Tag Archives: Entertainment Design

Change/Makers alumni profile video: Entertainment Designer James Paick on designing a life of play

With its bookcases full of toys, games, models and monstrous action figures, the lobby of Scribble Pad Studios could double as a Comic-Con booth or a teenager’s fantasy boy-cave. Not far off is a large room full of people mouse-clicking in front of monitors containing the dark landscapes of video games. While this kind of activity might get a person in trouble at most other jobs, the work is all about play at this entertainment design firm, founded by Art Center Alum James Paick (Illustration, ’04),  specializing in character, creature and concept design for video games, TV and film.

Paick, who founded Scribble Pad in 2008, didn’t attend Art Center with the intention of becoming an entertainment designer. In fact, the Entertainment Design department didn’t yet exist back then. But in the years since, it has become one of Art Center’s most sought-after degrees, which has inspired the launch of the new Character Animation track in Entertainment Design, now accepting applications for Fall 2015.

Ultimately, it was Paick’s passion for popular culture and science fiction informed his illustration work, which he leveraged to land work in various video game design firms before he set out on his own and launched his own business. There’s a lot to admire about James Paick (the subject of our newest Change/Makers alumni video profile) who now spends his days creating fantasmagorical alternate realities and conjuring the creepy creatures who inhabit them. Check out the above video and the Q&A below to learn more about his creative inspirations and the wisdom behind making work out of the booming business of play.

Continue reading →

The future is spectacularly now in Product alum Edward Eyth’s concept art for “Back to the Future Part II”

Screen Shot 2015-01-23 at 11.21.58 AM

Today, Buzzfeed published the following photo essay, featuring Product Design alum Edward Eyth’s “Back to the Future Part II” concept art. The piece offers a prescient glimpse at the 1988 sketches of the futuristic world of 2015. What better way to kick off the weekend than by looking back at an Art Center alum’s vision for the future that is now.

Continue reading →

On fueling creativity with kindness (not Red Bull): Student Leadership Award winner Fernando Olmedo

Entertainment Design student Fernando Daniel Olmedo won the Fall 2014 Student Leadership Award.

Student Leadership Award winner Fernando Olmedo. Photo: Chuck Spangler

“Something I always made a point to do as I walked through the halls was to smile,” said graduating Entertainment Design student Fernando Olmedo, during his acceptance speech at this past Saturday’s graduation ceremony for Art Center’s annual Student Leadership Award. “No matter how tired I was, I made sure that I looked in people’s eyes and smiled.”

“And something pretty remarkable always happened when I smiled,” continued Olmedo, who was selected among several candidates for the Fall 2014 award by a committee of students, faculty and staff. “For this brief moment, there was this connection, this energy, this spark that came from somewhere deep inside … It worked better than coffee and Red Bull.”

Continue reading →

Art Center in Asia: Create Change Design Forums at Beijing Design Week

Art Center's Mark Breitenberg welcomes participants to the 2014 Create Change Forums in Beijing.

Art Center’s Mark Breitenberg welcomes participants to the 2014 Create Change Forums in Beijing.

In the latest issue of Dot magazine, we take a look at Art Center College of Design’s long history—nearly 60 years—of connections to Asia. Take a trip with us through time and across the Pacific as we look back in history and forward to the future. Today’s focus: the College’s growing relationship with China.

Whether it’s the impending arrival of China-made cars to the U.S. market or Film alumnus Michael Bay’s (BFA 88) Transformers: Age of Extinction breaking the $300 million barrier at the Chinese box office, these days all eyes are on the Middle Kingdom. And Art Center is no exception.

Just ask Mark Breitenberg, special assistant to the College’s president, who led the Create Change Design Forums, a three-day series of presentations and workshops which took place in China this September during Beijing Design Week.

At the packed forums, co-organized by Graduate Industrial Design (Grad ID) alumnus Lan Yu and sponsored by her company, Art Center leaders and alumni met with employees from 70 Chinese companies to introduce them to Art Center’s methodologies and creative processes.

Continue reading →

Entertainment Design alum Edmund Liang is shaping the future one video game at a time

Edmund Liang

Entertainment Design alum Edmund Liang

Edmund Liang is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in transmedia narratives and multi-sensory spatial experiences. Last fall, Liang was named one of Complex Art+Design’s 25 People Shaping the Future of Design and his projects—video games, interactive media, film and animation, motion graphics, photography—are as eclectic as his client list, which includes the Famous Group, Jim Henson Company, Dreamworks, Psyop, Imaginary Forces and Logan.tv.

A self-described “provocateur” in his field, Liang was once an “art kid” in high school who had no idea that there was a world of design. “I didn’t know that the keyboard in front of me was designed,” he recalled. “I didn’t know that the video games I was playing had people behind them.”

By the time it came time to consider colleges, Liang was first attracted to Art Center’s Illustration program and touring the campus prior to enrolling, he said, “I got the impression that it was a very rigorous and serious school. That’s what I wanted.”

edmund_liang_006

Artwork by Edmund Liang

Continue reading →

Captain America soars at the box office, thanks in part to Tim Flattery’s Helicarrier and Quinjet designs

Tim Flattery Captain America 6 of 7

Art by Tim Flattery for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier flexed and flaunted its superpowers at the box office during its opening weekend, earning more than $300 million worldwide. With those kind of numbers, it clearly wasn’t just fanboys (and girls) vying for an early glimpse at Hollywood’s latest super-sized comic book adaptation.

This widespread embrace was particularly gratifying to Art Center Entertainment Design Chair (and resident alpha fan), Tim Flattery, who collaborated with production designer Peter Wenham on designs for the movie’s spectacular Helicarrier (yes, an airborne aircraft carrier) and the Quinjet. “I love working on comic book movies,” Flattery said.  “I’ve always been a fan and read comics as a kid.” Continue reading →

Entertainment design students restore Halloween’s fading fear-factor

Let’s face it: Halloween has become scarier than ever before. Unfortunately, that’s happened for reasons that have little to do with the ghosts, goblins and the great gobs of candy that began as Celtic custom marking the death and rebirth signifying the of the harvest season. Over the past decade or so, Halloween has been co-opted by profit-hungry pop-up superstores hawking disposable “Scream” masks and spooktacular inflatable lawn decorations to consumers hoping to purchase a more sanitized version of the collective cultural experience.

But as Halloween has become more homogenized and commodified, there are fewer surprises that await revelers, leaving a major deficit of the kind of adrenaline-spiking thrills that have defined the mythic tales that have defined the holiday, like Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Edgar Allen Poe’s the “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In other words, all treats and no tricks makes Halloween a very dull holiday.

It’s time fright back into Halloween night. With that in mind, we’ve resisted the temptation to celebrate the proliferation of clever (but defiantly un-scary) costumes referencing politics (the debt ceiling) or pop culture (“Breaking Bad”). Instead, we’ve plumbed the deepest recesses of the creative firepower on hand at Art Center for the kind of mythically unsettling visual storytelling that evokes a low-grade version of the terror that follows a night of spooky campfire stories. The above slideshow is a curated selection of images by current and former Entertainment Design students, whose work often involves conjuring the reference points for otherworldy cinematic sci-fi fantasias. You’ll also find the artist’s explanation for the ideas informing the dark and twisted images which capable of sending the fragile among us sprinting to safety. Care to join us in our effort to re-haunt All Hallow’s Eve?

Student profile: Christina Yang’s Art Center coming of age story

Self portrait by Christina Yang

Drawing of Christina Yang at work by Madeline Ocampo

Christina Yang began attending Art Center when she was 12 years old. But hold off on calling her the Doogie Howser of the design world. She simply followed her passion for visual arts through every phase of the College’s curriculum, from its public programing for underage artists to full-fledged matriculation.

She began her journey with Art Center for Kids courses. She then continued her studies in the College’s Saturday High program while attending Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) before being recently accepted as a full-time student in the degree program. She starts Fall 2013 as an Entertainment Design major.

Dotted Line: Why did you choose Art Center?

Christina Yang: My father went to Art Center, so attending the Kids program felt natural. But I also kept returning chiefly because of the high quality instruction I received. While other children’s programs were rather loose and directionless, Art Center instructors taught me core skills with a great deal of structure balanced with encouragement. My age never mattered. The teachers were never condescending. We had the privilege of being exposed to Art Center’s disciplined, focused, rich learning environment, which helped us begin to take ourselves seriously as artists.

Continue reading →

Entertainment Design Presents The Intern Show

Join Entertainment Design students and Chair of Entertainment Design Tim Flattery at the Intern Show on Sun., April 7, 12–5 p.m. on the Hillside Campus.

Entertainment Design

Entertainment Design concept art

The event, open to employers in the film, animation, theme park and gaming industries, showcases second- through seventh-term students looking for summer internships. Students will display environment, character, hardware and story concepts, plus portfolios and sculptures.

Internships are an integral part of the educational experience, and those offered to students in Entertainment Design can lead to lucrative work. Production designers, art directors and other recruiters consistently come to scope out the talent. In the past, students have earned internships at Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Blizzard, Mirada, 343, Riot Games, Thinkwell and more.

Entertainment Design student Brandon Liao was in his fourth term during last year’s Intern Show when he had the opportunity to talk with an art producer from Riot Games. She was so impressed by his character designs that it led to an internship where he created new champions and costumes, or “skins,” for the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game “League of Legends.” He’s now working at Riot part time. “It’s actually really fun, because every assignment you’re doing something completely different,” said Liao.

RSVP by emailing maritza.herrera@artcenter.edu, or calling 626.396.2464.