which includes a child demographic and yet I'm posting life drawings which may or may not include nudes. If nudes offend you please refrain from looking too deeply into my blog. These are academic studies and are not meant to be lewd in any way. That said, here are some more life drawings from Otis College and some sketches I did at the beach. I noticed that you basically get one pose at the beach, but hope that the different angles of that pose make up for it. By the way, Boom Blox was just listed as one of the 10 must-have games coming out this year on a Nintendo platform. Here's the article. http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/ten-upcoming-nintendo-games-you-shouldn-t-miss/1204664
Absolutely remarkable, but when Ken Harsha (Art Director), Huy Dinh (Concept and Production Artist), Chris Miller (Concept Artist), and I (Senior Concept Artist) set out to make the art for Boom Blox, we knew that it was going to become something special. The characters, the worlds, the gameplay, the mechanics were all given so much love by the team members of Boom Blox. I'm sure if you ask any one of the people who worked on this project if they'd want to work together again, they'd say,"yes". I'm sure soon, the public and the critics will say,"Yes, we want more Boom Blox!" This is truly a unique game and unique experience in making it. We had such a good time and it shows in the final product.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 9:11 PM No comments:
Monday, April 14, 2008
Boom Blox will soon be out. I am really excited. It's scheduled for a May 6th U.S. and May 9th European release! I'm reading that Boom Blox also made a huge impression at the 2008 Nintendo Media Summit. One of the most interesting ideas brought up was the interactions parents could have playing this game with their kids. Parents can make puzzles for their children using the level-editor and vice versa. Actually, many aspects of this game do encourage person to person interactivity such as the many multi-player levels and the ability to send your puzzles to friends via the Wii Connect 24. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=25685
Again, I can not reiterate just how proud I am of this game. It is a game for gamers and casual players alike which is a rare feat. The editor is amazing fun. The characters are hilarious. I mean just look at this screen shot. It's freakin' nuts! Block monkeys with bandito mustaches and cowboy hats flying through the air as the block world around them explodes in chaos. Can you believe this game was made in America? Yes! Here's a video interview with our producer, Amir Rahimi, talking about the game. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/32795.html
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 10:11 PM No comments:
Friday, March 28, 2008
Here are some sketches that I've beeing doing during my vacation. Mainly cafe sketches and life drawing. There's also a page where I was analyzing a telephone pole and an apartment building. Often times, I'm asked why a video game company would need a concept artist when the game takes place in a modern day setting. I mean, couldn't you just have the 3-D artists look up reference photos and model a building as is? A concept artist is more than a copy-ist. Otherwise we'd be called copy artists :) Concept artists can be a useful tool for an art director to communicate a unified vision to the 10 in-house and 30 out-source 3-D artists. As a concept artist, I also bring an attention to detail to the table. For example, if told by an art director, build a telephone pole. At first glance, "telephone pole" is a word that we all have a point of reference to, which in our imaginations look like a 1st grade cartoon from the flash card labeled "telephone pole". This is sufficient for us to go through life with a passive picture in our head to recognize a telephone pole, but not necessarily to create a telephone pole. To create a telephone pole, you must answer several key questions such as," How tall is the average telephone pole? How many telephone wires do we want attached to our telephone pole? How is the structure planted into the ground? Are there ancillary attachment pieces such as street signs, street lights, and garage sale posters? Is the telephone pole located in a rural countryside or in a metropolitan city (such will determine style and period)? Do these telephone poles act as cover objects in our world (in which case, the base should match cover dimensions for the game)? All of the questions above lead to answers which will give a prop character. We've all seen boring looking props without a whole lot of thought put into them, but sufficient to communicate what the object is supposed to represent in a virtual environment. But as "Next-Gen" games (which by now should be labeled "Current-Gen"), we need to pay closer attention to such details. And in order to save art directors from sitting in further meetings than he should, concept artists can provide 3-d artists with enough information to build from without worrying if the tone of the object created is correct.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 7:08 PM 4 comments:
Monday, March 24, 2008
Another Sketch night theme this week. Did this diddy real quickly. Theme was female officer. Thought I'd not do a sexy pin-up.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 11:34 PM 1 comment:
Army of Two is a great game
I normally publish my sketches on this blog, but I just finished playing Army of Two with a friend of mine and had a blast. I applaud the hard working talented developers over at EA Canada. They've delivered a game experience which is on par with Gears of War. This game is fun, addictive, and beautifully crafted. If you enjoy playing co-op games, get Army of Two and tell your gamer friends to get it as well. To my surprise, there are a lot of average reviews out there for this awesome game. I feel that many of these reviewers are prejudice against EA. In my book, Army of Two should be getting a solid 85-87 Metacritic score (which BTW, is what the reader reviews have been ranking for this game). I have a theory that reviewers judge EA games harshly, and in the case of Army of Two, they give some pretty weak arguments. Some have said that this game should not depict the fantasy of being a mercenary. That it's too close to home. But I would argue that many of the popular games out there, with high meta-critic scores, do this, such as Grand Theft Auto, which puts you in the fantasy world of being a criminal, or Mercenaries which also put you in the role of a mercenary in a real world country. The fact is, video games are here for entertainment not education. If a game is fun, then it has done its job. Other arguments I've heard is that the single player campaign is too short. Yet this game has a longer single player campaign than Gears of War which garnered a 94 Metacritic. I think my biggest qualm about the haters out there is that they don't realize just how difficult it is to make great games. There are substantial risks, and when a company decides to put a lot of production value into a game such as Army of Two, they expect high sales and high metacritic scores. When people just bag on a game because they feel like that's a way of sticking it to the man, it actually results in "the man" not taking such risks anymore. The chief complaint of a lot of haters out there (that there just aren't a lot of good games these days), are the architects of their own undoing. What I would like from those of you gamers who are reading this (all 6 of you), to play Army of Two for yourselves in co-op mode with a friend and then judge if you had a good time.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 12:38 AM No comments:
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Bunch of guys at work and I have decided to do a themed sketch thing on a weekly basis. I'm way behind, sorry guys. I'm on vacation dammit! But since I came up with the subject, it wouldn't be good to let everyone down. Here's my interpretation of Scooby Doo.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 12:05 PM 2 comments:
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
I'm so proud of this Boom Blox game! Our team did a great job at defining the look of the game under the art direction of Ken Harsha. We had such a great time making this game! Here's a pretty good preview of our game on Kotaku. http://kotaku.com/353191/spielbergs-boom-blox-revealed
And here's the trailer to this awesome game! http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/20999/Wii/Boom-Blox
IGN Hands-on preview of Boom Blox.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 5:54 PM No comments:
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
I always go into vacation thinking that I'm going to get so much done. It's finally time to work on my own stuff. And then I realize that I rest in my natural state. Time moves slower, I decompress, and I chill. Didn't really get much done. Here's a sketch.
Posted by Daniel Cheng at 7:32 PM 2 comments:
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Currently a concept artist at Treyarch working on Call of Duty: Black Ops. I've also been a concept artist on Boom Blox, Boom Blox Bash Party, Medal of Honor Airborne, and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent at Electronic Arts Los Angeles, Mercenaries 2 at Pandemic Studios