3D Primary Judges
In alphabetical order by first name first
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Alex "brutikong" Velazquez - Illustrator/Digital Sculptor - id software |
Alex, a fourth place world champion in Dominance War III - 3D, is an industry veteran with over a decade of experience in game art. He has worked for studios within Activision and THQ, such as Raven, Volition, and Vicarious Visions, and spent some time freelancing. Having been very active in many forums, contests and challenges for quite awhile, not much has been heard from him since he was called up for duty by ID software. Currently hard at work on the upcoming DOOM 4, he bides his time, preparing to unleash the next generation of hellish creatures on our world. |
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Fredrik Hultqvist - Dominance War - Founder |
Fredrik Hultqvist, an accomplished game artist with a background in Illustration and Design, currently runs as founder, editor, admin, site content creator and organizer of the Dominance War Series (dominancewar.com), GameArtisans.org and UnearthlyChallenge.com. With various works and DW tales published in magazines across the world, Fredrik enjoys helping artists everywhere with his wacky ideas and inspired creations. Although Fredrik cannot act as a final judge in Dominance War, he helps coordinate the primary judging phase for each and all events. |
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Joe Mirabello - Senior Environment Artist – 38 Studios |
Joe Mirabello is currently a senior environment artist at 38 Studios. Over the past half decade Joe Mirabello has been able to wear many hats in the industry, focusing primarily as an environment artist, but also creating occasional character art, concept art, and helping out as a technical artist. He's contributed work to indie games, mass market novels, military/government contractors and Smithsonian documentaries. Throughout his career he's tried to give back as much as possible to the art community. He's given lectures at multiple schools and universities, written tutorials, and helped moderate and manage Cgchat.com, GameArtisans.org, Dominance War, and Unearthly Challenge. He's been involved in Dominance War in some form since its inception, be it judging, managing publicity, or simply helping out here and there with promotional materials. He's already looking forward to next year's competition! |
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Mike "rv_el" Kime - Character Artist - Epic Games |
Mike Kime, a 5th place world champion in Dominance War III, is a professional character artist at Epic Games in North Carolina. He has worked on a range of projects with a wide variety of disciplines including full art duties on casual games to high-resolution character modeling for Unreal Editor 3 games. When he's not working he likes to create, experiment, and grow with personal artwork and ideas. Mike Kime is a part of the online game art community. Being a part of online competitions and art industry discussions has been a largely growing aspect of his life. |
3D Final Judges
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Billy "bahlswede" Ahlswede – Lead Character Artist – 38 Studios |
Billy, an 11th place world champion in Dominance War III, is currently the lead character artist on 38 studios Copernicus project. Billy has over 9 years of experience in the game industry focusing exclusively on characters for studios such as Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Sony Online and more recently 38 studios Boston. |
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Chris Black - Senior Environment Artist - Realtime Worlds |
Chris is a Senior Environment Artist at Realtime Worlds currently working on the groundbreaking multiplayer online game APB. He has 10 years in the games industry working on a number of hit games for companies such as Codemasters, Eurocom, Sony and of course Realtime Worlds. He has worked on all aspects of game art production including concept art, high end Zbrush, marketing renders, environments, characters, vehicles and even pixel art for hit mobile phone games. Outside of game art he is an accomplished illustrator who specializes in political illustrations and landscape oil painting. |
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Darren Bartlett - VP Production - Liquid Development |
With twenty years of experience producing video game content, Darren Bartlett has remained on the technological edge of the game industry. In 2000 he founded Liquid Development, a company designed to offer the best in art and animation outsourcing (a hard sell in the beginning, but a business model the game industry has come to embrace over time). |
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Dmitry Parkin - Freelancer - Character Artist |
Dmitry Parkin, the ultimate world champion for Dominance War III - 3D, is an accomplished character artist who has worked as a freelance artist for various well known companies around the world. When not engaged in communities like 3dtotal and cgtalk.ru, and participating or judging Dominance War, Dmitry enjoys creating personal 3d projects at home to further his skills as an artist. |
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Fausto De Martini - Blizzard Entertainment - Cinematic Modeling Supervisor |
Fausto De Martini started his career as a freelancer working for Advertisement companies in Brazil and got a job as a Cinematic Modeler at Blizzard Entertainment posting the Image "Marine" on CgChannel and CGTalk. Fausto is currently working as the Modeling Supervisor for the Cinematic Department at Blizzard Entertainment and he has been part of the production of world famous Cinematics such as "World of Warcraft", "World of Warcraft Expansion" and the "Starcraft 2" Teaser Trailer. He has many of his personal works featured in book covers, Graphic Card boxes, ATI Graphic Cards advertisements and his work "Cosmonaut" has been used as the main advertisement image for the sculpting software Mudbox." |
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Ian forged concept impetus on the 2nd place team in Unearthly Challenge. He is currently an adept character artist for Terminal Reality, conjurer of the Infernal Engine and invoker of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Ian embarked upon his career at SCEA San Diego then evolved into a character artist at Retro Studios working on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. He is a venerated alumni of Ringling College of Art and Design. Ian loves to draw and use a thesaurus. |
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James Chung - Creative Director - Studio iGO / Tako Games |
James directed and concepted the winning entry of Dominance War II (Taehoon's "Bigun"). He is currently working as a Creative Director for a brand new development company, Tako Games. Previously he worked as an Art Director at EA's mobile division. Before that, he worked as a 2D/3D/Concept Artist at Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 2. He was also an Art Director at a small animation / visual effects company working on a CG animated movie. James is an alumni of Art Center College of Design. He is currently busy making his first iPhone game. |
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Olivier Leonardi - Studio Art Director - Splash Damage |
Olivier has been working in the games industry for over 15 years and served as Art Director on titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Shaun White Snowboarding, and Rainbow Six: Vegas, which was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction at the 2007 DICE Awards. Olivier currently resides at UK-based Splash Damage, where he has taken the reigns as Studio Art Director working on an as-yet unannounced title. |
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Seonghwan Jang was born in Ulsan, Korea. With a passion for animations, paintings and sculptures at an early age, Seonghwan grew up to become a 3d artist and fulfill his dreams. After several adventures with Everquest, Atlantica project, Exine, Zera in Nexon company, today, Seonghwan works as an established technical art director for a secret project in NDOORS, Korea. |
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Soa Lee is an established 3D artist in Korea. With works published in various forms, artists everywhere have been touched and inspired by her work. Soa was born in Seoul, South Korea and studied and attained a degree in Fine Arts in University. Previously, Soa worked for Nexon as an reputed art director, but now, she enjoys working as a freelance artist for various companies around the world. |
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Tim Appleby - Lead Character Artist - Splash Damage |
Tim is no stranger to Dominance War, having placed third in the very first competition back in 2006. He started out in the industry over six years ago after Quake III inspired him to create his own character models. After working at MuckyFoot Productions and Headfirst Studios, Tim worked as Senior Character Artist on the award-winning Mass Effect at Bioware. He's now firmly implanted at UK-based Splash Damage as Lead Character Artist, working on an as-yet unannounced title. |
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Vitaly Bulgarov - Blizzard Entertainment - Cinematic Artist |
Vitaly was born in Moldova, where he started his career as freelance 3D artist. After a move to Moscow he worked in major Russian game developing studios as full-time artist and at the same time continued freelancing for American and European studios as well. Currently Vitaly is residing in California, where he has been dedicating himself to creating cinematics for great Blizzard Entertainment games. |
2D Primary Judges
In alphabetical order by first name first
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Cecil Kim - SCEA - Lead concept artist |
Cecil's artistic vision can be seen in the following hit titles: "Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy IX" and the award winning Franchise, "God of War." Currently, Cecil is working as a lead concept artist for the highly anticipated title, "God of War III," at Sony Santa Monica Studio. Originally from South Korea, after earning a BFA from the "Art Center College of Design," Cecil now specializes in environment concept design for the past 10 years of his career. When not creating art for games, Cecil teaches at "Otis College of Art and Design" since 2002. |
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Fredrik Hultqvist - Dominance War - Founder |
Fredrik Hultqvist, an accomplished game artist with a background in Illustration and Design, currently runs as founder, editor, admin, site content creator and organizer of the Dominance War Series (dominancewar.com), GameArtisans.org and UnearthlyChallenge.com. With various works and DW tales published in magazines across the world, Fredrik enjoys helping artists everywhere with his wacky ideas and inspired creations. Although Fredrik cannot act as a final judge in Dominance War, he helps coordinate the primary judging phase for each and all events. |
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Marco Mazzoni - Concept Artist – CCP Games |
When not working at CCP, Marco frequently practices his digital skills at Conceptart.org or GameArtisans.org. His current projects include interior and cover art for upcoming books in Wildfire's epic horror/sci-fi role playing game Cthulhutech as well as a World War II air-to-air combat game. When he isn't pushing pixels around for money, he's schooling his kids at the 8-bit video games that shaped his own childhood. |
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Nicolas [Sparth] Bouvier - Microsoft - Concept Artist |
Nicolas [Sparth] Bouvier has been in the games industry as an artistic director and concept designer since 1996. At an early age of 15, teachers were already more convinced than he was that he was destined for a career in arts. After being educated in the "Art Deco" school in Paris, Nicolas worked on various French projects and demos before really taking care of art in the hit title "Alone in the Dark 4" In 1998. His success as an artist continued into Ubisoft titles like "Prince of Persia: Warrior Within" in 2004, "assassin's creed" in 2007. Sparth left Montreal for Dallas, Tx to join id Software in 2005, where he took care of the designs of "rage", until January 2009. He then left for Seattle to join Microsoft. Actually working for the next games within the HALO franchise. |
2D Final Judges
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Andy Park – Concept Artist - SCEA |
Andy Park has done concept designs and illustrations for the entertainment industry for over 14 years. Previous works include comic book interior and cover illustrations for companies like Image Comics, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics, and additional cover artwork for various popular magazines such as Maxim, FHM, Muscle & Fitness, Wizard, PSM, Imagine FX, Advanced Photoshop, and Game Informer. These days, Andy Park specializes more in concept design/visual development for the video game and film and television industries. He has contributed to a variety of projects including video games such as Sony's God of War II and God of War III, television series' for ABC, HBO, and Dreamworks, a variety of television commercials, and various film projects. |
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Chris Robinson - Art Director (WoW) – Blizzard Entertainment |
Chris received his first taste of the games industry at a small internet game company in Seattle circa 1998. He worked his way down the West coast and landed in a slightly larger studio called Blizzard Entertainment where he now, as the Art Director, watches over one of the industry’s most talented art teams for World of Warcraft. When not working on fabulous new ideas for WoW, Chris enjoys his free time dabbling in illustrations, in-game art, and creature designs. |
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Grant Gosler - Lead Concept Artist - Terminal Reality |
Grant began work at Terminal Reality in year 2000. During his stay, Grant underwent many adventures as a production artist on 3d environments, weapons, various prop-like assets, and characters, and further ventures into 2d interface elements, concept designs and the creation of support materials. Presently, Grant’s journey continues forward with the formation of a crack team alliance with two other artists to realize many of the concepts found within the highly anticipated title – Ghostbusters. When not behind a table at work, Grant enjoys his stay in Texas, USA. |
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Hyoungtae Kim first wanted to be a cartoonist but after witnessing and experiencing games and its wonders, he quickly changed and became a game concept artist. Currently, Hyoungtae is extremely well known around the world for his work as a character concept artist for the hit title, Maganacarta project. As Hyoungtae enjoys his stay in Seoul, he continues to work as an Art Director for the Blade and Soul. |
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Jiansong Chen - Concept Designer - Perfect World Software |
Born in Beijing China, Jiansong Chen currently works for Perfect World Software Ltd. as a Concept designer for games and film art. Jiansong's Works have been featured in international authoritative channels such as the Expose series (<Expose 3>, <Expose 4>, <Expose 5>) and EXOTIQUE series (<EXOTIQUE 2> and <EXOTIQUE 3>). |
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Jimmy O'Ready - Character Art Team Lead - Realtime Worlds |
Jimmy O'Ready is the Character Art Team Lead at Realtime Worlds, currently working on the groundbreaking multiplayer online game APB. He started his career aged 18 as a comic book artist drawing Judge Dredd and Roy of the Rovers. He now has over fourteen years experience in computer games. He has worked as a concept artist, animator, environment artist, character modeller, and lead artist for companies including ATD, Striker 3D, and Electronic Arts Canada. Dundee-based Realtime Worlds are responsible for creating some of the world's best selling video games. These include the 2007 double-BAFTA winning hit Crackdown, and the global hit franchises Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. |
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Jungsick Park - Director/Art director - Eyedentity Games |
Jungsick Park, born in Seoul, South Korea, had great talents for art at an early age. Always embracing his talents and enthusiasm for art, Jungsick continued his passion into an eventual career. Jungsick Park began as a concept artist and then as an Art Director for well-known titles like - Kingdom Under Fire (Xbox), N3 and the Huxley project. After many additional shipped titles, Jungsick founded Eyedentity Games and currently works as its CEO and Art Director. |
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Justin Thavirat - Senior Art Director - Blizzard Entertainment |
Justin got his start in the games industry back in 1994 when he answered a local job posting at school that read, "Do you like to draw and play video games? If so, please send your resume and portfolio to Blizzard Entertainment." Since then Justin has enjoyed plugging away at game art, concept art, cinematics, and marketing illustrations to many of Blizzard's games in the Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft series. |
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Minoh Kim – Concept/3D Character Artist – 38 Studios |
Minoh Kim is a 12 year vet of the game industry. His first art job was doing concepts for Sony Interactive in the PS1 era. He later moved into 3D and became a character artist, working for SISA/989 Studios/SCEA, SOE, Sigil, and now 38 Studios. |
Judges will be announced during the course of Dominance War IV....
There are 3 types of judges and they are as follows:
3D judging is based on, but not limited to, the following criteria:
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Incomplete |
Incomplete entries can still be submitted, but they will not be judged.
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Wow Factor |
Is your entry eye catching? Does your entry look like it can destroy rival planet forces? Is your entry liked by most judges?
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The Silhoutte |
Does your entry look good from all angles?
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Technical |
Does your entry look well made? Good texturing technique? Good polygon distribution? Nice lighting? Good details on the highres model (if normal mapped)?
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Presentation |
Are all your images presented well together?
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2D Concept Art judging is based on, but not limited to, the following criteria:
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Incomplete |
Incomplete entries can still be submitted, but they will not be judged.
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Wow Factor |
Is your concept eye catching? Does your concept look like it can destroy rival planet forces? Is your concept well liked by most judges?
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Design |
Does your character design look good from all angles?
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Technique |
Good coloring technique? Good design? Good amount of detail distribution?
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Presentation |
Are all your images presented well together?
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When Dominance War IV is complete and everyone has submitted their 2d and/or 3d finals,
3 intense stages of judging will occur. The stages are as follows:
CHALLENGE DEADLINE:
11:59 p.m Eastern Time, Monday, May 18th, 2009
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