World of WarCrafts: The WoW-themed art of Semjaza

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It's Monday and I'm feeling artsy -- today, World of WarCrafts staves off the Monday blues with a look at the colorful world of Warcraft fan art.

Artist Semjaza of the Fenris realm (US-H) has a marked talent for creating Warcraft and Warcraft-related artwork with an incredible amount of detail. Even more interesting is that most of this is accomplished without the typical pen, pencil or paper -- Semjaza's an artist of the digital age. Despite the computer-colored art, Semjaza still manages to pull off the kind of heavily-detailed and painterly work you'd expect to see on paper or canvas.

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Check out more about Semjaza and his artwork after the break.

Obviously work of this caliber points at an artistic background. "I've been drawing since forever -- Mom says age 2," Semjaza says. "I went to art college (Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass.) for two years before I figured out 'fine art' wasn't what I liked to do. Being young and foolish, I quit rather than look towards illustration or digital art (which was still pretty new at the time -- this was around 1992; I'm 37). I recently went back to school and received my bachelor of science in game art and design." As for the tools used, Semjaza's work is primarily done with Photoshop and/or Corel on the digital side. "Sometimes I start with a scan from real-life pencil and paper," Semjaza explains. "I use a tablet -- a Wacom Bamboo, to be exact."

What kind of artwork does he focus on now? "I'm a big fantasy genre geek -- Dungeons & Dragons-type sword and sorcery stuff," Semjaza says. "I like to do some sci-fi work as well, though I always come back to fantasy. Once in a great while, for practice, I do self-portraits. Mostly though, as long as it's something you can't see out in your backyard, I like to draw it!"

Semjaza's artwork is definitely not something you'd find in your backyard -- it looks more like illustration or comic art. When asked if he had future plans for his artwork, Semjaza replied, "Long ago, I wanted to do comic books. I'm not opposed to the idea or anything, but I'm thinking more along the lines of illustration or game art (concept stuff, etc.) if I can get the work."

So what drove Semjaza to create Warcraft art? "The Blizzard artists that come up with the look of characters, monsters and places are truly imaginative men and women; they've created a really interesting and diverse 'look' to all aspects of the game from way back to the RTS stuff to Diablo and now WoW," Semjaza replied. "For someone like me, who is really just a beginner despite being an old fart, there's a lot of material to draw from, literally and figuratively. It also gets my ideas rolling when I browse through the work of those artists."

Of course we had to ask -- what's his favorite Warcraft-related subject to draw? "Absolute fave race to draw would be Forsaken -- they're zombies, after all, and zombies are cool!" Yes, yes they are -- as long as they stay off my lawn. Thanks for the look at your work Semjaza! To see more of Semjaza's creations, be sure to check out his gallery on Deviantart.

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 anne@wow.com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.