From concept and design, to in-game and living within the world of Telon; how is it that art is created? I've often wondered what a task it must be to create an expansive, living, and colorful world like what you see in Vanguard. How do you build a city's walls with a mouse, computer and code? It's certainly easier said than done, and the artists on the Vanguard team seem to do it by instinct!

Earlier this week I poked around the office, peering over the shoulders of the many artists within our building to catch a glimpse of what they are working on. The big project, it seems, is the revamping of Khal! Not only are the artists giving the enormous city a splash of color, they're also improving the overall performance of the zone.

Here you see Artist James Rochelle adding some detail to the patterns that will appear on walls in Khal.

Vanguard artist Jeff Damron, uses Maya to create an overhang that flows from the Khal city walls.

Artist Nathan Brock is currently working on a new and improved Minotaur and Hobgoblins for Game Update 3, as well as optimizing numerous NPCs (though he says you won't notice a physical difference as much as an increase in FPS!) During a break from his detailed work, Nathan talked me through exactly how he creates art for the game:

Where I start with adding new art varies from assignment to assignment.  Sometimes I'm creating a fresh NPC that the design department needs for a given area or dungeon.  Sometimes I'm revisiting an older model that needs to be brought up to snuff.  And sometimes I am creating armors for PC's to use.  All of these different tasks usually involve a bit of talking with the party that put in the request to see what they want out of it.  Then I'll move on to doing some sketches to start and solidify the ideas that were passed around.  This part really helps me think both the model and texturing through before hand, which saves me a lot of time.  From there it's on to modeling, texturing, rigging, and eventually getting it into the game.  I won't bore you with the nitty gritty.

Ideas.well they come from everywhere.  It usually starts with a simple request for "X" mob.  After that I do some doodles and start bringing it to life in 3d.  Throughout the process I am consistently going back and forth with the other artists to see what they think of the direction the mob/armor is going.  I get great feedback from them, although sometimes it results in completely scraping what I had, but that's the way it goes.  Starting over on something is sometimes the only way to get the best result.