Rokkan

2K Games and Rokkan are named finalists for Mafia2Game.com, the hit sequel to the award winning game Mafia, set in the dark and sinister world of organized crime. Mafia2Game.com is up for Best Website for a Product at  2011 M16 Game Marketing Awards. Winners will be announced on April 7, 2011 at the Awards Show in San Francisco.

Congratulations to 2K Czech, 2K Games Family along with our team here at Rokkan for another successful and well-made collaboration.

Rokkan and 2K Games have had a long successful track record in creating cinematic, story driven sites for the gaming community. We’re pleased and honored to announce that BioShock2game.com has been named a finalist in the Motion Graphics category at this year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. We’re more than excited be featured alongside some of the best interactive work out there and BioShock2game.com is by far one of the most successful experiences we’ve launched amongst our collaborations with 2K Games. The site was a perfect opportunity for our in-house 3D and motion graphics team to stretch their capabilities and if you haven’t played the game already, you’ll get a good idea of what the game is like when you experience the site for yourself.

Best of luck to the rest of the finalists and see you in Austin! For more insight on the project, check out the case study here.

 

Praised as a visually arresting site with a strong grasp of the brand personality, the official2KGames.com is the result of a long-standing and growing relationship between our two companies. With over five years of collaboration and more to come, the making of 2KGames.com was a perfect opportunity for both 2K and Rokkan to flex our gamer muscles. Congratulations to both 2K Games and our team here at Rokkan for another Pixel Award and another job well done!

Finalists for the 2010 OMMA Awards were announced this week with ROKKAN representing two major projects, 2K Games and Virgin America v2.0. The OMMA Awards celebrate the year’s best in online media, marketing and advertising through three disciplines across 77 separate categories.

2KGames.com was nominated as a finalist in the Entertainment Gaming category for Website Excellence. Featured in OMMA Magazine’s Creative Roundtable this past June, 2KGames.com was praised as a visually arresting site, considerably ahead of what most gaming publishers are doing with community and social networking. The site serves as a portal for 2K’s growing line of impressive products as well as a destination for gamers to discuss the latest news and hot topics. ROKKAN and 2K Games have worked together on several projects including the award winning game, BioShock.

Also in the race is VirginAmerica v2.0 under Travel and Tourism for Website Excellence. This is ROKKAN’s second recognition for Virgin America by OMMA, running against other travel and tourism websites such as, iCrossing’s Vail.com and Level Studios’ San Luis Obispo Vacations. Virgin America continues to push the envelope in airline booking, creating a minimalistic, altruistic approach to traveling and purchasing tickets. All of the information you need without any of the fuss.

The OMMA Awards is now open for voting, allowing MediaPost members to choose up to three entries for the Member’s Choice Award. To vote for ROKKAN, you can easily sign up and cast your ballot here.  Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on September 27, 2010 at the Hilton New York.

As promised here’s a closer look at the creation of the Civ 5 front of box. We had about a month and a half from concept to completion.

On the Rokkan side there was myself, Charles (ECD/Lead Artist) and Matt Burniston (CG Director). On the other side we had creative and product leads from 2K, and Trailer Park who created the leader renders. Rokkan’s job was to come up with concepts and composite the final illustration.

Structurally 2K decided the box would be an O-card – PC game boxes that open up in the front. Instead of creating different panels for each part of the box, we wanted to create a seamless piece (front to back) that would encapsulate the history of mankind from medieval times, through industrialization, and finally to the space race. For lack of a better term, this had to be epic!

We started off with a ton of sketches showing a mash-up of warfare between different regions and units from various periods of time. Civ box covers have a history of showing these types of period piece mash-ups, and everyone agreed on the inclusion of this motif for Civ 5. Also, Rokkan previously worked on the box for Civ 4, so we had a deep understanding of the brand. Here’s a shot of the final storyboard that was approved prior to the style frame.

Here’s the final hi-res spread that we created after the style frame. (click the images for a closer look)

The production pipeline was divided into 3 portions. All of the terrain (ground trees, etc) were created in 3D using Luxology Modo. We also created Colossus of Rhodes and some of the other structures in 3D. The units in battle were actual in-game models that we re-textured and rendered in hi-res for print use. The pyramids, city, battleship, water, sky, etc. were photo-composited. The leaders were created by Trailer Park – a combination of photography and 3D. The final art was then assembled, retouched and composited in good ‘ol PS.

You can see from the spread that the location of the Civ and publisher logos denotes the FOB (Front of Box).

So how did we end up with the actual front of box (at the top of the post), was from focus group testing that the 2K team had done (a typical aspect of box art creation). Without divulging too much info, 2K got some really good consumer feedback which resulted in the removal of the leaders on the front of box to the more action-packed scene of the final cover (courtesy of 2K’s creative team). Either way, we’re happy with both of the executions. Our original leader packed artwork is being used for the website (also a Rokkan creation) and other avenues of marketing such as the Civ 5 booth at GamesCom.

This was a great piece to work on and it’s a throwback to my days at Acclaim Entertainment doing concept sketches. We had loads of fun creating the piece and hope there’s more in the future. Let us know what you think of the final cover vs. the original cover and hope this post was insightful!

Rokkan’s Civ 5 artwork was blown up to gigantic proportion at 2K’s GamesCom booth this week. We’re super excited to finally see the artwork printed and super large no less. Shout outs go to the guys at 2K for letting us work on the illustration for such an awesome game and to Trailer Park for helping with the renders of the leaders. Stay tuned for a follow up post on the creation of the illustration and how we resolved on the final box art. Hit the image for a larger view.

Also, if you gamers haven’t already done so…check out the Mafia II demo on XBL and PSN. Not only is it an awesome demo, you’ll also get to see our intro animation prior to the start screen. Fresh.

OMMA magazine’s latest Creative Roundtable discusses/critiques our recent launch of 2Kgames.com. It’s a pretty good read…mostly because we didn’t get completely ripped to shreds! Big ups to the creative panel for their helpful insight: The SuperGroup’s Gabe Aldridge; RED Interactive Agency’s Peter Novosel; and Chris Remo, editor-at-large at gamasutra.com.

Read the Full Article on the OMMA Website

We’ve worked with 2K games for quite some time now and finally got the opportunity to create something for them to be used in-game. There’s no real industry word to describe this piece. Essentially it’s the logo animation that you see when you first start up a game. More after the jump.

We worked on the Mafia II website and were asked to create the logo animation for the game itself. The style of the animation was based on film noir (black and white film/photography), which in many cases is high contrast with a feeling of mystery. We came up with a few concepts and netted out with something a little more “familiar” for lack of a better word.

Here are some of the concept/style boards:

Concept 01 - Made Man

I sat down with Luke at Kotaku.com to discuss the state of game box art and game branding. Aside from the article turning out to be a great discussion topic with almost 50,000 views and a ton of comments…the thing that stands out the most is the rather large press photo. Normally press photos are thumbnails, but this one is a beast!

+ See Charles’ Press Photo