Hope to see you at PocketGamer Connects in San Francisco!

PocketGamer Connects U.S. installment starts tomorrow in San Francisco, and we're excited to welcome all our friends back to The Bay. As always, this year's event is sure to bring together like-minded creatives and business folks looking to make it big in the mobile sector.

Be sure to drop us a line if you're in town; Bespoke is less than a block away from Concept Art House HQ. We have lots of snacks, games, and insights to share. Hope to see you soon and welcome to San Francisco!

Concept Art House's 3D work for Limbic's mobile game, Zombie Gunship Survivor.

Coming Up, E3!

Bane, CAH for Injustice 2

Ready or not, E3 is right around the corner. This year's event is sure to be festive as ever and with the introduction of consumers passes, we're all excited for a new fresh energy to hit the floor. Concept Art House's CEO, James Zhang, Director of Business Development, David Wallington and the rest of the business development crew will be there will bells on.

Will you be in LA the week of June 11th? If so, we'd love to meet up, talk shop and swap ideas. Let us know when you're available and we'll set up a date and time. Happy Hour's on us. 

Deadshot, CAH for Injustice 2

Between the hugely successful launch of NetherRealm's Injustice 2, Tencent's soft launch of Strike of Kings, Boss Key's LawBreakers heading to PS4, and the newest installment of Get Set Games cult classic Robot Unicorn Attack 3, you can't throw a rock without hitting a game that CAH has been a part of. But don't take it from us, just take a look at what the gaming press has to say about some of CAH's fantastic partners: 

Injustice 2 Launch Trailer Highlights Customization, Supers, And More

The hugely popular Chinese MOBA Strike of Kings, by the studio behind League of Legends, has been soft launched

'LawBreakers' makes the leap to PlayStation 4

Robot Unicorn Attack 3 dashes onto the Play Store

Flash, CAH for Injustice 2

Black Canary, CAH for Injustice 2

As always, we're honored to be an invaluable part of so many talented teams and are alway excited to see our partners doing so well. Looking forward to keeping up the momentum and looking forward to catching up in LA!

James Zhang on China's Global Expansion in Games

The live events of 2017's GamesBeat Summit have come and gone, but the goods from this year's festivities just keep on coming, i.e. they've posted the talk videos. If you didn't have the opportunity to attend in person and you have Chinese markets on your mind, take 30 minutes to hear straight from the experts on the games business in China. It'll be thirty minutes well spent. 

As always, we're more than happy to help answer any questions you have about breaking into Chinese markets; whether that's adapting a game's art style and player incentives, or navigating the ever-changing and complex publishing hoops. Click the button below to drop us a line. We hope to hear from you soon!

GamesBeat Summit 2017

GamesBeat Summit is an event the Concept Art House crew looks forward to every year. Drawing industry leaders from around the San Francisco Bay and beyond, GamesBeat provides a top notch setting to catch up with old friends and to get a deeper look at the games, challenges, and opportunities coming right around the corner. We're excited to share that Concept Art House is a proud sponsor of this year's festivities, taking place May 1st and 2nd. We're looking forward to exploring this year's theme, "how games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic" right along side our industry peers. 

Concept Art House's founder and CEO, James Zhang, has a long history of speaking at GamesBeat and this year is no exception. Along with Jim Ying, senior advisor at CV Capital, and Jazy Zhang, the former CFO at Giant Interactive Group, James will be discussing China's role in the global game ecosystem. Be sure to come listen in if you have Chinese markets in mind for your game. 

Check back soon if GamesBeat Summit isn't on your agenda next week. Dean Takahashi and GamesBeat Summit crew will almost certainly be posting videos of the panels, fireside chats, and keynotes.

Lets us know if you'll be there. We look forward to catching up!

GDC 2017 in Retrospect

There's nothing revolutionary in saying that GDC is a whirlwind. It does, however, happen to be a true statement. Last week, the Concept Art House team hosted over 90 meetings, explored the expo floor, sat in on numerous talks, and attended dozens of networking lunches, dinners and parties, all in the pursuit to connect more deeply with you, our clients and partners. 

Virtual Reality continued to have a strong presence at this year's GDC. Passes to VRDC sold out long before conference doors opened. VR show floor exhibits traded in the startup vibe of two years ago for a level of slickness that rivaled the console and game engine booths. With Sony announcing better than expected sales of PSVR units, an Oculus price drop, and Khronos Group's open standard VR API stack, VR seems poised to have another exciting year. 

Between the exorbitant cost of user acquisition and an increasingly crowded marketplace, mobile games prove difficult to excel in. Even given the challenges, exceptional developers continue to find success, and savvy funding arms are still hedging their bets on mobile gamers staying engaged. Futureplay and Gunslinger are two mobile games studios excelling during highly competitive times. Gunslinger's intricate mobile RPG and Futureplay's simply structured idle games are vastly different, but by looking to their success, we see that mobile markets are thriving and that mobile gamers continue to be hungry for new experiences. 

CAH for Injustice 2

CAH for Injustice 2

CAH for Injustice 2

The use of well-known IP is a trend that remains hot in the era of costly user acquisition. NetherRealm's Injustice 2 is riding high with D.C. Comics and Jam City is standing out with Family Guy The Quest for Stuff. Glu and Scopely are also doubling down on IP. (Dice with Ellen has been topping the charts for weeks.)

Every year GDC gives us a look at what's ahead, and with GDC 2017 behind us, we're excited to apply what we've learned to our own business and to help you excel with yours. 

Furby Connect: Flexible Marketing Art for Physical and Digital Play

Working on an up and coming mobile title,  forward-looking VR project or AAA console game is the norm around the Concept Art House office. Even with the diversity of projects we tackle on a daily basis, Hasbro threw us for a loop with a job a little out of the ordinary. Many of us remember the original Furby, the cuddly toy robot that "got smarter" as you played with it. Considering how many nightly newscasts touted stories of Furbys becoming fluent in second and third languages, it's safe to say that the original Furby was on many a Christmas list in 1999.

One of Concept Art House's marketing pieces for Hasbro's Furby Connect. 

Fast forward to the summer of 2015, Hasbro was readying the launch of Furby Connect. Like the original Furby, the more you play with Furby Connect the more it learns, but Furby Connect also wirelessly updates with kid-friendly pop-culture trivia and other fun surprises. With the Furby Connect World app, Furby Connect bridges the physical and digital worlds of play. If your Furby Connect becomes hungry, open up the app and feed them their favorite treat. Your Furby Connect needs to go to the bathroom?  Not a problem. The app has a solution for that too... 

Furby Connect going to the bathroom.

Given Furby Connect's upcoming presence on toy shelves and in app stores, Hasbro had a lot of branded material to tackle for launch. Concept Art House was happy to help create flexible art assets that could be turned into splash screens, marketing material, box art and lots more; all in Hasbro's signature Furby style. Take a look at our work right at the top of the iTunes app store. 

Concept Art House's marketing work on display in the iTunes store. 

And in Hasbro's official Furby Connect comercial. 

Furby Connect's launch was a big undertaking, but an exciting one. It brought up lots of nostalgia for '90s kids and introduced audiences everywhere to a new type of connected play. Here's CNET's and Gizmodo's review.

Hasbro turned to Concept Art House when they needed a large body of flexible marketing work. Together, our two teams combined our expertise to launch an innovative product and delight a whole new generation of Furby lovers. 

Our sketches, their paintings: how Boss Key leveraged CAH for LawBreakers

Packed with games industry legends, Boss Key Productions is a new game company hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina. There's a ton of excitement surrounding their first release, LawBreakers, and we’re pleased to say that Concept Art House had a hand in creating some choice character concepts.

Originally referred to as “The Brute”, Cronos was one of the first characters developed for LawBreakers and was a quasi-catalyst for what the game would eventually become. “He’s a tough guy who wears a mask,” was about all the direction Concept Art House's Art Director, KJ Yu, needed to start the first round of Cronos sketches.

First Concept Art House deliverable for the LawBreakers project - 7 possible directions for Cronos

With the initial direction selected (Boss Key chose option one) and with more of Cronos’ backstory fleshed out, KJ was able to layer additional details and nuance into the final deliverable.

Concept Art House's finalized Cronos sketch 

The Boss Key art team filled in the final details, added color and injected Concept Art House’s work with LawBreakers' signature attitude. Jay Hawkins' full-color Cronos painting and finalized “card” are truly stunning.

Boss Key relied on Concept Art House when they needed to ramp up production quickly. By working together and remaining flexible, our combined teams delivered a dynamic character that's sure to excite players for years to come.

Interested in knowing more about Boss Key's artistic process? Check out the vide below; cued up to where Jay Hawkins talks about Cronos. KJ’s sketches are even up on his computer screen during the interview.

From West to East: What studios must know before bringing their games to Asia

GamesBeat is a games industry event that never disappoints. This year’s conference was held in a small resort outside Los Angeles and - as always - drew some of the most influential executives and creatives in our industry. With fireside chats, panels and roundtable discussions, GamesBeat 2016 participants discussed the future and helped set the tone for ongoing gaming innovation.

Concept Art House’s own James Zhang was amongst the panelists on From West to East: What studios must know before bringing their games to Asia. The panel’s conversation started off strong diving into China’s ever changing gaming regulations, touched on the rise of mobile eSports, and progressed into the cultural differences driving player expectations and motivations. A quote from James seems to best sum up the conversation, “games are complicated, and China’s even more complicated.”

The full From West to East conversation and VentureBeat write up can be seen here, and even more GamesBeat 2016 footage here.

Concept Art House’s VR Work Shines at E3 2016

To all of you just getting back into the post E3 2016 swing of things, welcome back! The Concept Art House team had a great time in LA during this year’s festivities. An exceptional moment for us was getting to demo Ripcoil in Oculus’ E3 2016 show floor booth. 

Ripcoil is a Pong style, two person virtual reality game created by Sanzaru with visual concepts done by Concept Art House. The game is played standing up, with players navigating an expansive arena via hoverboard. Using the Oculus Touch motion controllers players throw, catch, and punch a virtual disk to score points and defend their goal in a one-on-one match. 

Concept Art House worked with the Sanzaru team to define the game’s art style, generated iterative sketches, and delivered final concept designs for Ripcoil’s characters, arena, and play disk. Below are just some of the character iterations we created for Sanzaru. 

First iteration of Ripcoil character sketches

Color rough of a Ripcoil character 

Color render of a Ripcoil character

Final Ripcoil character concept from four angles

It’s an honor to work on titles that are helping to define best practices for virtual reality game and visual design - and we aren't the only one's standing up and taking note of Sanzaru's upcoming VR title.

I Still Can’t Believe How This VR Game Tricked My Brain

Hands-On: ‘Ripcoil’ is Sci-Fi VR ‘Pong’ Meets Competitive ‘Tron’ Disc Throwing

Ripcoil is a Multiplayer Disc Battle for Oculus Touch, First Gameplay Videos Inside

Ripcoil is an Oculus Rift exclusive title, and will be available for consumers at launch of the Oculus Touch motion controllers. 

E3 2016 Bound

James, Sloane, Jason, Christina and Debra from Concept Art House's sales and business teams are headed to E3 2016. We'll be catching up with old friends, making new connections, and of course taking tabs on the latest art trends. Be sure to get in contact if you're in LA June 13th through 16th, we'd love to talk shop and to hear about your next project. 

We hope to see you there!