CREATIVE DIRECTION: My roles as Creative Director, Producer, Designer, put me in the position to lead assignments but not necessarily do the artwork or execution on them.
by ehaldi
Rock Poster for our band, The JV and our buddies Def Leprechaun and Post Adolescence. We were going to each play a David Bowie song in our sets which inspired this ‘Spider From Mars’ theme. It was also October and nearly Halloween and I saw this image in my head that could have the spider-ship look like a pumpkin from a distance or at first glance.
Categories: Creative Direction, Home, Illustration, Logos
by ehaldi
Backyard Football 07-08 intro sequence. Starring Tom Brady (human and cartoon) and the Backyard Kids. Directed by Erik Haldi Animated by Rafael Calonzo and Tom Witte Music by Chris Bellew When Backyard Sports focused on the console market, and once the art style had been updated for a 3rd time. We had to find some ways to be judicious with our money. One way I thought that would be effective is to create one intro…like a saturday morning cartoon, and […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home, Videos
by ehaldi
When we were just getting started on the production of the Hidden Expedition: Smithsonian – Hope Diamond game we were presented a very cool and unique opportunity. Starbucks wanted to feature a previously released game as its iOS download of the week: Hidden Expedition: Amazon (on iOs). Our team was in charge of creating a teaser for the Hope Diamond game and inserting it into the re-release. We were just getting started creating assets so there wasn’t much to put […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home, Videos
by ehaldi
In the Hidden Expedition: Smithsonian Hope Diamond game we wanted to do a few things different regarding the in game UI. Nothing too drastic though, just a few wrinkles. Most games have inventory that occupies the lower middle of the screen, and always has an ‘interface-y’ feel to it. And it always felt like a blocker to me. We had this idea of a backpack that you would take with you during your adventure…so we literally created a backpack. When […]
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by ehaldi
To continue the theme of players not just stumbling onto a random list of items to find in a scene, this is our Jungle Bluff. In this Hidden Object scene, the player had to collect items for their backpack, yep the one hanging in the tree. The player had just escaped by jumping out of a moving train and their pack landed in the tree, and the cards you see in the corner float down to the ground prompting the […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home
by ehaldi
In this example of a trying to give the player a new way to experience a new way to get a list of items to find, we made a Gift Shop from the Smithsonian. We let them know first that we understand that this is NOT the way that they actually look…not this messy! Upon entering the room there would be a receipt waving in the cash register to the right, when it was clicked, the receipt would appear along […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home
by ehaldi
Hidden Object Scene Design. Trying to revolutionize the way people experience finding objects. When Bill Meyer, Jeff Haynie and I sat down to think about our goal: engage players with new mechanics for playing Hidden Object scenes we first thought why? Well, because this genre was so stale and with new games coming out every day or every other day that were essentially ALL THE SAME we thought that we NEEDED to do something different. We looked at games that […]
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by ehaldi
Hidden Expedition: Smithsonian, Hope Diamond. This is ‘The Device’. I wanted a way for the player to get messages from the people that were helping them along their journey, but who may have been working a world away and this is what we designed for our contraption. This was designed to look like it was an antique of sorts…but still functional for what the player needed. There was a visual design and a thematic tone to this game that was very […]
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by ehaldi
DISCLAIMER: Artwork done by art team. My role was Senior Producer and served as interim art director. Fairway Solitaire- Windows 8, Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, Kindle Fire, Mac and PC. Fairway Solitaire a finalist for the 1st annual Tabby Awards Fairway Solitaire won IMGA’s Excellence in Gameplay 2013 IGN nominated Fairway Solitaire as one of the five Best Mobile Board Games of 2012 Fairway Solitaire a finalist for Best Mobile Game and Best Casual Game by the […]
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by ehaldi
As the Co-Designer/Producer of this project/adventure game I really wanted to sink my teeth into getting the intro to a place where the story was really being set up for the user, creating some mystery and wonder. The story of the Hope Diamond is so amazing, and this intro helps sell the legend that drove our fact meets fiction tale. The images story board is from my original scribbles, I wrote the dialogue and set up the scene as well. […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home, Illustration, Videos
by ehaldi
These sketches were the design for a U.S. History Bobblehead matching game, that went into Hidden Expedition: Smithsonian, Hope Diamond. A big chunk of our game occurred in Washington DC and you just can’t go there and not think about US history…it’s everywhere. We needed a puzzle for you to gain access to something, so you had to help this person with their souvenir bobble heads. The goal of the game was to match the 3 pieces (Head, Torso and Legs/Base). […]
Categories: Creative Direction, Home, Illustration
by ehaldi
Backyard Sports Story Books. I have always loved books, in particular kids books. When I was working as Creative Director for Humongous Inc. we signed a deal with Grosset & Dunlap (Stonesong Press) to do a multi-book series to support our Backyard Sports Video Game brand, I was so excited. Michael Teitelbaum (writer) them and Ron Zalme (illustrator) were selected by the publisher and they got started. The original direction was to put these kids into these super fantastical situations and […]
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by ehaldi
Backyard Baseball was my first opportunity to design an entire games UI, the look, feel and the layout. This was one of my favorite games of all time, and my designer, Nick Mirkovich was awesome to put this in my hands and let me get to it. It was also supposed to support other sports with minimal redesign. The resolution sure has come a long way! This screen sets up the world series matchup, of the game you are about […]
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by ehaldi
My first job out of art school was as a production artist for Colores International, a windsock company. I did a lot of preparing artwork for silkscreening (including using a stat camera, who know’s what that is?). One day early in my job there, a sales man came into the art den and said, ‘I’d like to pitch a unique idea to the NFL, something more than putting their team logos onto regular windsocks…anybody got any ideas?’ Well, a few […]
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by ehaldi
This is from a game called Hidden Expedition: Devil’s Triangle. When I first came to Big Fish this was my first project as Senior Producer, and it was developed in-house at Big Fish Studios. It was originally released to PC Download, but was later ported to iOs and did very well. It was a game is part of a series of Hidden Expedition games (Titanic, Everest, Amazon). It was a huge game and turned into a two part game with […]
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Erik Haldi