Concept Art House CEO James Zhang on helping Supercell make its Super Bowl advert

so first question is who are you what's your company what do you do okay James Aang CEO founder and company is concept art house & Spell gun two companies here excellent two companies yeah good stuff so what do you guys what do you guys do what was the thing that you know you're known for okay so let's just focus concept of our house for the show stock so we do really high in art graphics concept our 3d animation pre-production things like that okay and what kind of what kind of projects would even work on the past week we've done we've been doing this for about eight years likely go to pretty good reputation help shape maybe five six hundred games every year we come out to be you know 50 games or so some of the top ones let's see hey day my vegas by play studios punch against for cabanne dis except for spirit Lords war dragons for Pocket

Jen's Riot Games blizzard hasbro a lot so it's coming fairly well known good yeah yeah a few startups coming off camera that you were doing some of the work on the clash of clans title the was it the Super Bowl so we did not responsible for the game but on the superbowl ads those are our 3d models in there it's amazing so what was it what was it like what from an advert that you knew it was going to be oh it's cool it's cool data same cisco office went there they're statues to show us and the big challenge there was they gave us these little in-game models because they're only meant for the and we had to make these giant models out of them so it's like how do you treat hair is it like hair or is it like plastic or there freckles or how do you know so that was fun here's the challenge please yeah these are big challenges and and obviously the games industry is an ever-evolving chalice and how what trends are we seeing at the moment in the games industry well I feel like we're kind of lucky because we see many games about five or six months before they come out so it's really

interesting if I want to break it down there's maybe three big takeaways I'd say obviously games look a lot better and because of that they're more expensive so really approaching console like graphics so you know marvelous constant champion amazing all right we've got all the real-time lighting spagett abuse so really really good-looking our two is brands you know before I don't want to insult anybody here but if we play a game like Iron Man which for a console was not very good game yet so brands it really didn't matter you know but in mobile I can just lifts off Jurassic Park hobbit or dress world Hobbit fast and furious Kim Kardashian yep brands are really you know family guy simpsons these are all top 25 girls in games so i think brands are going to keep getting hotter and hotter and mobile and then the third trend i would say this whole east to west bridge you

know if you look at you know when to III a couple years ago and and if you go to you 35 years ago it's all like xbox sony nintendo you go there now there's a heavy heavy mobile presence and if you look at a company like kingsoft they recently had III boo their mobile game is 20 million dollars the chinese company coming to the Western market you know Nettie's they just have an office here those recent announcement Firefly game just got findings all these games are from China person we've made so much money in China now where else can we go with our games and the same thing from Western market so trying to be successful in China some of the season failed and then some are continually trying so there so there any other any particular visual styles you think work better you know out in store you know the reverse of that other underneath like is there a visual story professional market house yeah that's a great question i think the way to answer that would be if you take a look at the top grossing charts in china a few

familiar names pop line for its own boom beach clash of clans dungeon hunter five these games have popped up and yeah so if you look at just a style both games it seems like it seems like that blizzard games workshop really powerful fantasy IP seems to work really really well yeah and then something super cute seems to work well because everybody loves the I'm gonna go on a slight tangent here but everybody loves you Pixar films for example in the Western market well everybody loves those in China Korea Japan as well and the way they stylize their characters has made a huge impact in mobile right so you see companies like you know the clash of clans or or even like Ubisoft with like minion rush right really nice cute design 3d characters those seem to work really well for the Asian markets so when a company comes to you and says you know we want a visual starve it's going to do well in in the West End and in East is

there a unified style that you would go with or would you recommend that people will try different art styles for different different locales definitely want whatever style you pick you don't start off and get it right on the birds I you know the general direction you push them is there's a few basic rules that you try not to cross right like sci-fi doesn't work that well you know ultra realistic doesn't work that well in Asia so you kind of stay with me obviously if anything really natively specific like Cowboys aren't going to work super well in especially in China yeah so within that you know there's a there's a kind of a high fantasy look that's really popular look at like heroes charge look at dota you know look at League of Legends all really really popular China and if you go super cute you have a lot more different room to play you know anything along the dreamwork CGI Pixar look you're going to have really good luck with bright colors you know yeah so so just as a fun a little bit of speculation into the future yeah yeah

crystal ball out just for a moment yeah do you know you're absolutely maybe we see those do we see specifically the trend of visuals getting more impressive more costly yes do we see that as a trend that's going to continue on we hit a plateau in terms of the price of making making the visuals in a mobile game you got to believe it's going to keep getting better and better fidelity you know let's take a look at strategy games right so a lot of games were inspired by evony you know yeah yeah ebony and then that inspired kind of Kingdom Camelot and then it kind of spot valor and those are fairly gen one strategy games and then game war came out and you know it looked okay and the recently clash of kings came out complete with them but then here comes Inga with Donna Titans yeah and there's a city building mechanic that looks really amazing you know I can't speak for the rest of the game haven't played it but the visuals it's no longer locked

to the 45 degree angle everybody there's a buzz about it and I just have to think you know I play a lot of games myself and as a consumer if you look at Exhibit A Exhibit B assuming they both play exactly saying that one looks better you gotta go with one that looks better and I think companies like natural motion and Zynga have caught on to right because there's so many clones in the market you kind of have to you know I think company will keep the invest in it because these games just make so much money