Posts with tag art

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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The problem is sometimes things appear to get missed. Let's take the druid forms as an example. The old druid cat and bear forms were around long past their prime before finally being updated. The aquatic and regular flight forms for both night elves and tauren have the long, elvish ears instead of each race getting something more unique like the art above. The land travel form itself is nothing more than the cheetah monster model without any tweaks for either current druid race.

Another example is our old enemies, the murlocs. In Wrath we got cousins to the murlocs know as the gorlocs which have a newer and shinier model than their non-arctic brethren. We've even seen a few glimpses of deep-sea murlocs coming in the expansion which are also up to the modern modeling standards which put the old murlocs to shame.

Hopefully, all of the old art will be brought up to what we're come to expect for new content. It would be a shame for something to get left behind. Which things do you hope they'll update the art for?

In the midst of all this Real ID brouhaha, it's good to be reminded that we sometimes play the World of Warcraft to immerse ourselves in our other identities -- the characters we play. Some of us enter the world of Azeroth to have a grand adventure, leaving our probably awesome but otherwise non-magical real lives for a while to masquerade as dwarves or orcs ... as anything from plate-wearing champions of the Light to felfire-wielding sorcerers in brimstone-stained robes. World of Warcraft is still an MMORPG, after all, and at the heart of it the characters we play are reflections of ourselves, real names or otherwise.

Here at WoW.com, we'd like to celebrate these characters -- your characters -- by taking them for a spin. We're looking for submissions of our readers' characters which we'll take and draw. Think of it as a reverse version of World of WarCrafts, where we'll draw your character and throw in a paragraph or two about them, Know Your Lore-style. We'll need your help, of course. We want you to tell us about your favorite character, whether it be your awesome end-game raiding night elf priest or your humble, low-level bank alt in a snazzy tuxedo set. It's up to you.

We want you to let us know about your character by shooting us an email at zach@wow.com with your character's name and a few lines describing them. Obviously, we'll need to get them right, so you could either link us to your character's armory or just send us some screenshots we can use as reference. The more detailed your descriptions or pictures, the more justice we'll be able to give to your character, so make sure to give us everything we need. We'll even try our best to get little details in there somewhere, like your favorite non-combat pet if you want it hanging around. In the end, if we get it right, we'll have a WoW.com wallpaper featuring one of your characters every week.

In a way, it's a shot at 15 Minutes of Fame without actually having to be anyone famous in real life or having done anything particularly stupendous. You just need to be you -- and your character needs to be, well, just about any character in the World of Warcraft. Over time, we hope to compile a fairly decent gallery of the heroes that you play. Maybe it'll even help our readers get to know each other somewhat. Without, you know, having to tell anyone your real name or anything.

Blizzard.com

We're pleased to announce the grand opening of our new Concept Art gallery, highlighting the myriad characters, environments, and other artwork we create during the development of our games. We plan to update this page regularly with a wide variety of never-before-seen pieces of art reaching all the way back to Blizzard's early days, so be sure to check back often!

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Early days is right! There's artwork in the gallery that predates StarCraft and the early Warcraft games. Go check out Blizzard's concept art gallery, it will be time well spent.

In the last year, I have noticed that Blizzard has been making more of an effort to reach out to its community. When I say community, I mean the artists, the writers, the singers, bloggers, theorycrafters, and everything in between.

From having the three major franchises join Twitter, to the Battlecry Mosaic, to contests galore -- tell me, what does this mean to you? Have you participated in any of these contests or events? I myself actually entered the Fan Art Calendar contest just last night, and while I'm hardly expecting to win, it was not only a fun project to work on but it made me realize that Blizzard has at least a genuine-looking interest in its artistic fanbase.

Are you guys enjoying the contests? Or do you believe it's all a big corporate sham to make Blizzard seem all moonbeams and kittens?

Discuss amongst yourselves!

Some of the coolest contests happen in the EU, and unfortunately, sometimes completely under our radar. World of Warcraft in Europe recently announced the winners of a contest held between November 23 and December 6, 2009 (that's a period of two weeks, so even the folks in Europe might've missed out on it) which asked folks to design their own World of Warcraft trading card. We told you the coolest contests happen in the EU.

Winners were announced last December 18, 2009, with Blizzard apparently selecting the best entries according to language. Five winners were selected, with J. Hoermandinger winning the top prize for English submissions with the Boo'Yah "Brickhead" card; D. Klenk was the German winner with Shilanya; S. Mariez won the French top prize with Perséphia Tristombe; A. Fuentes Garcia was the Spanish winner with Nairies; and A. Kirsanova won the Russian prize with a thankfully nameless but awesome-looking card (Cyrillic would be a little troublesome to jot down here).

The contest awarded a veritable Upper Deck treasure trove that included a Death Knight deluxe starter kit, a World of Warcraft miniatures game starter kit and booster pack, and the ScourgeWar epic collection which has the Tiny loot card. The loot card enables Horde characters to mount a miniature raptor and Alliance characters to ride a miniature pony to move at unmounted speed. Congratulations to the all the winners! For those of you who missed out on the fun, you can always make your own TCG cards by downloading their Horde or Alliance templates. Enjoy!

Well, they started giving away pets for having an authenticator, so I guess it's about time I went ahead and put one on my account. I've had the app on my iPhone for a while, actually, but I never really saw the point in attaching it to my account, especially since it seemed like just more hassle, and who knows what kinds of errors could pop up. And honestly, I haven't worried much about hackers -- I use a secure browser, I don't click on unknown links. But I know, I know, it's safer, and with the cute Corehound Pup out, I might as well go ahead and attach it.

And you might as well, too. Blizzard's Store was flooded with people looking for authenticators yesterday, but things have slowed down a bit, and they've even got a brand new design with the Corehound Pup right on there. The price, as usual, is $6.50 with free shipping. If you've got an iPhone or an iPod touch, you can get the app free from iTunes, and we're told that it's coming to other platforms at some point in the future (guess when: "soon"). Even if you don't want to apply the Authenticator for whatever reason, just think of it as an almost-half-price pet.

Yes, our podcast is back again this afternoon at 3:30pm EDT, and this week we're welcoming Mary Varn, the creator and artist behind NPC Comic, a webcomic about a girl and her two cats who all play World of Warcraft. She'll talk with us about her work and her own characters, and since we'll also have Kelly "Cadistra" Aarons of the new Byron the Tauren Rogue comic on again, maybe they'll be able to share some insight on putting WoW-related cartoons together.

Turpster and I will make sure it's not all about drawing comics, though -- we'll be answering emails and talking about the most popular posts from the last week, including what's going on with patch 3.3 and when it might drop, what's up with all of the outages lately, and what it takes to get all of the achievements. All of them. Should be a great show -- you can tune in over on our Ustream page at 3:30pm Eastern, or just head after the break. See you then.

Blizzard's onslaught of fifth anniversary press continues. As we said on the podcast last week, Turpster and I both are kind of "meh" about the whole thing at this point -- just how much can you read/hear about how the game has changed over the last five years? But just in case you're still interested, here's two good pieces from two big publications about WoW's 5th birthday. First up, Prospect magazine has a piece by Tom Chatfield about "the world's most famous computer game" -- he plays with his wife, and says that the game represents quite a few things he's enjoyed. It's diverse, all-encompassing, lets you act out (or show off) your fantasy self, and constantly rewards rather than punishes. It's this brilliant game, he says, which has allowed gaming a "bridgehead" into the mainstream. Interesting.

Even moreso, here's another article from The Guardian that tags on to the whole "video games equal art" argument, using Blizzard's MMO as exhibit A. Writer Sam Leith compares the game to a cathedral, not only for the fact that the art and look of Azeroth will match up against any stained glass, but also because, like an old European cathedral, the game has so many functions and purposes. It's a social space, full of ritual and traditions. It's full of stories and emotion. And it's the creation of many over a long period of time. You might not think you'd ever have heard an MMO compared to the cathedral at Chartres, but the comparison is apt. When you think about it that way, it's no surprise that Blizzard is expecting many more years out of this game.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in!

Continuing Blizzard's slow PR trickle of Patch 3.3 news, they just released an interview with Lead World Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg Street, a.k.a. Ghostcrawler, about the philosophy behind the design of the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon.

There's a lot of great information in there. Where itemization is concerned, they explain that the multitude of bosses in the instance (especially compared to the ghost town that was Crusader's Coliseum) affords the developers the opportunity to really serve players with specific specs and make sure that each boss has a loot table with an item of interest for every raider in attendance. They also talk at length about some popular concepts they've brought back for the sake of keeping things fun and interesting -- like the return of weapon procs, something we've rarely seen since the vanilla endgame. Ghostcrawler says that the main theme of Icecrown's gear is "Epic. Cool things. Proc'y stuff." Sounds good to me.

They also talk about cohesion between the dungeon's art and the gear that drops in it. The compelling look of the instance made it easy to create eye-catching gear to match it, and that's apparently not always easy. The Frozen Halls, the set of three five-man dungeons also releasing with 3.3, will also have gear that shares the same artistic "kit" as the raid, like they wish they had done with Ulduar and its sister five-man dungeons.

Other topics touched on include discussion of non-boss items available -- trash epics, for example, or the Ashen Verdict rep gear that'll be available -- and why Crusader's Coliseum was so, what's the word ... boring. In short, blame Icecrown. Personally, I'm willing to make the sacrifice of one fairly uninspired patch period if it means that the end of the entire WarCraft III arc wraps up in a big, glorious, icy fireworks display. So to speak.

Check out the full interview for yourself here, along with some new screenshots.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Blizzard has made it a holiday tradition to release a holiday card every year (usually drawn by Samwise), but this year they're putting a little twist on it. They're running a contest asking the potential artists among you to submit your own original Blizzard-themed holiday card. Download their template, fill it up with Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft-related holiday art (no Lost Vikings or Rock N' Roll Racing art, apparently), submit it on the contest page before December 7th, and you can win a whole slew of prizes from Blizzard and Razer, including a mouse, keyboard, and headset, as well as a signed copy of Blizzard's 2009 holiday card from Samwise himself.

So artists, get to, um, "art"-ing! We can't wait to see your rendition of Deathwing as Santa Claus, Kerrigan as the Mrs., and a whole tribe of Fallen Ones standing in for the little elves.

Ever since Blizzard first revealed Deathwing to us back at BlizzCon, that image of the dragon and that jaw has stuck in my head -- dragons are always dangerous (you know what happens when you meddle in their affairs), but Deathwing is a dragon in his own class. And apparently that picture also stuck in artist Kymba's head, too, because she's been working on (and documenting on Livejournal) an awesome sculpture of the beast himself.

Obviously it's a work in progress, but Kymba has been doing a really thorough job covering just what she's doing with Sculpey (a brand of polymer clay). You can follow her own accounts on her Livejournal page (start over here), or check out the gallery below, in which we've compiled all of the pictures of the process so far. The jaw was made separately, and from what I can tell (I've never sculpted in my life), she used aluminum foil baked into the clay wrapped around a sturdier core. The whole thing looks great so far -- we can't wait to see what the finished product looks like.

Stay tuned -- you'll probably see it all done in a future World of Warcrafts post.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

Dang -- I never got anything as cool as this for my birthday. When Wolfgar of EU Aggramar-H hit the teenage years recently, his dad decided it was time to whip up something special. We'd say he managed quite nicely, wouldn't you?

"My son is a huge WoW fan, and as he has turned the dreaded age of 13, I decided to do something unique for him," explains Wolfgar's dad, who goes by the not-so-fatherly in-game moniker Ripyernutzof. "I decided to go with as realistic an interpretation as possible of the subject matter while still keeping the flavour of the original toon. (I sometimes wish he'd chosen a gnome character as it'd take a lot less material to complete!)"