How to achieve Blizzard style
Can anyone give me some help of Blizzard style, especially in WoW? I am playing WoW for 3 years and it's really breathtaking the environment they do, and the special effects. I am also interest how they made all that characters, armor and weapons.
Replies
Observation, Practice.
Stole it from a game industry mentor podcast but think it holds pretty true
Care to elaborate?
Here is a great example by Slipgatecentral http://vimeo.com/5820395
Thats the basic approach anyways...the style? Just try copying some of their work as close as you can, youll begin to figure out what characteristics make it scream Blizzard. Also, I wouldnt be surprised if someone hasnt dissected their artstyle and blogged about it somewhere, try to google it perhaps
There honestly isn't much more to it than that, besides having the proper skills and understanding of color, light, surface properties and other art disciplines.
You can probably find a few quick tutorials on how to do painted textures, but the rest is up to how dedicated and willing to learn you are.
-m
+1
Have a go, recieve crits, listen to crits.
Yep. This pretty much sums it up!
Also give psychodelic mushrooms a shot. Consume via pizza, tea or whatever then paint.
Post on Polycount. GREAT SUCCESS!!!!
Instead of just asking such a broad question...do what everybody else is saying and just...eye it out...try to match what they do. If you aren't yet comfortable with taking a style and applying it to your own work...pick something simple from WOW, and try to replicate it from scratch. Do that, post it in Pimping and Previews, THEN ask how to fix your work to achieve that style.
I'm not sure what your skill level is, but being able to follow a hand painted, exaggerated style like Blizzard's takes a good eye and skill.
I urge you to try it out and post what you have, then we can better help you.
Edit: Also Cocaine and Strippers
haha if you cant seem to find that filter, look for the make art button. Works just as well.
1. Light sources
Just about every piece of wow Gear and Armor glows! But this is not exclusive to nifty particle effects and lightning, every piece of gear that has an area of origin for such effects is the main light source used for the weapon.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=70180#.
Note at the head of the staff there is a Yellow Power Crystal From this crystal there is a particle effect emitter, but it you look further you will also note that this is the origin of one of the weapons main light sources.
2. Color Color Color!
Keeping with the theme of the Gladiators Energy Staff, you will notice that the light source on this object is Yellow! And the light emitting from this source remains yellow, even on the length of the staff near the grip, you can see that they used the color yellow to add that bit of light and an accent to help pop the model out. It is also very important to note that there is no pure blacks, or pure whites on this model. Every inch of the texture is a color Blues, Yellows Greens, and Reds (all color compliments) The most saturated of colors are on the focal points of the model the Yellow Orb / Light Source, and the rest of the colors are a bit duller so that they draw your eye to the focal point.
Ive lately been trying to do this in my own art, If I realize that I have an area on my piece that could act as a light source, I play off it and do my best to convey where the light would be bouncing off.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mcdrF6OhDmQ/TgnySUED7FI/AAAAAAAAAI4/BqHlJtmTbxE/s1600/TextureClose.jpg
Note the eyes, and the creases in the eye sockets. While this is by no means an amazing piece of work that is of World of Warcraft Caliber, I took note and tried this out, and I was really pleased with the final result and how it made the face pop out a bit more and be convincing. This is definitely something I find myself becoming increasingly aware of and am starting to do more and more.
This doesnt mean you should add an emitting glowing crystal orb to every piece of art you create, but to at least be aware if you have one.
3. Diamonds
Note that there are various patterns in the coloring, for lack of a better term, the color is broken down into Chunks to give the art an illustrated and comic book feel. This is pretty important for creating a piece of art that fits Blizzards current WoW Style.
Heres an image of the comic book version to get the point across. http://www.omarijames.com/Art/Pics/Battle%20Chasers/800x600_bulgrim_cab.jpg
Note that the colors on the war golem are broken down into Fragments, and Crystals, I've also heard this referred to him as Diamonds So if you find that you are blending in your colors when painting, feel free to break it up a bit and give it that geometric broken feel.
Again - if I come off as captain obvious on this post, please feel free to call me out on it and put me in my place ;-) But this was something I wrote sometime back to help some friends out who were getting into creating art for a blizzardy style - it seemed relevant to this guys question so I figured - why the hell not post
If I were to venture a guess at what I think nails down their style:
3 tones of shading (arguably more), large details, bold colours, with no specular.
Impressionistic brush strokes, front/back/top lighting, and high saturation.
Everything should look like it's made out of rock.
Also, try to copy the guys on the WoW team. Guys like Murph, n' Dusty.
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/6030-tutorial-normal-map-conversion-from-purple-to-orange/
Thanks :poly121:
best advice i can give towards the starcraft 2 editor is to simply stop using it. Seriously, they shat all over their community and the tools they gave are simply not worth your time.
Hold your breath till the next expansion comes out.
I haven't heard anything since I've only just sort of started using it. Could you tell me the story on this?
I've managed to get a custom unit in, using the marines skelly. Just need to see about getting one in with my own skelly and then see about animations. Looking at the custom spells and abilities on the mods in custom games it looks like I'll be able to do just about everything I want it to do.
What no one will say (and why no one from blizzard here will post in this thread) is that the starcraft 2 custom community was a total failure due to their rushed development of the title. I think part of it stems from the fact that blizzard is still butt-hurt from the fact that Valve is going to put out the next DOTA, highlighting their inability to profit from fan made product.
The sad reality is the biggest loser here is the gaming community (particularly modders such as yourself). Blizzard is making shittons of money off of exclusive content while the gaming community is oblivious to cool custom content that would have come to bear.
For some. Personally I tend to procrastinate until I see really nice art in games, then I get to work. I get motivated immediately after playing games. Doesnt have the same effect on me as seeing art in WAYWO for some reason.
Well yeah but his post made it seem like we should never play games to avoid getting influenced by them.
Might wanna give this one a try.
In their cinematic trailer, for every expansion, does they also paint the character/creatures to look so damn realistic, or it's just the in game models?