Jordan Grimmer and Ben Thompson

Jordan Grimmer
Biography:
    Jordan Grimmer is a 2D Artist at Kobojo on Dudee, graduate from University of Teesside.
Websize:
Personal homepage: http://www.jordangrimmer.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordan_grimmer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordangrimmerart
Kobojo: http://www.kobojo.com/

Work Involved:
• Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey (July 2014), currently working as a 2D environment artist on Kobojo's JRPG 'Zodiac'. Winner of "Editor's Choice" award on the App Store.
• "Prospect" Feature Film (June 2014), Contributed concept art towards film.
• Hex: Shards of Fate (April 2014), Contributed environment touch-up and original environment artwork to in-game menu and splash screens.
• Of Falls and Angela (March 2014), Book cover illustration.
• Brave the Elements Card Game (February 2014), Sole illustrator.
• NEO Scavenger (October 2013), Contributed environmental pieces to the NEO Scavenger PC game.
• City of Burning Shadows (October 2013), Book cover illustration.
• Rail City Chronicles (January 2013), Book cover illustration.
• Un-announced iOS Game (August 2012), Contracted to create fully fleshed out level design documents for two separate in-game levels, including level schematics, game play elements, enemy encounters, asset lists, and style guides; presented as a deliverable document to customer. Basic BSP block out of the levels in UDK to scale with provided assets.
• Wreck-Age Tabletop Game (February 2012), Contributed concept art.
     
    ZOdiac: Orcanon Odyssey is the best 2D fantasy RPG iPad Pro paid game in 2015. They will apply new chapters for paying player regularly, Publish on IOS, Ps Vita and PC. Beautiful scenes, depth colour and layered 2D freehand lines combined a RPG full of Japanese fantasy. Whether the stories, game design or art, it showed us a high level. With the developing of technology, the images of Jordan’s drawing can be vividly reflection and high quality of images in the game. This work also makes Kobojo to be the first European Union which made a Japanese RPG game.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zodiac-orcanon-odyssey/id933199580?mt=8
     
Hex: Shards of Fate:  A fantasy card game with beautiful pictures and easy to play. This game used dark fantasy style to its pictures.
https://en.hex.gameforge.com/

Brave the Elements: A card of Magic and Gathering the most famous fantasy card game.
http://shop.tcgplayer.com/magic/magic-2014-m14/brave-the-elements
     
NEO Scavenger: A survival game in end of the world with retro pictures. Players wearing a gown must find all of useful materials in the wildness, and fight against other danger in the ruin world.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/
    These works of art he is involved usually are full of fantasy and beyond life. This required a wealth of imagination and creativity. At the same time, the types of these works are quite different; this reflects his strong conversation skills.
Job content:
For a 2D Artist, Jordan need to select the suitable elements according to the requirements and design some ideas with game atmosphere. For example: maps, structure, units, light and so on. So he needs to have these abilities for support his job; a Vast stores of knowledge and rich imagination from read and life; a very professional painting basic skills (such as great sense of line and form, colour and lighting, human anatomy, and both character and environmental design, in a variety of styles); a good communication and expression ability; a proficiency in the use of 2D software (Photoshop and Corel Painter etc.). He also needs to be aware of the 3D software (ZBrush and Maya) to help him for communication with other roles.
http://jordangrimmer.deviantart.com/art/The-Gates-of-Amhrak-449844346
The Gates of Amhrak
This is a picture full of religious elements from Jordan; it is named “The Gate of Amhrak”. First Jordan grasps the elements and structure to make it to be a gate. For it is a fantasy theme, he found the suitable part not only from life but also to the rich knowledge, so he chose devils and Death to emphasize the heavy atmosphere. And show it through the light and vision and even the slightest movements of the characters. Finally he finished the concept art: A person wearing the red cloak is walking to the demoniac door.


Present situation and future development of kobojo:
Kobojo headquarters is located in Paris, and there are offices in Scotland and London. And there is a team in Kyoto and Tokyo. Its team members also participated in these famous RPG games as final fantasy 7 and final fantasy tactics. At present, the company is in the development of a new mobile game Zodiac. In addition to the lead cast Capital Partners Oxford, investors of A round Vision Endeavour and the Scotland investment bank also participated in the B round of financing. About this year, Kobojo received a $7 million B round of financing by Capital Partners Oxford and other companies.
    Mario Rizzo, CEO of Kobojo said that The development of Kobojo has gone beyond the field of social entertainment game, and are creating world class AAA games, We have the world's top talents. The current round of financing is very important, it can allow us to develop faster to provide more excellent RPG gaming experience for the global players.
    Holman Martin, investor of Oxford Capital Partners said that Kobojo is a new star in the mobile game. Mobile game market is very large, there’s no restriction of the geographical location for it. In the Americas, Europe and Asia, it have been successful. The studio is very experienced in the field of game research and development. In particular, the development of mobile games and core games, making the company's prospects is very good in the future.
    Investors are interested in the field of mergers and acquisitions in the field of mobile games, in particular those companies which is able to demonstrate the real intending to innovate. Kobojo have very obvious advantage in touch screen device and multiplayer game technology, we expect there will be more interested in the future by investors.
    But they hope to find a more creative approach to improve the company's game downloads and player retention rate. They don't want to rely too much on the user access behavior, because it is easy to bring the user to lose, and they need to invest a lot of money every month for it.
    At the present stage, single user installation costs are close to run away on mobile application. They have to find a solution to gradually reduce the dependence on third party organizations and advertising networks.

http://www.oxcp.com/investment-news/oxford-capital-completes-investment-in-games-developer-kobojo
http://www.develop-online.net/news/zodiac-developer-kobojo-raises-7m/0206923


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Ben Thompson
Biography
    Ben Thompson is a lead artist at Billzard for Hearthstone, work in American California. Graduated from Laguna College of Art and Design. Achieve distinction: Society of Illustrators Los Angeles award winner 1998, Eagle Scout with five palms.
Personal homepage: http://www.benthompsonart.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/benthompsonart
Billzard: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/

Work Involved:
 
Hearthstone：Heroes of Warcraft
    “Hearthstone：Heroes of Warcraft” is a card game published on PC, Android and IOS by Billzard Entertainment. The story background based on the series of Warcraft, players can choose one of the nine heroes to fight by casting spells or summoning followers.
    Ben created the atmosphere of the game very accurately through the grasp of this game; all players or watches are friendly and open atmosphere. This is very fit for the theme of Hearthstone. This Orc may be playing as Jaina, but he won’t tell his people. Gnome is using maybe a huge character, and clinging to a fantasy.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/
Job content:
Lead artist, Ben Thompson is responsible for determining the overall appearance of the game and atmosphere, guarantee a range of requirements that others must follow. So he needs to have good communication skills and clever diplomacy to decide art style and to ensure the interest of the teams understanding of game art technologies, a thorough grounding in art, drawing and painting, a Management-knowledge in leadership technique and coordination.
Skills to supervise and manage other teammates’ and work in hearthstone, First they need to understand the expression and version of the game. Then spend a few months from design, gathering game’s materials. Artists according to the description and requirements, provide many schemes and great ideas.
He also needs to guarantee the tendency of art; make sure the art style would be different from Warcraft by the level of 20%-30%, because they need to make Hearthstone more of an affinity to the player. The core of its game mode is foolproof, so requires that the expressional pictures are more abundant, normally Ben creates them with other teammates according of their actual needs.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/13023802/hearthside-chat-art-with-ben-thompson-2-25-2014
  
    In following up development of the game, you decide the line and requirements to extend and update contents, games must give players different choices in diversity. For example Jaina in Heathstoneis the late setting of Warcraft; she rose to revenge for her people, at the same time she is even a kind alliance human wizard, Medivh is a bit dark and a negative role. These different characters are the factors for enrich games.
http://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Ben_Thompso
Present situation and future development:
As an extended CCG card game, the recent action of Hearthstone is extended melee mode and TGT content. Whenever there is a new content, the hearthstone is eye-catching. The number of players and tournament density are also commendable, Server frequent downtime and dropping from global can be viewing the number of Hearthstone players really cannot be belittled.
    Whereas, “Invariable” is an old problem of Hearthstone; the effect of TGT on Naxx and GVG is very limited. It is not a good thing when the game routine is too good to guess. The Melee mode of Hearthstone gives a lot of fun to the player, but the fresh sense for them it is really unstable. E.g. like the bonus package, there is no subsequent reward on Melee mode. It looks like players never get any award what's so ever . I think that’s why the player lacks interest.
If the game environment is stable but does not have any eye-catching new ideas in three seasons, Players will lose patience with the game. E.g. they make players wait 31 new cards and 7 months later. So the amount of access is significantly decreased than last March.
Although the game is imperfect, it is still undeniable artworks from the largest studio productions. Every card is designed by a famous painter in the game, in total more than 400 beautiful card illustrations with World of Warcraft’s classical characters. Scene reduction also is "Warcraft" fans most relish topic. Each card has a wealth of attack animations, magic effects is very graceful, easily makes people get immersed in the fierce battle.
About the BGMs, they have perfectly constructed a leisure game atmosphere. Summoned minions release the magic and minions attack and death all has a corresponding dialogue dubbing, even players can recognize the different character by the ears. Compared to most of the mobile game to ignore the voice sound, Hearthstone is an unquestionable work.
Beyond all that, Blizzard also announced they will add new content in future (E.g. game mode and marketing strategy). This news makes so many Players anxiously expect Hearthstone’s update. We hope this game could perfect gradually soon, otherwise they will lose its customers.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/08/11/the-art-and-artists-of-hearthstone
http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3528779