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If you're not familiar with the "Last Man Standing" deal put on by ConceptArt.org, check out my February post. I made it into the 2nd round of the friendly competition. The theme this time was 'outbreak'. I didn't want to do zombies at first, because I thought it cliche, but I thought this idea was fun enough to tolerate a pile of zombies. Click the picture to check out the full piece...
posted by horia at 04:28 AM -
I've just posted a couple of pieces I dug up at work. Above is an unused warrior armor cocept for Guild Wars. I actually drew it pretty fast, but when I found it again, I had to fix a couple things that were bothering me about it. The sketches below are my rough comps for the loading screen I did for one of the levels in the GW mission pack. The ones I like most were too action oriented to be a loading screen. I ended up going with the one on the bottom left because it tells the story it needs to clearly, and it had a sense of suspense which is apropriate for a loadscreen. When I had to draw the lore pages for that mission's epilogue, the top right piece was a perfect fit for what the writers had in mind for one of the six panels, so I was a pretty quick paint over to do. Today's lesson...recycle!
posted by horia at 10:15 AM -
Last Man Standing is a ConceptArt.org illustration competition. It's a fun way for everyone on the forum to interact and match their stuff against their online comrades. This is the 3rd time the competition has been put on, here's how it works: you get devided up randomly in groups of five contestants. A theme is assigned for the round, and everyone has to send their piece to the moderator to be posted on the forum on the due date. Then the judges declare a winner for each group, and those individuals move on to the next round where they compete against other winners from the last round. The groups get smaller and smaller and the competition more and more intense, until, finally, there's only one, man, standing.... or woman... Anyways, check out my piece for round one, it got me into the second round. Wish me luck on my next piece! posted by horia at 12:54 PM -
If you've somehow seen my site but haven't visited Sketchwich, do so now! Its a blog where all my ArenaNet homies post personal work for critique and friendly competition. It's honestly the most inspirational site I visit. Seeing super rad life drawings or digital illos, cartoon sketches and oil painting by the guys you sit next to everyday, really brings it home. Here’s a speedy illo I did for the ‘futuristic’ weekly topic. I made myself finish it in one sitting so I wouldn’t’ drag it on and then decide I didn’t like it. Check it out, but more importantly go check out the rad blog!
posted by horia at 12:41 PM -
As of today, I've worked at Arena.Net for FOUR years! It's been an amazing place to work, mainly because of the friends I've made there, and the strong sense of artistic community we've established and maintained.  I've added a few new pieces from the recently released Guild Wars Mission Pack. Aside from storyboarding and directing the cinematics, I painted the loading screen for one of the four new missions, did six small illustrations for an in-game lore booklet, and got to design what the Ninja Assassin Clan looked like!
Also, if you've not already, do yourself a favor and pick up Valve's Orange Box! Besides the full collection of the genuinely fun and great looking Half-Life 2 games, OB includes Portal, a really neat first-person-view puzzle game developed by DigiPen students, and one my favorite looking games of all time, Team Fortress 2! TF2 was art-directed by Moby Francke, and executed by Valve's strongest artistic team. It's beyond refreshing to see such a rad looking game do so well amongst its rehash-of-a-rehash competitors. Most importantly though, HL2: Episode 2 still uses props I made for the original game, so I can put it on my resume :) posted by horia at 10:20 AM -
At 12:01am on Friday, August 31st, Guild Wars: Eye of the North went live! This is our fourth game, an expansion to the previous Guild Wars titles, Prophecies. , Factions. and Nightfall. . I did a few environmental props and a couple concepts toward the beginning of the project, but mainly I focused on storyboarding and helping implement the in-game cut scenes. Our tools and technical limitations were quite a hurdle to overcome, but I feel the scenes we really had time to polish look great regardless. Overall, I really think this is Arena.Net's best looking game so far, on all fronts. I’ll take this opportunity to reiterate what a pleasure and honor it is working with such an amazingly tallented stable of artists and friends.  I’ve posted three new paintings in the “work” section of my gallery, and you can check out the in-game trailer I directed by clicking here. posted by horia at 09:48 PM -
This weekend the Penny Arcade Expo was held in Seattle for the first time. I was there for portfolio reviews at the ArenaNet booth. I also spoke on the PAX panel "Visual Design in Games Today." It was a lot of fun answering questions from people starting out in the industry, looking for tips and trying to find out what the art side of the game biz is all about. It was my privilege to sit in with Dan Paladin (the dude who drew/animated everything on Alien Hominid), Art We (Art Director on the new Penny Arcade game) and Paul Whitehead (Environment Lead at Suckerpunch). All the dudes were incredibly nice and I'm very lucky to have met them. I was also glad to hear that we were all basically on the same page, makes me feel like my eight plus years in the industry are beginning to show.
After the panel I reviewed portfolios at the Arena booth. The general buzz about the new Guild Wars game is really good, which is great to hear. Other than that, I saw hardcore PC gamers, LARPers, cos-players, and table-top dungeon crawlers gettin’ their nerd on. Good fun. posted by horia at 04:08 AM -
With a big thanks to Kevin at Down Periscope Design for coding my page, I'm glad to present my new portfolio site!  posted by horia at 01:06 AM -
Check out Down Periscope Design -graphic designer and illustratorKevin Dart's new web design shop. He'll hook your lame ass up with a killer site for straight up good rates. Give em a peep-
posted by horia at 02:53 AM -
My best bud's at Fleet Street Scandal have put out a mega rad book that features their collected works. The guys have been selling prints of their vibrant and dynamic artwork for a while now and have built quite a trove of amazing pieces. Do yourself and a friend a favor and go buy a couple right now!
posted by horia at 12:09 AM -
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Last Man Standing [round 2]
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