....Red Ninja

	Vivendi Universal Games had a project called Red Ninja in development by Opus in Japan (contracted to Kenji). Their initial concept art was fantastic, very Japanese, very anime, it had its own style (shown at left). The game's Producer for Universal wasn't happy with how the lead character was turning out conceptually and requested me to give him a number of costume alternatives. He also wanted more concept work for the main adversaries.
- New Concept Art
	For the sake of consistency, I wanted the new concept art pieces to appear as if they came from the same artist that made the originals in Japan. With that in mind, Jeff Watts and I both made a number of costume designs for Akemi and several other ninja concepts. Shown here are the variations in which you can see the process that led to the final look (below).
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- Final Art
. .	The final concept art was completed by Opus in Japan . All were worthy of marketing material at the same time giving the character animators inspiration on the range of movement she will employ. Really well done, at least to my standards.
- Environments
	Red Ninja's environment look was inspired initially by the game ICO, with low saturation, medium contrast, and blooming light.The Art Lead from Opus developed a look similar to this, but unlike ICO that was played entirely within the confines of a castle, Red Ninja took place in every conceivable environment.So the ICO look had to be used judiciously. I was asked by the Producer to take the existing environments and without changing any geometry or materials, make it look richer. When I had a technique, I was to teach it to the art team in Japan. This was my challenge. I approached it like this: The art team is Japanese and what look I develop should be a look they would respect; by having respect they would embrace it. The second challenge was that I had to do it in a sequential way that could be taught easily to the team without much translation. So off to Japan I went and was given a cube to work in and a copy of MAX. I experimented for 3 days to get the look I was happy with before I set out to retouch a level. At the completion of my environment we put it into the game and took a look. The artists looked at their level that I had enhanced and upon comparing it to a Japanese smash hit like Onimusha side-by-side, big grins started appearing, bows were exchanged and I had a big sigh of relief. The images on this page are examples of my work accomplished for the game Red Ninja. In all I personally refined 8 complete levels of the game (only examples from 3 are shown here).
- Photos from Japan
. . . ........	It was cherry blossom time when I arrived; I am pictured here (2nd from left) with the Art Lead, Senior Character Animator and Producer from Opus the developer who made Red Ninja. Dinner was always an experience that shouldn't be missed, especially with Ogawa san, the Studio Head of Opus. So much fun, what wonderful people. Lunch with Ogawa-san (Sega employee for 17 years) and Ari-san; I miss them. My cube-mate Takagi-san. Most people worked without shoes. He was the tools programmer. We had a Japanese–to-English phrase book between us. He was easy to laugh and worked very long hours. I would bring him pastry and latte's. The Tokyo city lights.