Gong Xi Fa Cai - Happy Lunar New Year!

Image courtesy: Haojun Qi

In the year of the pig, we can hope for fun, good fortune and wealth, according to Chinese astrologists. We welcome those with open arms, as one of the biggest celebrations in the world comes to an end. The pig in Chinese zodiac is known to be a faithful friend, but also very stylish and perfectionism oriented. Sounds like the stars are aligned for a prosperous year!

For last year, the year of the dog, here’re some statistics of what we accomplished:

• We delivered on 251 projects last year for 70 clients last year

• 11 of our games from last year alone were Top 100 grossing titles on Appstores.

• On average, that’s 1 project every work day!

• We delivered almost 100,000 hours of artwork to our amazing clients.

• Each of our artists delivered about 130 hours of approved work each month

And because we believe in great work/life balance, we found many reasons to play. We finished our year with a big annual party celebration in Shanghai over food and drinks.  

CAH Shanghai team celebrates the Year of the Pig!

The ladies from the US office enjoying some New Year Dim Sum! (Thank you, Seasun!)

Sneak peak ahead:

One of our favorite projects from last year is Endless Entertainment’s IP inspired narrative game called “SERIES”.  These are some of America’s favorite stories that we’re helping bring to life. Series: Your Story Universe is currently available on Google Play in the US, Canada and Australia for a limited period. Global release is expected in 2019.

Endless Entertainment lets the audience play with their favorite TV stars.

February also means GDC is around the corner! Will you be heading over to San Francisco on March 18? If so, drop us a line and let’s catch up!

New Year - Same CAH... Only Leveled Up

It’s the time of the year when you tie loose ends, collect your thoughts and plan how to make the year ahead the best one yet. That’s why we were setting the ground for future success throughout 2018.

It has certainly been the year of learning for Concept Art House. We put a lot of effort into leveling up even more. And to help us on this journey, we collaborated with highly recognized artists in our industry who selflessly shared their expertise. We also leveraged knowledge and experience of our own employees through talks and workshops.

In 2018, we had the pleasure of hosting experts both in our San Francisco and Shanghai office. Blizzard’s very own Jeremy Cranford flew all the way to China to spend a few days with our talented artists and share bits of his vast knowledge gathered during 16+ years in the gaming industry.

Jeremy Cranford during his visit to CAH office in Shanghai

A few months later, our team in San Francisco had the pleasure of hosting Karl Lindberg, Senior Concept Artist at Industrial Lights & Magic. Our Project Managers gathered to learn about art techniques from someone who shaped the look and feel of Jurassic World (Universal Pictures), Jungle Book (Walt Disney Pictures), and Kong - Skull Island (Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures), to name just a few.

Karl Lindberg with CAH Artists and Project Managers

Priceless knowledge we gain every time we have the pleasure of learning from such reputable and acknowledged professionals allows us to keep the role we have in our clients’ projects - an extension of their own team. And this is not the only way we level up. Our team consists of professionals who have been in the industry for decades. Learning from each other is what we encourage and appreciate immensely.

This is why we took a few months to craft and organize Project Management Workshop where some of our most experienced co-workers shared everything they learned over the years on over a dozen topics. It’s safe to say that these meetings made our office the loudest on the floor because, in addition to learning, they were a great deal of fun. And, since no course or program is complete without a certificate, we made sure that all the hard-working students have gotten one upon successful completion.

A few of our Project Managers upon completing the CAH 101 Project Management training

Success happens when you’re ready for it. This is why CAH keeps on actively leveling up, so that we justify the trust our clients put in us every time we’re invited to help along their creative journey. In 2018, we were fortunate to have collaborated on big, bold, chart-topping games - and not only as art providers. We were an integral part of the art direction, leadership, brain storming, exploring and defining the end product. With the knowledge, experience and dedication we have, we cannot wait to see what 2019 prepared for us. We can only promise it will be great!

Zynga’s Artists and James Speak WITH ART Students of Oakland’s Unity High School

Last week, our CEO, James Zhang, was invited by our friends at Zynga - Allyn Bruty, Richard Fox and Andy Wang - to give a talk to the AP art students at Oakland’s Unity High. It was a great opportunity for us to give back to our community and reflect on how we got our start in the gaming industry.   

Talking to AP art students of Unity high school. Their teacher ‘Mr. Art’ in the foreground.

Allyn showed her impressive animation reel from her days working as an animator at Sony, EA, LucasArts and now Zynga. Richard talked about his favorite gaming war stories making games like Crackdown and Frogger. Andy Wang, who was once our art director at Concept Art House, shared with the students his path from being a Biology major to creating the look of CityVille at Zynga.

James went way back to talk about his favorite art inspirations from when he was in high school. It was a nerd encyclopedia of 80s and 90s as shown in the pic below. James spoke about his passion for D&D, Marvel comics, Nintendo, and 80s cartoons which ignited his love for art and games. But it was his high school art teachers who challenged and encouraged him to go to art school and find success in the art field.

Some of James’ favorite art inspirations during high school in late 80s and early 90s.

Mr. Art’s students were attentive and engaged. They asked great questions around careers, passions, and to Allyn, “What is it like to work in games as a woman?”. To which Allyn responded by encouraging the students to lean in.  

We were all impressed by the passion of the next wave of young artists. The hope is that our talk in a small way inspires them in the ways that our own high school art teachers inspired us many years ago.  

Thank you again to Mr. Arturo Arechiga and Unity High of Oakland for giving us a chance to speak. We look forward to doing it again next year.

Some of the games James worked on before founding Concept Art House

Speakers Allyn Bruty, James Zhang, Teacher Arturo ‘Mr. Art’ Arechiga, Andy Wang and Richard Fox

If you want to keep up with everything we're up to, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and ArtStation.

Marvel Studios' Epic Ten Year Anniversary

It began a decade ago. Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role kicked it all off. And, luckily, it never stopped - Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and so on.

To kick off year long celebration, the crew secretly got together in Atlanta, Georgia to take a… memorable photo, to say the least.

Marvel Studios Class Photo - The First Ten Years

This year we’ve seen no less than three new Marvel titles, with the biggest (untitled) one yet to come in 2019. Needless to say the fans are excited. Merchandise, shows, fan art competitions and exhibitions and many, many more platforms for everyone to get involved.

Even though it’s hard to pick a favorite, we would like to highlight an exhibition that just happened at Hero Complex Gallery in Los Angeles - for obvious reasons - art is our thing! Visitors were able to see original concept art by Marvel Studios’ lead artists. If you happened to be around, you could see folks like Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed, Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding, Director of Visual Development Andy Park, and Senior Concept Illustrators Rodney Fuentebella, Jackson Sze, and Anthony Francisco.

Original concept art done by Marvel Studios’ notable artists (left to right): Rodney Fuentebella, Anthony Francisco and last two by Ryan Meinerding

As we said, Marvel had many ways of celebrating the big year. Now famous mobile game they published in collaboration with Kabam, called Contest of Champions, came out with a lot of stunning wallpapers and teasers this year. Concept Art House was honored to have contributed. Take a look!

Only a few of many wallpapers and teasers Concept Art House did for Kabam’s Contest of Champions

Witnessing all the stunning art, brilliantly portrayed heroes, passionate fandom, surreal visual effects, captivating storylines and everything in between, all that’s left to say is - here’s to 10 more!

If you want to keep up with everything we're up to, be sure to follow us on Facebook,  Twitter,  Instagram and ArtStation.

CAH is Almost a Teenager

The US side of the CAH family

Remember when Wii was first launched? Or when Pluto was announced to no longer be a planet? Or when Facebook first came to life? How about when the beloved Evolution of Dance video went viral? Seems like a pretty long time ago, right?

One more thing came to be in 2006 and is still around, full 12 years later. It’s Concept Art House. A few artists in Shanghai were hoping to get where they are today - being the very leaders in the game art space. A few dreams and endless dedication and talent did the trick.

However, there is one crucial component to this success. Our clients who put their trust in CAH to help them ship some of the best looking games in the industry. This is why we’re taking this chance to say thank you to all our friends and colleagues who recognized our value and entrusted us with hundreds of projects over the years.

Like any other milestone, this one makes us look back and count the successes. Here’s what happened during previous 12 years:

• CAH helped ship close to 700 games

• We concurred 2 continents with offices both in San Francisco and Shanghai

• And our clients? They are spread over 4 continents.

• We worked with majority of world’s top studios, or more precisely:

  • Worked with 24 of the top 50 mobile developers

  • Worked with 7 of the top 10 and all top 5 developers

  • 11 developers are current clients including 4 of the top 5

• We grew our offer to cover all platforms with services that include art direction, concept art, 2D art, 3D modeling, marketing art, animation, vector/flash art, and VR.

• We are proud parents of no less than 3 puppies between our 2 offices

It’s safe to say we’ve had a good ride so far. And we obviously had to celebrate!

During these 12 years we followed trends, developed strong personal relationships with industry leaders and veterans, kept leveling up our skills continuously and earned a reputation of valued partners to all our clients.

So, cheers to that and here’s to many, many more!

You’re all invited to join us on our journey! Stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and ArtStation.

XDS - The Best Way to Keep Current

Even though we always find reasons to hang out with our clients, External Developer Summit (XDS) is the most relevant gathering for service providers. There is no better place to get up to speed with industry trends. They even publish annual report on this topic. We broke down the latest one here and will update this article as soon as the new one is out.

XDS show floor with its many faces

This year, our Head of Asia Operations, Jenny Chen, and Director of Business Development, Davis Kurzenski, proudly represented CAH, a bronze sponsor of the event. One thing we can say for sure is that the service providing landscape is changing. Developers seem to gravitate towards outsourcing technical solutions more than ever before. Art studios are slowly consolidating and forming bigger entities, so we see much wider scope than we used to.

However, it seems that despite changes, CAH has found a winning formula. These traits is what separates the industry leaders and Concept Art House has been nurturing them for years:

• Extensive experience in the industry

• Wide network of industry professionals

• Seamless communication and constant availability

• Providing high level art direction in addition to resources

• Taking into account each client’s unique context - no such thing as one size fits all

• High expertise in a variety of art styles

• Presence in Asia and North America

Even though we always kept these as our core values, after XDS 2018, we can say it with confidence that CAH has what it takes to stay at the top.

As promised, we will revisit this article with data based insights as soon as the new report is published. In the meantime, feel free to stay up to date with what CAH is up to on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and ArtStation.

CAH is Sponsoring XDS 2018

CAH will be showing some of the best pieces we've been working on since the last XDS

CAH is proud to announce our Bronze Sponsorship of the External Development Summit (XDS). This will be our third year in a row sponsoring this event and we are eager to catch up with everyone yet again.

Our representatives this year will be Davis Kurzenski, Director of Business Development, and Jenny Chen, President of Asia Operations. 

Coming to Vancouver any time between September 5th and 7th? Don't be a stranger!

The Boomsday Project: Second Hearthstone Expansion This Year

The ever so successful card collecting game just added 135 new cards for PC and mobile gamers to get their hands on. This time around, the set includes Legendary Spells, the first of this kind with the highest rarity and power.

Legendary Spells card designed by CAH

Concept Art House has been creating Hearthstone cards for years now and we're proud to have our work in every new batch. These are also a part of the Boomsday Project:

So what do you think of the new expansion? A lot of our artists are passionate players of the game so this has been a hot topic lately.

If you're curious what else we have going on these days you can check the news on the latest additions to our studio (puppies included) or you can peek behind the scenes of King's latest title we proudly worked on.

If you want to keep up with everything we're up to, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and ArtStation.

Behind the Curtains: Festivities and New Members of the Team

We would like to share with you some fun news and some recent additions to the CAH family.

Our China team just celebrated the 39th Annual Dragon Boat Festival, an occasion that includes activities like dragon boat racing, a personal passtime of our teammates and James, our CEO.  Some of them made sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, toasted over rice wines and deadly “bai jio”. Our team in Shanghai took this time to go out, take part in festivities and enjoy one another’s company.

Team building pool and drinks!

And on the US side, our San Francisco office have been busy adding to our team with a few remarkable people:

Sophia is one of those superheros that no company can go without. She makes sure our staff is paid and the team is always taken care. Thank you, Sophia, for ensuring this place always ticks perfectly!  She comes to us after 9 years of working at a prestigious law firm. She is a 5th Dan blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do and also coaches the Cal TKD team!

Meet Na, our new fearless 3D artist, who helps us deliver top notch quality like a true pro! She’s working and learning alongside world class artists and we’re always proud to be able to pass the knowledge to young, gifted people, such as Na.

Marissa is our Project Management Summer Intern, who took on some of our most challenging projects. She continues to bring immense value to our team day after day. It sure promises to be a great summer!

Well, Sean is by no means new to our team, but he just made a big transition to becoming the lead artist of our 3D team! He truly is someone who goes above and beyond for each of our clients and we’re looking forward to many years of working together.

And finally - world, this is Summit. A bernedoodle who also just joined us on a full time basis. Perhaps the most energetic team member, she makes sure we get all the puppy love we need.  She’s 9 weeks old and growing a pound a week! Level up, Summit!

There we have it.  Fun nights and puppies are encouraging our batteries to recharge and helps us recommit to delivering world class art for our partners and clients.

If you wish to stay in touch, connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and ArtStation.

To catch up with the latest news, check out this article.

King and Playstudios Join Forces To Bring Royal Charm Slots

Royal Charm Slots hit the App Store and Google Play Store a few days ago. King and Playstudios got together to bring along a social casino game for those who love winning. You can read King’s full press release here.

We are very excited to see this game go live since both King and Playstudios are our long time friends and partners. So far we worked with Playstudios on POP! Slots and My Vegas while King came to us when they needed help on Pyramid Solitaire Saga.

Playstudios’ widely successful casino games - POP! Slots and MyVegas Slots have reached impressive ranks on app stores. POP! Slots is in the top 10 grossing casino games, while My Vegas Slots was #1 most downloaded casino game.

Royal Charm Slots is already off to a great start in this respect. The game is featured on the AppStore in Casino Games.

Royal Charm Slots takes the prominent position on the App Store

Concept Art House is very proud to have contributed to this fun project. Here are just a few of many assets we created for Royal Charm Slots.

Characters, gems, maps and more - a small sample of the work CAH did for Playstudios

The game is true to King’s signature colorful style which their 285 million daily active users love and Playstudios is the perfect partner for diving into into social casino genre. We wish them all the best with the new title and can’t wait to see what the future brings for this game!

If you like what you see, go ahead and download the game now:

Here you can read more about other projects we worked on such as MAG Interactive’s Word Domination and Linekong’s Supercharged: World Cup.

If you want to keep up with everything we're up to, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and ArtStation.