Our friends over at Warhammer Alliance have interviewed Art Director Greg Grimsby at EA Mythic. Many of the answers give a lot of interesting insight on the state of Warhammer Online and how the development is forthcoming. Since Greg is the Art Director, many of the questions are focused on just that; art.
How are things coming along with Warhammer Online? What are some of the most recent developments in the project?
Greg: Progress has been amazing these last few months. We have moved past the stage of getting all the core elements in, so now we can polish and tweak the art as needed to ensure we meet our very high quality bar. In terms of recent developments, the final lighting and sky systems are now in and our talented lighting and concept teams are working hard to push the visuals to glorious levels.
How many artists are there on the team, and how are they divided up in terms of functional areas and different categories of work and assets?
Greg: We have over 55 internal artists working on WAR as well as additional resources, such as freelancers we use as necessary. These artists are specialized into a number of art disciplines such as character artists, VFX artists, concept artists, animators, world artists, and UI artists. There are also sub-specialties within some of these disciplines such as tech artists, lighting artists, terrain artists, etc.
Are there any significant differences between the ways the Warhammer art team works compared to its counterparts on Dark Ages of Camelot?
Greg: We have a much greater investment in concept art and terrain art in WAR. The level of detail and artistry our terrain requires must be handled by skilled artisans, where as in the early days of Camelot there was no such thing as a “terrain artist”. Additionally we have a sizable pool of great concept artists that produce the work you see on a monthly basis. Those guys feed the hungry production monster with highly detailed visuals to work off of. Its not that we haven’t done concepts for DAoC, its just the scale and ratios have been much improved on WAR.
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