some of you know me already, some might not. Some might like me, some might not. But this isn't even about me. This is about a guy i don't even know personally... again: Some of you might know him already, some might not. And that's the point. I want to help this guy because i like what he does and i think it's highly unappreciated and not known well enough across the Starcraft community.
The person i wanna focus here on is Phill Berry, a creative mind and user on deviantART, also known as ~Phill-Art.
My goal is to help him catch Blizzards attention because he has some very sick ideas and most of them would fit amazingly for the upcoming and last Starcraft 2 addon called Legacy of the Void. By telling his name there will be some people who already know which guy i was talking about, for those who still got no clue who that guy is and what he could do for Legacy of the Void, i want to help you guys understanding this and show/talk about some of the stuff he made:
So now everyone knows what i was talking about. He came up with some very interesting designs as well as creating some very cool mechanic concepts for units in general. I like most of them very much and i think many if not even all of them are cooler than actual units we have in the game right now and would add significantly depth to the ingame experience for a player. And that's my point.
Because when i look at these pictures that's how i want Legacy of the Void to look like. I want Protoss to be mystical, dark, kind of ancient when they decide to go for the Templar and Void tech and at the same time i want them to have that holy shining aura when they don't do. Oh and jeah... i want Zerg to look scary, creepy and dangerous. Phill showcases both pretty good.
I think he nailed the way the game could or even should look like and my hopes are that WE would help him getting Blizzards attention.
What can i do?
There are several ways how we can get Blizzards attention on this. It's important that you don't only read this thread, maybe agree and just hope that time will help. No... that's not how it works.
There's only one person who can help out here and that is: + Show Spoiler +
Upvote and leave comments here to get the message on the first site of Starcraft on Reddit...Blizzard reads Reddit from time to time. So we have to make sure this thing will catch their attention straight on the frontpage.
You can find several ways how to contact Blizzard directly on this site. Attention: We don't want destructive ctriticism. We just want to show them what they might miss for Legacy of the Void in a peaceful way. So write some kind words ;-)
You may want to go for some Blizzard spamming on their Twitter. Post a link to this TL-Thread and tell them that you want this guy to work for them on Legacy of the Void.
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You don't have to do everything i noticed here, it's ok if you do one of these but ofc even better if you just do everything. The more we do the faster they might get it.
Final note
I appreciate everyone who helps out on this thing. You guys are amazing and all of you are eSport-Heros! Let's try to make something happen... the most positive thing is that you don't do destructive stuff like that "#savehots" thing a while ago, no... you actually help out to possibly make Legacy of the Void look stunning.
Because after Legacy of the Void there won't be another chance to change how Starcraft 2 will look visually. I don't say Starcraft looks bad.. not at all. This isn't one of this stupid Starcraft II is doomed threads. The game is and looks amazing!! BUT, this guy could definitely help to make the game look twice as amazing as it already does.
I never saw those pictures, they are amazing and some concept are nice (the striker is the worst idea ever though)
Some of then would not work at all I guess but I like what you say. Zerg needs look more disgusting, Protoss more mystical and Terran more industrial and rusty
Though I agree blizz can always use some help, I really don't feel like it is a good idea for them to even think about anything otherthan HotS right now. They need to bring people back to the game. That is what BW did and it looks like HotS will do that. Bring this up after everyone is fed up with HotS, because if they aren't I don't know if blizzard will implement LotV.
1. I like his work, but do we even know he wants to work for Blizzard?
2. Are we already focusing on hiring people for Legacy of the Void when HotS hasn't even been released?
3. Has he even applied for the job yet?
Community support is great, but I doubt Blizzard will hire people based on community's positive views of someone. While I agree that his work is great and he'd be a real asset, he should just apply and find out what qualifications Blizzard is looking for.
Additionally, is the job that would suit him even available?
On November 26 2012 02:02 docvoc wrote: Though I agree blizz can always use some help, I really don't feel like it is a good idea for them to even think about anything otherthan HotS right now. They need to bring people back to the game. That is what BW did and it looks like HotS will do that. Bring this up after everyone is fed up with HotS, because if they aren't I don't know if blizzard will implement LotV.
I am pretty sure the creative team doesn't work on HotS at the moment. That's for sure. HotS is about to be released and concept designers do the work at the very beginning. So they already work or will work soon on Legacy of the Void, that's for sure. First come the concepts and ideas, then comes the realization.
It's the same when you buy a car. The concepts are made way earlier than the actual realizations of these. So jeah, it's about time to think about Legacy of the Void, not from the Balancing side of things.. that's true. But that's not even my point. What i talk about is concepts and designs ideas.
This guy would certainly move the art style more in the direction that I would like to see; it's a lot more gritty, dark, and complex than the psuedo-WoW art theme Blizzard seems to have adopted for all of their games at this point. I don't know about a lot of the concepts for the units' functions, but most of them look pretty damn good, and I expect this guy would do even better work if he were paid for it and directly a part of the creative development crew. So insofar as his artistic and creative powers are concerned, I would be quite happy to see him contribute.
Yet...
As a previous poster mentioned, is the position he would fill even available, and does he even know that you are trying to get him a job at Blizzard? I'm not going to start spamming Blizzard to hire somebody if I have no confirmation that a) they actually want to be hired for this particular work and b) Blizzard even has an open position on their development crew.
Yea I don't know where you got the idea that this guy actually want's to get hired and even if,it's up to him to send a application.Blizzard won't hire people based on what a forum tells them .....
On a side note most of that art is nothing like starcraft should be in my opinion.Protoss units are drawn like something from a rpg,don't like the terran concept art at all personally(second one looks incredibly clumsy) and not sure where I would put it,zerg is decent. A stacraft unit should be simple in design and their appearance should derive from their function. I don't think his art,apart from the zerg to some extent,fits the starcraft universe at all.
I agree with op, this guy is awesome. The designs are much darker and what I'd really like to see from sc2. The abilities themselves he suggested all seem really interesting (much more interesting than what I've seen in HOTS so far).
I really like his artwork (that Vindicator looks pretty cool), but I think most of these units would probably not fit too well into the game. That second Terran unit looked very flimsy and un-terranlike and the bane creeper looks like a nightmare to balance.
I think Blizzard already posted the "Dark Templar and Dark High Templar" artwork on the StarCraft fanpage. So the social media team seems to be aware of this artist already.
Nice concept arts but I don't see them "fitting" that well, especially the toss ones. And after all blizzard is a multi billion dollar company, they can get pretty much any artist they want, im pretty sure they don't just hire guys from deviant art to design units but rather: a ) have people design unit concept wise b ) have artist design it art wise c ) have their balance team tweak it d ) have their other art/programing team put it into the game.
I don't know about getting this guy Blizzards attention, but his drawings are pretty awesome and, balance notwithstanding, a lot of the unit concepts are quite intriguing. Thanks for sharing at the very least.
I don't think you should design a multiplayer unit based on this. Single player? Knock yourself out, but for multiplayer these seem to either overlap or be too niche. And if I wasn't reading a starcraft forum, I'd have hard time recognizing these as starcraft units.
Is it pretty good art? Hell yes, but it's not something you should spam Blizzard with.
Really cool pictures though I'm not really a fan of any of the spells besides maybe the pushback (and even that I feel would be more fitting for Terran than protoss seeing as Protoss already has force fields).
I love the artwork in this post (been reading his posts on reddit for awhile) but for everyone slamming the art team at Blizzard, this is artwork from a guy who currently works at Blizz.
The way units are portrayed in-game are likely not 100% focused on the art team (viewability, etc are probably important factors). Tons of SC2 concept art is amazing.
How is spamming blizzards twitter and then coming back to say #savehots was destructive not hypocritical. Not saying either is or is not destructive, but I am currently baffled by the logic.
Can somebody go all Sherlock Holmes for Samwise's Twitter, e-mail or anything like that? I looked but obviously the e-mail isn't public and I found no official Twitter. Kinda getting the feeling some of the TL masterminds might have something there.
On November 26 2012 02:03 Torte de Lini wrote: 1. I like his work, but do we even know he wants to work for Blizzard?
2. Are we already focusing on hiring people for Legacy of the Void when HotS hasn't even been released?
3. Has he even applied for the job yet?
Community support is great, but I doubt Blizzard will hire people based on community's positive views of someone. While I agree that his work is great and he'd be a real asset, he should just apply and find out what qualifications Blizzard is looking for.
Additionally, is the job that would suit him even available?
If Blizzard was looking at this seriously they would probably purchase the ideas from him.
It would be interesting to see a race (in the case of the artist, the protoss) move towards having more powerful, but non-massable units such as this protoss hero or zealot lieutenant kind of idea. Not anything like an item/levelling mechanic, but just leaders of the forces that provide perhaps area buffs or just are stronger focal points in the army. I think that would be pretty cool.
(This is of course influenced by playing Warmachine, where character models can bring huge benefits to a force by their inclusion)
The concept art is really great and fits in with the starcraft art style better than some of the current units do imo, although the in-game mechanics suggested might not be the best as they stand. The sky lancer sounds/looks awesome, but is basically a seeker missile, for example.
On November 26 2012 04:44 ErAsc2 wrote: Really cool pictures though I'm not really a fan of any of the spells besides maybe the pushback (and even that I feel would be more fitting for Terran than protoss seeing as Protoss already has force fields).
Maybe this be solution to toss, weaken the ff and introduce this concept which I really like as well. Hey erik and im santieri ^^. It wont work terran due to MMM and stim being their core army strength. You would have to make this too weak hence making it boring and stale.
This is the problem with the current blizzard scene, they don't do whats fun, they do whats 'balanced'. Throw them into the game and just SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
On November 26 2012 07:52 Danzo wrote: Didn't Blizzard once said they're going to do the minimal work with LoTV, as in adding few or no units?
Many of the concepts are overlapping. For example the Protoss DT. What i was talking about wasn't exactly meant to introduce everything as new units... but they could for example change some of the visuals or update them to the new ones.
Like i said the DT is a good example here. Another thing is that David Kim for example did say a while ago - in an interview - that they aren't completely sure yet about what max-unit-count per race they see to be perfect or if there is something like different units limitations for an RTS.
It's good that the artist gets support and publicity but not sure about promoting him for LotV when HotS isn't even out yet and Blizz needs to focus on that. Does Blizz even need a new artist? I liked how the striker was meant to be a siege unit when it doesn't have anything to lock it down to ground to prevent the recoil from flipping it over, which it does now.
Crazy, i'm kinda shocked at how much attention this thing got.
Gosh i'm not a reddit-pro X__X ... i left the thread alone for 3 or 4 hours without checking for my answer because of the namechange i asked some Mods for. I made a mistake there calling it "WE WANT"... damn man.. there are so many guys hating just about that one single word when the whole topic is the thing i wanted to show them.
Didn't think enough about the decision how to name the reddit thread because of the reason that i spent very much time creating and writing the whole thread on TL as well and searching up for all the stuff... :-(
Unfortunately i just read the answer of the mods that a namechange for a reddit thread is something for an Admin.. so know i had to contact him, so the namechange will take a while until he sees my mail.
I wanna make sure that people stop to hate on this. I posted that i'd like to change the name of the thread like 10 minutes after i created the thread on Reddit. It just wasn't chosen and thought out well enough... i'm sorry for this but i kinda ran out of time after spending so much time for the rest. I just want that you guys know this.
I'm just really tired of answering that hate-responses over and over again... so just be patient until the admin fixes the name the way i wanted it :-S
Those are great drawings and concepts and they have all been posted on reddit before. I don't think Blizzard needs another artist, the guy is talented, but this seems like a petition to get one guy a job, as if he will be the new messiah and change legacy of the void.
I will say I wouldn't mind seeing this guys work in the collectors edition artbook, that will come with the box. or a posters
Pretty dumb unit designs imo, not really a fan. Zealot with 4 blades is something I would have thought was cool at 12 years old.. lets not go Star Wars prequals with our Starcraft please
Good looking units, but why should we spam reddit/battlenet/twitter again? I'm sure, like 100% sure that someone at blizzard has seen his stuff. Like someone in the reddit thread pointed out "Blizzard is already paying people who actually have designed games before.", & I'm sure they have tons of ideas like this already (just look at the extra art they released with WOL). They are not short of good ideas/designs, since they are scrapping most of them to be able to make a harmonious game. There's no point in harassing & spamming blizzard, it'll just annoy them more than anything. All that guy needs to do is send a message to blizz in their "job application" section (which he probably has already done), & wait for a reply. If we all spam reddit/tl/battlenet/twitter, it'll just make blizz think we REALLY think this guy is special, when in fact, he is no better (& I mean no offence with this, please don't start flaming me) than the designers that work at blizz.
I like some of the ideas, but then some of the other ones seem like they're trying to bring the whole 'moba' thing in with RTS. For example the vanquisher seems a little too much like a hero ability in dota 2; and the protoss 'hero' and void walker are also a little too 'moba-y' for me. I do really like the concepts of some of the units such as the upgrade for zealots and some of the others. In the end though I think what a lot of people are saying is true, blizzard should be working on HoTS and not worrying about LoTV. I really hope Blizzard doesn't rush LoTV out and lets HoTS have a good amount of time to be balanced, hopefully longer than 2 years like WoL... But just my two cents. He does some awesome art work and is very creative. So maybe sometime in the not so distant future..
On November 26 2012 09:39 zefreak wrote: Pretty dumb unit designs imo, not really a fan. Zealot with 4 blades is something I would have thought was cool at 12 years old.. lets not go Star Wars prequals with our Starcraft please
This made me laugh, I would rather have General Grievous, than a Zerg Jar Jar any day.