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ArenaNet's Art Director speaks on the artistic direction of Guild Wars
As we anxiously await any morsel of news regarding ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2, it's still nice to hear the occasional interview along the way. Recently, Allakhazam sat down with ArenaNet's Art Director, Daniel Dociu, to talk about his experience in the gaming industry, his evolution at ArenaNet and his visions for Guild Wars. While we get no news of GW2, the interview is interesting nonetheless."We built this art team from a handful of people to somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty people now." Dociu said in the interview. "They have been more or less hand picked from the best talent pool that the industry had to offer. It's a team that I'm personally proud of and very protective of and that's what I would consider that my main contribution to the game."
A brief chat with Guild Wars' chief art director
While Guild Wars has some detractors ("it's not a real MMO", they say) there are a few incontrovertible facts about the game. It's free, it's fast, and it's absolutely gorgeous. The beautiful imagery that we get to enjoy in Arena.net's Tyria stems first and formost from the fabulous art used the series; graphical trickery isn't behind those amazing screenshots. We can blame that fantastic imagery, then, on Guild Wars' art director, Daniel Dociu. Dociu is the subject of a recent interview with the arts and architecture site BLDG BLOG. The site's Geoff Manaugh sat down with the artist for a chat about his work, including his inspirations, background, and how the art informs the game.Daniel offers, interestingly, that he makes it a point to draw his inspiration from anywhere but videogames. The broad input he gets ("we need a castle here") allows him the opportunity to draw from all kinds of different places when doing his work. He states that he primarily draws from architecture, though he's reluctant to shoose any one style or era. "Rather, I just sort of store in my memory everything that has ever made an impression on me, and I let it simmer there and blend with everything else. Eventually some things will resurface and come back, depending on the particular assignment I'm working on." Click through to the article to read the interview or to see more of Daniel's amazing work. If you're intrigued, more of this style of art is available in this Flickr feed or via our recent discussion of Guild Wars' art.[Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
A look behind the art of Guild Wars
Guild Wars art is beautiful. When we were doing our site launch giveaways, the giveaway post for a concept art print was one of the most heavily commented - you folks like their art as much as I do. So you might be interested in an interview over on the CVG/ PC Gamer site with Daniel Dociu, the art director for the series of best selling online games. In the piece, he discusses the innumerable challenges that Arena.net artists have faced in creating the games. The sheer scope of the world and the numerous cultural influences to synthesize were things I expected, but he also notes the important role that art plays in spurring on the writers and designers. As he puts it, "The way that I personally like to work, and the way things oftentimes work out, is that I throw out ideas and propose a possible context that these ideas could work in - a seed for the storywriters to consider."You can also read about his 'role' in a highly notable offline game, Half-Life 2. Dociu, you see, is the visual template for Father Grigori of Ravenholm fame. "Be free, my children!"I had the chance to see a copious amount of concept art for the Arena stable of games when I visited their offices last year. It was amazing to see the way they treated these precious works; the original data is all on a PC, of course, so printouts were what they used for reference and sorting. Their methodology for doing this was distinctly low-tech: they taped them up to the wall. As 3D artists came back over the concept folks' work, they'd just toss the printouts on the ground to indicate they were done. What was left behind was a drift of paper, each page featuring an image worthy of framing in a gaming household. Luckily, you can sample some of that beauty online. Arena's artists are frequent contributors to the ConceptArt.org Forums, and received permission after Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North to post their beautiful works. Make sure you especially check out the GWEN stuff - amazing!
