TenTonHammer have put up a great Q&A with ArenaNet Art Director, Daniel Dociu. For the artistically inclined amongst you this is a fantastic look at ArenaNet’s art team, which is without doubt amongst the very best of the industry.
Ten Ton Hammer: How many are on the art team, and how do you even begin to organize such a huge project?
Daniel: We’ve probably exceeded 70 artists by now. These are split among six teams: concept art, characters and creatures, environments and props, animation, technical art, and cinematics. As far as organizing the project, it is quite a challenge to keep everything under control and coordinate with design and engineering, the other major departments working on the project. For the first time in Guild Wars 2, we have a team of producers that facilitate the communication process. It is significantly more challenging, but we’re adapting to the challenges of developing a high budget game with a larger team and all the benefits and responsibilities that come with that.
Check out the rest of that interview here, and head over to our forum to discuss it in this thread.
The fourth and final part of Daniel Dociu’s GDC presentation is now with us, courtesy of the hard work of AJ and the ArenaNet community team. Head over here for the HD version, and here for the relevant forum thread.
Part three of Daniel Dociu’s GDC art presentation is here, yet again in glorious HD with an awesome soundtrack. I’ll save my breath describing just how incredible it is, and let you see for yourself!
If you want to share your thoughts, the 26 page monster thread on the GDC presentation can be found here!
It’s spring cleaning time, and ArenaNet want to update their lobby with a newer, fresher theme. What better way to do that than with some of the outstanding concept art we’ve seen?
So they’ve put their artists to work, creating some huge banner style images for the walls, but in their enthusiasm they designed too many! It’s up to us, the community, to pick which two are ultimately used.
So, head over to this forum thread to vote for your favorite two images!
Since we posted our last story on Daniel Dociu’s GDC presentation there has been growing demand on the forum for the actual footage used in his presentation. One particularly cool ArenaNet staffer, who goes by the name AJ, slaved away yesterday to bring us part one in glorious high definition – though you will have to go directly to their YouTube page to see at full resolution.
The ever pragmatic Shew has also saved out the individual slides from the video and uploaded them to the Guild Wars 2 Wiki page, check those out here.
Massively have also put up an interview with the man himself, Daniel Dociu:
Massively: This project is interesting as well, because it’s an MMO sequel, which is hard to find. Were there specific challenges you had to face when creating the second version of an MMO?
Daniel: Sure. First, it’s always a good idea to step back and evaluate what you’ve accomplished with the first iteration, first generation of the IP, and try to keep the good and be critical about the bad, and build upon. Start with a strong foundation and hopefully develop or expand on previous accomplishments and take it from there. There’s also the expectations that come with a sequel, the fact that you’ve already set the bar pretty high hopefully, and you are under pressure to deliver and surpass your own accomplishments. But that’s a challenge that we are happy to take on.
ArenaNet’s Lead Artist Daniel Dociu gave a presentation at this years Game Developers Convention. His talk was largely on the art direction of Guild Wars 2, and to accompany that he had a selection of rather interesting slides… Though keep in mind that not all of the images are Guild Wars 2 related.
As usual the forum is already buzzing with activity from seeing the new concept art included in Daniel’s slides. Check that out in this thread, the action starts on page 3.
We have four great finds for you today coutresy of Pumpkin Pie and Nevin. Posted on Guild Wars 2 artist blogs are some concept arts for Guild Wars 2! Check the thumbnails out below:
Guild Wars 2 Heavy Armor by Hai Phan
Guild Wars 2 Dragon Armor by Hai Phan
Guild Wars 2 Environment Concept by Richard Anderson
Guild Wars 2 Environment Concept by Richard Anderson
One of our forum posters Pumpkin Pie has stumbled upon some Guild Wars 2 Building Sketches that you’ll want to check out. We’ve uploaded the 6 of them into our Guild Wars 2 Concept Art Gallery. Also see them below:
