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A Kerrigan animatic shown at Blizzcon, you may remember this scene from StarCraft

One thing that often gets overlooked at Blizzcon is the art panel. The room itself is jam-packed with fans asking all kinds of questions, but press coverage on the interwebs is usually minimal. That needs to change, the press needs to embrace Blizzard's motto of Bigger, Bolder, more Badass.

The magic that Blizzard creates is fueled not only by Chris Metzen, the man behind the stories, but by Samwise Didier and his team of extremely talented artists. I was able to sit in on the roughly 90-minute long panel discussion led by Didier and his minions, I mean colleagues, Allen Dilling (unit design) and Brian Sousa (level design). I left that room with a new found respect for what these guys do every day at their job, and I have to say I was a bit jealous.

After one fan raised his hand and said, "Hey Sam, I just got a text from my friend who says StarCraft II is going to be a trilogy, is this true!?"

Didier responded by saying "What, StarCraft II is a trilogy!?"

Didier of course was joking, and than preceded to josh the fan for not attending the StarCraft II gameplay panel where the monumental announcement was made. However, he used that moment to segue into his talk about how the trilogy will require more pre-renered cinematics as well as a lot more art going forward, and that this would be his department's challenge.

Come see the light

In StarCraft II, Didier said the art team, and especially Sousa, were concentrating a lot more on lighting. Didier recognizes that a lot of fans have complained about how some of the tilesets look too bright, too cheery, and so it was to the skeptics that he directed his speech: space platforms and Protoss' worlds like Shakuras will get darker tilesets because it reflects the mood and atmosphere of that place. Space is a dark place, thus it's dark. Desert levels like Mar Sara are brighter tilesets because sand reflects sunlight and thus to keep the mood and atmosphere consistent those types of tilesets have to be bright.

What's with those Xel'Naga guys?

The Xel'Naga are the ancient mother race that the Protoss descended from and the Zerg are a creation of the Protoss that they lost control over. We never saw the Xel'Naga in the original StarCraft and only have minimal lore to pull from, so you can see what difficulties Didier and his art team faced when trying to create an image in their name.

Dider said the Xel'Naga have been sort of "reverse engineered" from the Protoss and the Zerg. Instead of being forward thinking they had to ask themselves, what would the mother race look like?

We may not find out those answers for some time as the Xel'Naga and the Protoss are slated to be the third installment in the trilogy. However, Blizzard's Rob Pardo did tell us that Zeratul and the Xel'Naga would be a common thread that runs through all three titles, so there's still hope for an appearance in Wings of Liberty.

"Seems like a long time aint it?"

What's the most noticeable difference between the original StarCraft and StarCraft II? Graphics obviously. Back in the day Blizzard had about 12 pixels to create a unit with and also create an animation for it. Today, they have over three times as many pixels to work with and can create multiple animations for one unit.

The upgrade in technology allows for more detailed units, and more detailed units means old units can be re-envisioned. Enter, the "Crackling," Didier's term for his multi-winged Zergling concept that has stirred up quite a reaction from fans over the past year.

Graphics in the original were limiting, this time around, with more freedom, "we're trying to show you why you're getting your butt kicked," said Didier.

Didier also mentioned units like the Ultralisk had been re-envisioned; the result was the "Omegalisk," a monster of an Ultralisk that had tentacles that could fly out and impale units around it. Sadly, like many of the art team's creations, it was scrapped because the developers said it made the game too unbalanced.

Sending it over "the wall"

Every day brings new ideas, some never make it over "the wall," others do and get "thrown back," while some, a small minority of ideas, actually come to fruition in-game. This wall I speak of probably only exists in rhetoric, but the ideas are very much substantive.

Didier and his team of artists will come up with a crazy concept that they really like and they will bring it over to Dustin Browder and his team of developers. Browder will either love it, and try to make it work in-game, or they will reject it because it throws off the balance of the game too much. The latter being the fate of the Omegalisk.

Likewise, the developers will walk over to the artists and say they have this really cool game mechanic they would like to try out but they need the artists to visualize a concept for it. This back and forth, give and take process is what helps mold Blizzard's titles into the masterpieces they are.

All new artwork from Blizzcon: Unit portaits

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