GRAFIT acquisition
Russian art company picked up by Shanghai-based outsourcer.
Shanghai, January 13, 2010 - Virtuos today announced that it has acquired the concept art studio of Russian art company GRAFIT. This deal allows Virtuos to further expand its services offering to game and movie companies.
Based in Voronezh, Russia, GRAFIT is a specialist provider of video game concept art production, building a strong reputation in Russia and Europe. As part of the acquisition, two principals from GRAFIT have relocated to Virtuos headquarters, while other team members remain in Russia. Concept Art Directors Roman Tulinov and Victor (“Hamsterfly”) Titov have joined Virtuos’ multinational art teams in Shanghai. Virtuos will also have access to GRAFIT’s network of artists working out of Russia, Europe and Asia.
“Our clients have expressed a growing demand for concept art – for example, for levels of games we co-develop or characters we produce. But we wanted to wait to offer these services until we had assembled a really strong concept art team,” said Virtuos Art Director Andrey Supryaga. “The work that this team has delivered has been consistently impressive, and we are very excited to partner with them and officially launch our concept art studio.”
“We have known Andrey for over five years and we have already collaborated with the Virtuos art teams on a number of projects,” said Roman Tulinov. By joining with Virtuos, we will be able to contribute our creative vision to more projects for a wider range of clients, and we look forward to that opportunity.”
Virtuos concept art clients already include major studios such as LucasArts, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Zynga.
In recent years, concept art has often become a bottleneck in the development process. Game companies are increasingly challenged to find enough concept art to feed larger onshore and offshore development pipelines.
“Bringing together Virtuos' art production infrastructure with GRAFIT’s expertise in concept art, we will be able to offer a more fully integrated art solution. We look forward to utilizing these talents and contributing to the creative conceptualization of more game and movie titles in the future,” said Gilles Langourieux, CEO, Virtuos.
About Virtuos
Headquartered in Shanghai, Virtuos is one of the largest and most international providers of digital entertainment offshore production services, specializing in 3D Art and Co-development. Virtuos’ international management team includes game development experts from more than 10 nationalities. Since its creation in late 2004, Virtuos has served 15 of the top 20 games publishers worldwide as well as renowned developers.