Posts with tag art

With notably rare exceptions, encounters between seafaring vessels and giant octopi always end well. Sparcle of The Seekers of Truth on Farstriders (US-A) managed to get stuck out on the deck of a gnomish submarine right before it impacted with an angry cephalopod. The most important question here is, "Why does a submarine manned by gnomes have a door-opening wheel 10 feet above the deck?"

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Please include "Azeroth" in the subject line so your email doesn't get marked as spam, and include your name, guild and server if you want to be credited.

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Blizzard has updated the Cataclysm and leaders art galleries with a few new shots featuring an awesome picture of Genn Greymane all wolfed out, a moody shot of Gilneas, and a familiar shot of goblins taking on a worgen.

The galleries are always a source of awesome art, and it's nice to see them getting updates more and more these days, even from expansions past. Most recently, Blizzard updated the Wrath of the Lich King art gallery with some cool shots.

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WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.

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If you're going to be around the San Pedro, California, area between April 7-9, the Golden State Pops Orchestra is proud to announce the Art of World of Warcraft, a showing of WoW artwork provided by Blizzard. The show will be open during the San Pedro First Thursday Walk as well as Saturday the 9th. WoW art exhibits are really awesome, especially when you get to see the high-quality prints of the game's concept art. It's a lot of fun.

Check out all of the details on the Golden State Pops Orchestra website.

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The Wrath of the Lich King art gallery has been updated with six awesome shots of clean artwork that features familiar locales and loading screens. Art from the Pit of Saron, Eye of Eternity, Forge of Souls, Wintergrasp, and Trial of the Crusader are available for ocular enjoyment.

The art for Wrath of the Lich King has always been some of my favorite concept art because of how easily the look and feel of the pieces convey what the entire expansion and Northrend itself was supposed to be. Success, indeed. Check out the gallery here.

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WoW Patch 4.1 is on the PTR, and WoW Insider has all the latest news for you -- from previews of the revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub to new valor point mechanics and new archaeology items.

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Hey, you! Yes, you -- dude sitting on the stained couch watching Family Feud and eating Cheetos. Need a little bit of high culture in your life? (And no, rewatching Once More, With Feeling doesn't count.)

WoW Insider may not be able to send you to the Louvre, and I'm not sure our legal department is okay with us reprinting the works of Maya Angelou. What we can do, however, is forward you along to some great new art just released at the Blizzard website. Specifically, there are three new pieces from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion: the Wrath box art, a piece called "Boneyard," and a piece called "Winter Tauren." They all show off the incredible level of talent of Blizzard's art department.

While you're there, be sure to page through the gallery and enjoy all the pieces of older concept art, too. They provide some great insight into how ideas transition from mere thoughts in an artist's head to a miserable, frustrating 5-man instance like The Oculus.

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

On this fine snowy morning of -12 degrees, I find myself writing an article for WoW Insider. If you had asked me a year or two before, I would have told you that's preposterous: I didn't think I had much in common with other players, and I certainly didn't have the confidence to put anything in front of the masses. I was learning the ropes, leveling, asking questions, not sure what I was supposed to do when the game was "over." I didn't utilize sites such as this; back then, I didn't venture much further than Thottbot.

Yet here I am today, with a few high-level characters, raiding, and I am writing this article. I've dabbled in a few other games since first playing WoW, and each of them has sparked my imagination and opened various creative passage ways. I found myself wanting to start a fan-fiction, which then grew into something even bigger. I always loved writing but never thought I would go anywhere with it. I guess I just needed the right inspiration.

There is a whole feature on WoW Insider (World of WarCrafts) about people who have been inspired by WoW to do great things. How about you? Have you started writing a comic strip, fan-fiction, a novel, created videos, or furthered another hobby? Have you done something you never thought possible because you were inspired by WoW or another game?

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

With the massive number of players logging in every day to WoW, there's an equally expansive amount of art and media coming from that player base. Very few games have ever brought out such a community of creative minds showing the rest of us their vision of a fantasy world. From machinima to custom WoW dolls (I mean action figures -- right, guys?), to Horde/Alliance-themed cakes, there are a ton of different venues for artists of all varieties to express their passion for the game.

I've just recently begun to start watching WoW-based machinima and have discovered there are quite a few masterpieces out there from people who seem talented enough to write or direct feature films. After the Cataclysm launch, I'm going to start an ongoing fan fiction story about a rogue and what his life is like after Deathwing ravages Azeroth. It should be plum full of adventures and high jinks! Although I'd love to include custom artwork with that story, my drawing skill ends at stick figures, so I'll have to use to screen shots.

Out of all the different art, videos, and other "warcrafts," are there any you'd like to participate in? Or maybe you already check out great fan art, make custom troll outfits for cosplay, or bake cupcakes shaped like murlocs. What are your favorites?

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, spotlighting the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com.

The end is nigh! The world will break! Flee, cowards, for his fiery reign of death will be upon us soon! The only way to combat this most heinous evil is to gaze upon some pretty neat, reader-submitted user interfaces. Deathwing will have no chance against our smooth bottom panels and the lack of clutter on our screens.

This week, Reader UI of the Week takes a look at Sewell's user interface, which uses some awesome art to give his UI a familiar but more productive look. Reminiscent of the original art or even Warcraft 3 taken in a cool, different direction, Sewell's UI is crisp, clean and full of flavor. If you like art panels, today is for you.

Blizzard is holding a silent auction at BlizzCon to support Child's Play, the charity started by Penny Arcade to help sick children. Up for auction are signed artwork, a signed NOObz marine and actual WoW server hardware. See the gallery below for the items on which attendees are bidding.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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BlizzCon isn't just about panels, demos and concerts. It's also about shopping and gawking. For those who like to gawk, the Art Gallery shows off the art for all three of Blizzard's games. The gallery below shows this year's offerings.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction and more. Sample the whole spectrum on WoW.com's Arts and Crafts in WoW page.

Mario, we know and love you best as our favorite plumber -- but don't think we haven't figured out that you're sneaking around out there as a druid, too. So what would happen if you tucked the beloved characters of Mario into the World of Warcraft? The result is David Stonecipher's "WoW Meets the Mushroom Kingdom" art series. Stonecipher's drawn up his own vision of how the Mario universe's most famous characters would look inside Azeroth.

Mario as a druid? Bowser as a warrior? Try all 10 classes on for size. "I did something a little different with these pieces this time," Stonecipher wrote us. "I've created a video that shows each artwork be created from blank canvas to finished completion. This allows people to get a look at how the art is created in various stages."

See more of Stonecipher's video game character mashups at GameArtOnline.com, or click past the break to see the other five WoW classes in Part 2 of the WoW/Mushroom Kingdom series.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction and more. Sample the whole spectrum on WoW.com's Arts and Crafts in WoW page.

Artist Christina Marie's WoW-themed work is nothing if not saturated -- saturated with color, saturated with game references, saturated with humor. It's the kind of stuff you can toss onto your desktop and then promptly lose vast chunks of time peering and snorting in bemused delight at the details scattered across these works. (Because I whipped up the Christina Marie art gallery, below, in just minutes. Without any linking or idle chatter in the WoW.com newsroom. You believe that, right? Right?) Her talent for twisting elements together (elements of art, elements of the game ... you name it) earned her a nod from Blizzard itself with inclusion in its 2011 holiday fan art calendar (as was our own Kelly Aarons). World of WarCrafts visited with Christina Marie to find out where the deluge of color and inspiration comes from.

From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame.

We've written before at WoW.com and even here in 15 Minutes of Fame about attempts to study World of Warcraft culture from a sociological, psychological or anthropological point of view. In all of these cases, the researchers in question have logged time playing WoW as part of their research, albeit some with greater degrees of immersive success than others.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Bonnie Nardi, a University of California-Irvine expert in the social implications of digital technologies and author of the rather blithely titled My Life as a Night Elf Priest, not only rolled the token raiding character in order to observe the curious behavior of the raiding animal -- she actually enjoys WoW in its own right. Rather than cautiously sniffing WoW culture only to generate another wide-eyed, ZOMG-look-at-this-funny-lingo report from the digital field, Nardi dove deep enough to play in four different guilds: a casual raiding guild; a raiding guild composed of fellow academics; a small, casual guild; and her own friends-and-family guild. Our two-part interview with Nardi, packed with opinion and cultural analysis, reveals a witty approach to WoW culture that successfully combines academic insight with the familiarity of a seasoned player.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction and more.

I've been reading an anthropological analysis of the World of Warcraft for an upcoming 15 Minutes of Fame that talks about the game as an "active aesthetic experience," a collective expression in which the participation of all is key to the entire experience. One of the things I'm most looking forward to talking about with the author is the incredible creative energy that WoW breathes into so many talented artists, writers, crafters and musicians. From WoW-themed arts and crafts that tickle our fancies to re-imaginings of the very artistic underpinnings of the game soundtrack and art itself, the World of Warcraft has inspired so many people across the world.

While obviously we could invite you to scroll through our backlog of World of WarCrafts columns (and indeed, if you're interested in any sort of creative effort, we think you should), we decided to make things simple. We'd like to invite you to our new resource guide, Arts and crafts in WoW. From how-to instructions for arts and crafts, to recipe "strats" bringing you the flavors of Azeroth, to soundtracks and artwork and fan fic and more, we've gathered the best of our galleries and in-depth features together in one place. We hope you find it as enjoyable and inspirational as we do ... Welcome to the sights and sounds of the community of World of Warcraft!

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including arts and crafts, fan art, WoW-themed recipes, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by emailing lisa@wow.com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

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