Kian’s Blog

Here is a concept that I managed to wrap up this turkey weekend. I think i played too much Killzone 2… This bad boy is inspired by KZ2 and WW1 German army, especially the helmet and bayonet.

Did a fantasy environment piece the other day… learn a lot, especially lighting from Chris Lee. Hope to do more. Here is the final image, lighting thumbnails and character for fun…

I spent a couple of hours today repainting this guy. It was based of a sketch I did for a product pitch. I hated the superquick colorized version that is on my homepage. After a few experiment, this is the final one that I am most satisfied. Could spend more time on it, but I don’t intend to. Let me know what you think… Hope to do more next weekend.

a quick experimentation of techniques and design…

I did this today.

and some from way back…

I have decided to move my blog from Google to Wordpress. Seems they have more features and customization. I am still playing with it,  hope to make it cool!

Thanks!

I attended this inspiring workshop for the second time. It was really inspiring to meet and listen to Ian McCaig, Eric Tiemens, George Hull and more top notch concept guys from the film industry. I definitely learn new stuff and inpired to keep pushing myself to new level!

This time, I have the pleasure to share this workshop with my fellow colleague and also ex colleague from Petroglyph like Elie, Adam, Eric and Mike. We had fun and shared some great time together.

Carine Ng, my new baby girl was born on May 9th, 2008 at 11.05am. She and her mother, Ariel are both doing very well. So I am pretty much occupied with her for the moment.

All I can say is IWeb 08 is a life saver! I have completely reworked my site in record time, versus using Dreamweaver and manually add things. I have also added new pages and able to create a more dynamic layout. This software, like all Apple products is incredibly smart and well designed.

I have added new concept art and animation from the cancelled Universe at War expansion.

Its a sad news for the animation world, that Ollie Johnston has passed away on April 14 2008. He is the last surviving member of the Disney legendary animator group called The Nine Old Men. His animated film credits span from Snow White, Pinochio, Fantasia, Jungle Book and pretty much all the classics that we all remembered and loved. More info can be found in his shared website with Frank Thomas. Thank you very much for all the great inspiration and memories, sir!

There are so many big budget films coming from China these days. I just saw two recently. The Assembly is an epic war film based on the China civil war between the KMT and PLA. Plot summary here. Most reviewers compare this film’s visual to Saving Private Ryan, but today, which war film doesn’t? The production quality is top notch, and the violence is pretty gory. Fyi, the director of this film is Feng Xiaogang, who has a really good eye for visual art in his films. His other film, The Banquet(known as Legend of the Black Scorpion here in US) was a great feast for the eye. The sets are usually very elaborate and over the top.

The Warlords, is the new Jet Li epic film. This is not a martial art film like Hero(which is still the best Jet Li film, imo), but tells a pretty intense story of a general’s ambition to conquer the divided China during the Qing Dynasty. More info here.

I want to also express my opinion here regarding the Asian cinema. Although we are seeing a big surge of epic films coming from China, not many is trying to push the art of film making. Most of them are very similar, only repackaged with a different story. Don’t get me wrong, these are all solid films that are well told, produced to their finest quality.

I just hope that we won’t get flooded with too many war epic tales or gangster stories over and over again. I want to see more attempt at breakthrough films that define new genre and standard of film. Korean cinema however, has been very creative and aggressive at diverging their film industry. Old Boy, The Host, Tae Guk Gi are all very different. I think as soon as China films start to explore new frontier, we will see some very refreshing ideas that could challenge the best in Hollywood. Meanwhile they are working really hard to shape the film industry of the new China!