Designing Cute Cars

Balanced Worlds has recently announced Kart Buddies, our next game extending the Buddies brand. Please support us by "Liking" us on Facebook. We make casual-core 3D freemium games inspired by games we grew up playing. Albeit our games are on the kiddie side, but making games for (E)veryone is what we love to do.

Here are some concepts I did to get into the groove of things. Designing cars is a highly specialized skill and I have much to learn (as always). FYI, the cooper inspired one was started by my lead artist but I ended up doing some corrections then coloring it.

PS3 Move - Something a little more technical

Here is something for those who enjoy something a bit more technical. Early on, before the PS3 Move was released, the team I was working with were trying to come up with some crazy attachment peripheral ideas for the PS3 Move. I thought these ideas looked fun, simply plug and play, but I can imagine they'd be easier to lose than your TV remote. Fun but not a good idea:).

Ratchet and Clank Ideation Sketches - 11 years late but still worth the wait

I recently had the time to go through my piles of Ratchet and Clank ideation sketches so that I can digitally archive them. I know it's like 11 years late but scanning each one of them in would take a significant amount of time. So after a decade of waiting I figured now's as good a time as any to take pictures of them, now that digital cameras exist. Below is the final Clank design. He's been through a pretty rigorous iterative process to get to this point.

Check out the updated Ratchet and Clank section of my website to see how Clank came to be.You'll also see a bunch more concepts and ideation sketches that helped shape the tone of the franchise. These sketches have never been seen outside the walls of Insomniac Games, other than a few class lectures and some folks at Sony, no one else has ever seen these... my fault for keeping them all to myself:).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Cheers!

John

Bomb Buddies - New Character Designs!

Hey All,

Here are some new characters myself and my team are working on. Their 3D versions are looking real SWEET and I can't wait to try them out in-game. Our team's passionate at making games for everyone, so please swing by our Facebook page.

So here's what's New... We've got a Zombie Monkey and a Nurse character. More cool looking characters to come. Please let us know what characters you'd like to see in Bomb Buddies. The game's Free-2-Play and Free-2-Participate!:). So Common and Join the Fun!"

Bomb Buddies Pre-Alpha game footage!

We added a new Pre-Alpha video of our latest game Bomb Buddies. It's a Bomberman inspired game made by my team over at Balanced Worlds. We're hard at work polishing and fine tuning every aspect of the game for all to enjoy, so please tune into our Facebook page and hit "Like" if you'd like to know more about it. Closed Beta is coming soon and we wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the fun.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bomb-Buddies/251621804900970

Thanks for all your support!

John

It's the Year of the Dragon!

Happy Chinese New Year!

Not that I'm familiar with the Chinese horoscopes, I just figured I would use this 'flaming' opportunity to introduce to everyone what the team at Balance Worlds (where I work) is hard at work on. So with no further ado, I present to you...

"Bomb Buddies is a fast-paced 3d free-to-play game for Facebook, the web, IOS, and Android. Players team up with their friends to blast their foes in fun and frantic dynamic environments. Inspired by the absolute best games in the genre, and then propelled to new heights by Balanced Worlds Equilibrium Engine, Bomb Buddies gives players the highest quality, most social, explosively addicting experience in existence!"

Join us on Facebook and Learn more at www.balancedworlds.com.

Thank you for tuning in and help spread the word!

John

Underwater Stuff

Here's an underwater themed sketch I did just for kicks. My daughter's been watching Finding Nemo for the past few weeks, so I've been brainwashed by her and had the sudden urge to paint something underwater related.

Balanced Worlds new website is LIVE!

Hi Everyone!

Balanced Worlds' new website is up and we are expanding to the West!

Come check us out!

www.balancedworlds.com

Fat Princess Cake Animation

Here's an interactive cake logo I did for one of the Fat Princess' patches. It was done in collaboration with Plastic, the guys who brought you the awesome interactive Santa Monica logo for God of War III. This one, by the way, is also interactive. Additional props also goes to Matt Morton for coming up with the idea, and much props and kudos to myself for previz, modeling, texturing, rigging and animating:).

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese Bunny New Year!

After five months living in Beijing I finally get a chance to sit down and log in a quick update of what's been going on. The new year in China is literally not only a blast, but a series of EXPLOSIONS! A full week of non-stop industrial fireworks all around the city makes the 4th of July feel like a walk in the kiddy park.

Aside from this week of craziness, the past five months working in Beijing has been an adrenaline rush. The talent here is truly inspiring and I'm grateful to be a part of this new frontier. Work and life has been keeping me quite occupied, but I wanted to say hello to my blog and let it know that I still care and that I'm alive.

Hope all is well with everyone and have a great 2011!

John Wu

Post E3 - It's announced... finally.

Here are the games I'm currently working on... well the announced ones that is.

I started working on "Twisted Metal" (PS3) even before "Calling all Cars!" ever started, which was 2006. Next thing you know, a few years later, I'm back on the project helping out with the project's greenlight pitch and some concept work.


Below on "Sorcery" for the PS3, the game studio The Workshop is doing some pretty amazing things with the Playstation Move. My involvement for this project was to help with the greenlight pitch and provide art direction along the way.

CDA Summer 2010 Classes - Vehicles and Mechs

I'm back from a nice long vacation and ready to rock it out with a new group of hardcore concept art enthusiasts. Why hardcore you ask? It's a 10 week course taking place on Saturday nights! Classes start June 5th. Can't wait.

BAFTA Video Game Awards - flOwer PS3

"The visually stunning FLOWER won this year’s Artistic Achievement BAFTA. Lauded by the jury as a ‘triumph… that could only ever exist in the interactive medium’, the game takes players on a swooping journey through beautiful, dreamlike landscapes."

Check out the full list here:
http://www.bafta.org/press/video-game-award-winners-announced,90,SNS.html

I guess I must be doing something right:). That Game Company is already an insanely talented and innovative group, I'm just glad I got to help them with art direction from the publisher side... more like art guide early on the project than actually directing, really. Also, much props goes to George Weising for some heavy lifting on the design front.

Below is a sample of the stuff I did on the project. More at:
http://therealjohnwu.com/gallery_scea_projects.html

Class is over! Bitter Sweet...

Thanks to those who spent their Saturday nights attending my class. I had a blast and I hope to see you all some day.

On a side note, check out this sweet award I received from GameArtisans.org!!! Thanks Fred! It was for the image below. I guess I'll slowly get back into creating art. It's been too long I haven't done anything for myself.

Teaching Time - Vehicle and Mechs

Here's a new brochure for my class:

It's teaching time again. I'll be teaching the Vehicle and Mech classes this spring at the Concept Design Academy. For more information, check out the brochure below. There are a tone of great classes offered. I wish I can take them all. Droooool.

Fringe - Massive Dynamic set perspective issues

I noticed that the background image behind Massive dynamic's CEO's office was a little off. Here's why:

Random Speed Paintings

I haven't been doing much personal art lately and feel kind of guilty for not being "art productive. Here are some speed paintings that served their purpose in satisfying that artist inside of me... now back to charting the markets.

Nakatomi Plaza Photo Edit

Here's a Photoshopped Fox Tower (Nakatomi Plaza) done for my dad who's a huge fan of the movie Die Hard. He couldn't get a clear shot without being run over by cars, so I ended up editing out the lamp post on the left and repainted the stuff behind it. Props to those matte painters who happen to fool us practically every day.

Closed UNG - Great little Experiment and Lesson

In my previous post I mentionned that my breakeven was brought down to 10.95 because I wrote Nov 11 calls for 0.9 against my position. Since UNG tanked below the ascending trendline, the short call position dropped to 0.5, which would make a 0.4 profit on the short side. So I decided to buy back the Nov 11 calls to lock in some profits on the down side. So that made my new breakeven to 11.35.

So the long short of it was...
Bought at: 12.05
Short Nov 12 calls at: -0.50
Covered Nov 12 calls: +0.30
Short Nov 11 calls: -0.90
Covered Nov 11 calls: +0.40
----------
New Breakeven: 11.35

... Then I sold it at: 11.45... which makes 11.45 -11.35 = 0.10

So all that work for 10 cents:). But at least I didn't loose any money.

The moral of the story is that hedging your bet is better than not hedging at all. If I didn't write calls against my position or even bought puts, I would lost from 12.05 to 11.45. That's a 0.60 loss. Now imagine if you had 500 shares, that wouldn've been a loss of $300 in a few days. It's not the kinda risk I like to take.

In addition, another important lesson learned was that I should've picked an uptrending stock with decent yield. I guess that part completely slipped my mind.

Getting back to Blog and trading.

Decided to try out covered calls with UNG (Nat Gas). I know it's not the most popular ETF around but I figured I should be able to make money on the up and down side... whichever way the price goes.

Since the USD/CAD is showing more signs of weakness, I figured that I'd pick a commodity that's pulled back significantly on the monthly/weekly, but has strengthened a bit and could potentially entering a stage 1 basing. The price of UNG finally broke a long ass weekly descending channel. It by no means it will V bottom, but it does mean a fundamental shift in price geometry. Volume has also been heavy on the rise up leading the breakout (09/04/09 to 10/02/09), and at the current state it's still holding above the breakout point.

Here's my trade so far:

Bought UNG at: 12.05
Sold to Open Oct 12 Calls at: -0.5
Bought to Close Oct 12 Calls at: +0.3
Sold to Open Oct 11 Calls at: -0.9 (option expiration on the 11/16/09, 7 days away)
So my Break even is now at: 10.95

This position is meant for covered calls so I can generate income for the long run. Essentially I'll collect rent money until UNG gets shut down. Or, if I get striked out before options expiration, I still win. The goal is to keep selling calls against my position untill I get bored.