it's Thompson

It's always happened so far, thankfully, but if it didn't people would hear from me. :P

It really depends on the FX. With spells, legendaries, etc., a lot just work right off the bat, very occasionally something takes like five revisions or we just completely scrap something because we come up with a cooler idea later. There's not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to what does or doesn't wind up taking multiple passes, although if there's more robust WoW reference to pull from, the card art's already in (we're getting the card art in sooner and sooner and it's sooooo much fun getting to riff off of it for the FX), things like that, it tends to reduce the likelihood that it's going to wind up with a bunch of revisions. :)

You're completely right about the pack openings being some of the most iteration-heavy. Pack openings tend to be a couple weeks of work and iteration, all told. They're also a little more technically noodly because they're a lot more 3D than a typical card effect, so we're jumping back into Maya more, doing more animations on top of the particle FX themselves, stuff like that.

Stoked you like the Mean Streets one! That was the first one I got to do (Charlene le Scanff did the base art for it), they're always loads of fun. :D

He's always like that and it's glorious.

Also, we have a roster of people with noteworthy laughs in the office, and they're all naturally giggly. So every once in a while one of them starts laughing, then someone else joins in, and from there the contagion spreads and in a few minutes we have this giggle-cacophany covering half the office. It's super distracting and always hilarious.

Arfus is vv goodboye. <3

There is usually a brief or basic outline. However, if we feel that we can add something that will enhance the piece and have it add to the overall experience that is always encouraged!

What's your favorite FX to do, for example gold card animation or special animations when legendaries are played. What's your least favorite to do, whether it's because it's a pain to do or you just don't like the visual of it?

Favorites are kind of a potshot, most of it just comes down to unexpected inspiration (Wickerflame and Elise the Trailblazer were probably my favorites for opposite reasons - Wickerflame just clicked and took less than a day; for Elise, I was so stoked about the art, I knew what I wanted to do but was chipping away at it on and off for like a month trying to get it right, but I'm really happy with how she turned out and so I feel like I won, dammit :P). In general, though, I really like doing the entry animations for minions with well-established lore, just because there's so much to work with and try to re-create in a Hearthstone way, and things that are trying to communicate something really specific gameplay-wise, because those are always a fun sort of half-design half-art puzzle.

Least favorites are just the ones where I have no friggin' clue what to do; every once in a while there'll be one that turns into a slog of revisions just hoping to find something that sticks. A lot of times that works out really well too though, because it forces me to get creative and it turns into something cool and different that I never would have considered if there'd been an obvious answer. :)

Stomp.

To put it simply, the game design team comes up with a card concept based on set needs. The art team then writes up art briefs based upon game designs directions and send those briefs to our card artists. The artist then submit a sketch, color rough and color final making any needed revisions along way. Once the art is approved, we put the image into the game engine and start the process of animating the golden cards.

We here at Blizzard are always looking for amazing artists! If you're looking for a full time position please check out https://careers.blizzard.com. The Hearthstone art team also review freelance portfolios submitted to: [email protected] and contact artists who we think would be a good fit.

We leave it up the individual artist but approximately 90% of the card art is painted digitally and 10% is painted traditionally.

She is an undead female Dwarf. The horns are part of her helmet. Something kind of like a Vrykul would wear.

Everyone on the team loved Snowflipper penguin. I think it really helps to have some fun characters like that to balance out all the seriousness of the Lich King and the Death Knights. The illustrator Matt Dixon was also so proud of that art he did a variant of that character just for the the HearthPwn community. Check it out here!

The creative process is really collaborative between art and design. For example, I remember not wanting to have all the mounts in The Grand Tournament be horses so I pitched the idea of having creatures like "Muklas Champion" and "Tuskarr Jouster" riding a hippo and a turtle and the design team said: "go with it". When I asked Brode what he thought "Skycap'n Kragg" should be riding and he said: "A giant parrot" and I loved the idea. Another example is how the art team will pitch creature ideas for a set during the concept art development stage. I remember design needing some smallish creatures for the Journey to Un'Goro expansion and Jerry Mascho wanted to draw some cool turtle folk creatures. Design loved his drawings and that's how Tortollan appeared Hearthstone.

There is actually a range of art styles in Hearthstone. On one side of the spectrum we have super cute images like "Snow Flipper" penguin but on the other side we still have some pretty menacing art like Ragnaros or the nine Death Knight heroes. We decided not to go super cute for the Death Knight Heroes as it seemed to take away from what those particular characters needed. So, to answer the question, it really depends upon how we want to cast a character and how much we want to dial up the cute.

This can happen from time to time as the set goes through final design, but we often get to revisit the resulting pool of art for future sets. No art goes to waste!

KING KRUSH!!!!

"Webweave" is amazing. I still can't quite figure out how that animation was created to allow for multiple variations of the string pattern! 0__o

The standard illustration is completed first and then given the golden treatment. The focus in each case depends on the type of card in question to make sure to highlight whether it is a Minion, Spell, Weapon or Hero. The resulting golden animation should add a sense of value and excitement to the card.

For the Art: "Archmage Antonidas" For the Visual Effect: "Brawl" For it's usefulness in my deck: I tend do judge a card based on either of the above (professional pitfall) so yeah... I am a bad player.

The theme for each set is always one of the defining features and as such generally involve much discussion.

Often we tend to look at the mechanics or keywords that we want to highlight in the set to possibly inform a direction. (Curse of Naxxramas helped highlight Deathrattle, while Journey to Un'Goro celebrated the Adapt mechanic).

Similarly we often will look to some of our favorite content from WoW and try to offer a unique or unexpected twist to the content (One Night in Karazhan and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan are good examples of this). The internally developed style guide for each set will definitely help guide the aesthetic for a given set, but ultimately the personal styles of the freelance artists will really help expand on the theme in ever-surprising ways.

Ultimately we continue to stay true to one of our guiding principles which is "Delightful Surprise", and this extends to consistently developing exciting new themes for not only our players but also the team to work on!

Q: Ben- As the art director, do you do any of the drawing yourself or do you primarily make sure your department is on the same page as each other as well as other departments?

A: Initially as the first artist hired on the team I was responsible for all of the initial concept and iteration involved in developing the look of the game. At the time the game shipped I had painted all of the 2D art/textures in the game and a couple of the cards as well ("The Coin" and "Rexxar" initially).

These days I am fortunate to work with a super talented team who have taken the game to new heights, and as a result my days are spent working to maintain a sense of continuity to all the art that goes into the game, and helping develop content with some of the supporting teams at Blizzard (Cinematic, Marketing etc.)

I do continue to paint each and every set logo for our expansions as I love working on those. ;)

The boards are actually painted as full illustrations and then projected onto the models that are created with that illustration as a blueprint. It was tricky at first but once the modelers got the hang of it, it really unlocked our ability to help push the proportions and as a result the style of the game even further.

If you were to rotate the game board to any other view than the one presented in game it would look like Picasso modeled the corners ;)

Our titles are equal...But I'm older...I don't know I am confused.

1. No regrets honestly. Art will always be a subjective endeavor and as such opinions will vary that said there are those pieces that certainly hit the nail on the head when it comes to capturing the ever evolving Art Style of the game

2. I'm going to let Hadidjah answer that one ;)

3. That the internal art team is solely responsible for the art found on the cards themselves. While we try to find the time to do at least one piece in every set, much of the art created has to do with the assets that make up the game as a whole: the boards, card backs, user interface pieces, logos etc.

4. My favorite piece is by far Archmage Antonidas. So much so that I bought the original painting from the artist. the fun part about that piece for me is that the artist (Wayne Reynolds) added a stone with a swirl on it to his belt items long before we ever picked the Hearthstone swirl as our icon. Serendipity...

STOMP!

I would, yes.

I was tasked with the early conception of the nine Death Knights heroes. First let me say as a concept artist and an avid World of Warcraft player, it was absolutely awesome to work on this! I definitely had a great deal of freedom but there are a few things we had to keep in mind. Making sure the hero was still recognizable was key, like we couldn't overkill them. We accomplished this by doing our best to maintain the overall silhouette of the original hero. A good example is Garrosh's pauldrons, they went from bone to ice.

Absolutely!

He is exactly as jolly and exuberant in real life as he is online! #100

There is a great deal of competition in the entertainment concept/illustration field right now thus making it fairly difficult to get your foot in the door. However there is always a way! Always! Dedication, patience and being able to critique your own work is key.

I wrote a note a few years back that details my journey to Blizzard. I’ll just paste it here for the sake of convenience:

So since I began working at Blizzard, I have been swamped with questions on how to get in and if I could suggest a point of contact. I understand the constant barrage because as I can tell you from experience, Blizzard is an AWESOME place to work! I personally think that there are many avenues to getting your foot in the door, but I will share with you my own and what worked for me.

It kind of began last November just after Blizzcon 2013. I was so amped by what I saw, especially the Warlords of Draenor debut, that I just couldn't wait to go paint me an ORC!!! So I did and got some really cool feedback by many folks here on FB (even some people that worked at Blizzard). One in particular was a really good friend of mine and previous co-worker who had just started working there a few months prior. He shared how much he absolutely loved working at Blizzard, and after seeing my painting, he highly encouraged me to consider applying as well. Personally I had always had aspirations of working there someday, and he had me convinced that now was the right time. I decided to begin putting together my portfolio and he shared as much helpful information as he could along the way. Now, please keep in mind that he is someone I'd worked with before and who was also a good friend. I really don't think it's ever a good idea to just blindly hit up people that work for Blizzard and expect them to go above and beyond for someone who is a complete stranger. I have had that happen to me numerous times since working at Blizz and it is definitely not good form.

First thing you should do is visit: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/ and thoroughly read through that. Also watch the video, it's EPIC and inspirational! While you are there, look at the job openings and see if any of the listed positions fit your skill set. I think I applied to 4 different open positions there and waited for a response. Now the response time is usually determined the same way it is at most companies, by how urgently they need the position filled and the hiring pace of the department/team you applied for. Personally, that wait is a nightmare for me. So I decided to do whatever I could to help move the process along faster. This leads to my next step.

GET NOTICED! As I said above, sitting around and waiting for a response was maddening to me. So I decided to try and get my work noticed. I drew Blizzard related fan art and shared it via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, CGhub and Reddit. I then compiled all of it on a portfolio website dedicated to my Blizzard aspirations with a very unique url ;). I wasn't sure if they would think I was a crazy stalker artist, but I had to keep it real and that url said it all! It seems to have worked out famously.

Finding the time to put together a custom portfolio may be easy for some, but for me it was quite the challenge. The only time I had available to work on this was in the evenings and on the weekends because I was currently employed as a full time senior concept artist. I really enjoyed that job and still have a great deal of respect for my team there. So I had to find a balance that allowed me to create Blizz art and that also wouldn't totally burn me out and hamper my work performance. My silver lining was having a very understanding family who didn't give me grief about all the work I was putting in, but rather encouraged me along the way.

Now here's how I wound up on the Hearthstone team. I recall that I wasn't playing Hearthstone when it initially came out due to the fact that I was using all my free time to draw ORCS and Draenei. However when I saw the advertisement for the Hearthsteed, I figured why not? So I hopped on with the plan of getting my 3 wins to obtain the mount and logging off.... but there I sat several hours later absolutely sucked into the awesomeness that was Hearthstone. SO much in fact I decided to do some relative fan art that consisted of a few card backs and a gameboard. I then thought ZOMG are they hiring for this team!?! They were! Interestingly enough, my Hearthstone fan art was first noticed by a Blizzard headhunter that contacted me before they realized I had actually applied for the position. The rest as they say, is history.

Good Luck to you all! If you want something bad enough and are willing to dedicate the time and energy into achieving that goal, anything is possible!

I see it more as an opportunity to breath a little more life into the character via a very dynamic pose or facial expression.

I think all card art have their special little challenges, however my most difficult card art is yet to be released. Stay tuned! ;)

My favorite card back is the Cupcake card back...I like cupcakes!=D

The Blizzard Career site is definitely the best way to get your art/resume on our radar. It’s also great because you will have an active profile in our system, allowing you to apply to other relative open positions easily.

You should send your resume and a link to your current portfolio. If there is something additional or specific it will be noted in the posted job details.

stomp...

It's a challenge, but it's a challenge that makes working on the game fun and unique. The stories we are able to tell in Hearthstone are basically "What If...?" tales in Azeroth that gives a lot of flavor to the game. We have the freedom to explore crazy ideas like a disco party in Karazhan, and then turn 180 degrees to show all of our heroes die in Northrend. The vibe and flavor of the art can change, but our core principles are consistent on the art side. My favorite part of working on the team is hearing what Design's first thoughts are for a new expansion. That really gets us excited... finding ways to make the new theme standout, and make it feel truly Hearthstone is really rewarding.

All of the disciplines within the Hearthstone team have a huge stake in the creation of each release. On the art side, we typically go through an early process of gathering reference and doing quick exploratory sketches with the Design team before committing to a style guide and visual direction. After that, the boards, card backs, card art, card FX, card goldens, Mission UI, Tavern Brawl illustrations and hero skins (and more) all go into production.

When we send out the artist brief, it typically includes all of the relevant info so the artist has context. I've had situations where I needed to take a second round at the sketch stage, since the Design team made the card cost higher/made the minion more powerful. We view all cards through the same lens. We try to match the art to the power level, vibe and flavor of the minion and set, while still making every card feel epic.

My favorite is Twin Emperor Vek'lor from Old Gods. "The feast of souls begins now!" He seems pretty confident :)

The minion frame definitely gives artists a challenge since the tokens are fairly small in-game. We always strive to make sure that the illustration reads well when small and that there is enough separation between the character/creature and the background elements to make the minions easy to digest quickly in-game. It's satisfying when the art hits that sweet spot as a full illustration, but also reads well in-game.

It works both ways. Sometimes we talk about a certain creature we'd want to see in a new set and then game design will figure out the card mechanics after the art comes in. Other times the game designers have a very specific card design in mind that the art team will follow but the process is very collaborative.

Luckily we have a lot of different ways to influence the color palettes based on class colors or spell colors, which helps give variety to the set overall. Especially with the Death Knight types, those three kits' colors found their way into the card illustrations (blood = red, unholy = green, blue = frost) pretty often. There was also a lot of great reference in Northrend to pull from that isn't exclusively blue and white, so much content from the past to inspire us!

Hi Pickksil,

The process is really democratic. If you can create art in the same style and quality of the art you see in the game then you are on the right track. I would suggest creating several Hearthstone style card illustrations and mock them up in the oval frame. Then email your work samples to: [email protected]. In addition, my team mates have also answered similar questions - definitely check them out!

Hard to put an actual percentage to it, but each and every expansion for the game (including the classic set) have benefited from a Blizzard artist's involvement. We love that so many artists across the company enjoy contributing to the game!

The time it takes to complete any given piece varies greatly and depends on the artist in question and their personal schedules.

Most card art takes anywhere from a few days to around a week with feedback, but it can vary based on subject matter, artist schedule, coffee levels, etc. The new hero illustrations take a little longer, since they're much bigger and more involved. The steps are typically in a few stages...

1.) a few rough composition sketches, one is chosen to move forward with 2.) a color sketch, start to figure out the lighting and materials 3.) color finals and then additional tweaks and polish based off art director feedback.

MY favorite is easily the one that has the....heeeeeey wait a min!

Thanks for the question pickksil! I replied to a very similar question above that I think may answer some of your questions. You can find that response here My journey to Blizzard

• You can't be annoying asking about one of my favorite things! :P I definitely want to keep updating them, but it's a passion project that has to happen outside the main schedule, since all the new content needs to take priority and look cool, so it kind of happens when it happens. I love getting the chance to work on them though, especially the ones that have a ton of lore to them to pull ideas from (like, with Deathwing it was a matter of narrowing down what to do rather than coming up with something). :)

• I'm a wee bit biased towards moar FX, especially when there's an awesome opportunity for story or flavor, but part of what I like about Hearthstone is how clean the art style style is, and I think having a core set of smaller FX that we reuse a lot lends itself well to that. I think it helps keep things really easy to read since most people have a decent sense of what the holy heal/buff, a Fireblast-sized fireball, etc. imply gameplay-wise. We always try to make sure we get a lot of the unique feel of each set into the FX, both in one-off FX for really big spells and minions, and in smaller FX that we'll get some reuse mileage out of for that set and probably never again afterwards.

Ultimate Infestation, specifically, was slated for its own effect, but unfortunately we didn't get the chance to do a unique super-version. We like to try and make sure that all the FX going in are nice and polished, rather than rushing in more things that might feel a bit slipshod at the very end. :)

For runes/symbols/etc., I tend to hunt down class-related stuff from WoW to try and keep things consistent, and because someone way more talented than me already came up with some sweet symbols for me to steal (Krul and Bloodreaver's are both from Warlock spells or quests... I forget specifically what Bloodreaver was from, but Krul's are from one of the the first Warlock/Voidwalker quests). They're not ripped wholesale, I simplify them a bit so they fit a little better into the Hearthstone style, but I like referencing WoW when there's an opportunity.

That is a deeply personal and important question, thanks for asking! When I started I was all-in on Squirtle, then for a while I really wanted to be a Grass trainer so I switched to Bulbasaur, and eventually I settled on Charmander.

At this point I just trade all three onto one account.

There is no singular path but here are several things that I know have worked for others in no particular order. Create art every day, work on many of the online tutorials, go to local life drawing workshops, look at artwork you enjoy and want emulate and then put that next to the art you are currently creating. Try to be specific in what the differences are. Then work on the parts that don't meet your expectations. Also, go to art events, post your art on online forums and develop a small group of trusted artist friends who you can share your art work with and just generally inspire one another. Most of all create art for the sheer joy of it.

;)

<3

Actually, the board for Knights of the Frozen Throne was the most difficult thing for me to conceptualize into visual art, compared to other boards I've worked on. Trying to pick a few areas from Northrend/Icecrown to focus on that sold the vibe of Death Knights and Arthas, but still felt like Hearthstone and looked good as a board element, was initially more difficult than I imagined.

My favorite card back is the Warlords of Draenor card back from a while back! I love the combo of the splintered wood and chunks of rusted out iron.

It happens both ways actually.

Often the Design team has very specific goals with a card design that requires the art description be written in a specific way to visually express their idea.

Other times the card design is of a more general nature and art description is written with less restrictions.

1. Re: FX. How long does it take to make an entirely new card animation (like Deathwing for example).

It completely depends on the animation, honestly. On average, I spend 1-3 days on an entrance. Some just work and it's less than a day start to finish (Wickerflame fell into that category). Others - mercifully rarely - might take a week or multiple revisions over the course of several weeks, either because we don't feel it's right yet or because it's really elaborate and just takes more time to get all the pieces working together. Deathwing was me chipping away at it over the course of a few months when I had free time, but if you lumped it all into one, I'd guess maybe four days?

There are also some, like Curious Glimmerroot, that we know are going to take ages, because it's a ton of collaboration between Design, engineering and FX. But they're fun too, just getting to work so closely with everyone and trying to hone it down to the right thing. :)

1. Silver Hand Murloc, but it's really hard to choose. <3

This gets asked a lot so I hope you don't mind a little bit of copy-pasta. :)

I definitely want to continue adding them! It happens rather slowly because all the new content needs to take priority and look cool (and any legendary entrance takes a fair bit of time to get looking good, running well on everything, and not creating a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation for people's download sizes as we add more and more of them). But Classic legendary entrances are the first thing I go do when I do have a bit of free-ish time at work, and it's really fun getting to revisit them. I also like to think the entrances add an nice element of specialness and value to the cards that ideally (eventually) all legendaries would have - every legendary is going to be someone's favorite, and I don't want their card to be the one getting left out in the cold. :)

(This is a bit of a copy-paste from the last time I talked about goldens, hope you don't mind. :))

We try to keep to a (verrrry rough) hierarchy of 'loudness' in golden animations. This all gets broken constantly, because maybe a piece is really freaking cool, someone is just super inspired by or in love with a given piece... but we try to roughly kinda-sorta adhere to it. Spells get to be the loudest - in terms of the speed of the animations, brightness, etc.- because they're only ever seen in your hand or as the big card when they're played. Minions come after that, because they're on the board and generally the stars of the show. Weapons are a bit lower key than minions. And hero portraits are the hopefully the subtlest, because they're always there, the whole game, every game. We also try to keep the attention on the subject of the art piece - so if it's a spell we draw the attention to the spell (ez mode), for minions and heroes we're trying to highlight and draw the eye to the character (can get to be a tricky balancing act if the minion is casting some crazy spell, for example), etc. - and we try to avoid doing anything that makes it feel like a completely different piece of art (not going to heavy on ambient stuff that wasn't there before, adding in big chunks of new colors, etc.).

My favorite effect that I've gotten to work on is probably either Wickerflame or Elise the Trailblazer's entrance, but it's a little like choosing a favorite pet. Favorite cardback is definitely the disco one, Charlene and Nick (base art and animation, respectively) totally killed it with that one. Favorite board is probably Mean Streets, I just love how much distinct color and personality Jerry and Zwick got into each of the corners. :)

Probably a toss-up between Silver Hand Murloc and Lyra. I'm bad at choosing between adorable go-get-'em and otherwordly badass.

I love how different each set is - I know for me it makes for a ton of variety in what I'm working on but always gives me a true north to point to if I'm worried something's starting to wander thematically astray. And it's hard to get bored when every four months everything changes and you've got a brand new set of art pieces and challenges to play with. :)

Within each set, at least on the FX side, at some point there's always definitely a challenge to keeping everything feeling cohesive without getting samey - I never realized how emotionally distressing trying to find a fourth way to put a dinosaur on a board or quickly shatter ice was until I had to do both.:P We (half-)joke about how Old Gods was the goo-and-tentacles FX set, Karazhan was the disco-sparkle set, Mean Streets had the three distinct families, Un'Goro was the camera shake set, and Frozen Throne was the ice set, and I already tease Design with my guesses for what the universal FX of the next sets will be. But the jokes are only fun to make because we love how unique each set is and getting to run wild in those brand new settings.

To kick things off there's a brainstorm where a couple of the designers, artists, and possibly some other interested people will look at each piece of art and pitch around ideas for what could be happening in the animated version. Most of us know roughly the technical limitations that we're dealing with and will brainstorm with that in mind (although our technical artist, Kyle, wrote an absolutely amazing new version of the goldens shader that has an insane amount of flexibility, so that this point there are way, way less limitation than there used to be, it's wicked cool), but there's usually someone in the meeting who isn't really very familiar with the goldens tools and limitations as well. They're pretty fun to have around, because they come up with crazy impossible ideas that sound really cool, and then it's on whoever's doing goldens (usually Nick, because he's a goldens wizard) to try and figure out how to take this impossible thing and somehow trick the goldens shader into doing... approximately that.

The goldens are implemented directly in Unity, like most of our stuff, and are powered through a shader that has about a bazillion settings to mess with to get all the textures layered together and animated. Nick's got a pretty crazy system that I don't think any of the rest of us really understand, but we just sort of let him do his thing and then we get things like Humongous Razorleaf and Bomb Squad, so it's all good. :P

This article is a mostly-philosophical overview of the goldens process, but the breakdown of the utilization of the different mask channels in that first 'Creating All That Glitters' section is really core to how we build out goldens. :)

Hopefully that's helpful - if there are any questions that come out of that feel free to ask!

Even Angrier Chicken gets this sweet crested 'fro.

Furious Chicken get a robot wing and a giant truck.

Greetings, friend!

I can only speak for the FX side, but Arfus is probably one of my favorite entrance animations, and it was also one of the more collaborative, which was pretty cool. I was super excited to do his entrance (because pupper), but the way the schedule shook out I wound up having to hand him off to John Zwicker. Zwick took a first pass at it but didn't have any really strong ideas he wanted to chase, and when we were chatting about it I mentioned how I'd been thinking about tossing a bone onto the board from offscreen and then having the minion token jump after it. Zwick took that, dropped the bone from the card instead, and replace the jumping token with the lil' ghost-corgi model. So I think the end result was way better and cuter than either of us would have come up with on our own. :)

1. Grow beard.
2. All-in on either cheeky smile or stern dad-stare.
3. Become art god.
4. Profit?

We all try to conscious of performance right from the get-go, so fortunately it gets to be enough of a habit to stop feeling like a limitation. :) Overdraw is sort of something you're scared of no matter what platform you're working on, but it's super-death on mobile, so there's some extra incentive to be conscious there. I think the one that always surprises people the most is that we use very very few flipbook textures in Hearthstone's FX - they're a really natural fit for such a painterly game, but we try to keep our FX textures really small (again, especially important on mobile), so there's very rarely a case that's worth tanking the massive flipbook texture when we could get something close with a dissolve, a more carefully animated set of smaller particles, things like that.

We also have an amazing technical artist, Kyle Harrison, and he does a lot to help keep us from feeling limited as well - he's set us up with a lot of really efficient shaders to give us more wiggle room performance-wise, written a couple of really wonderful tools to extend what Shuriken can do, things like that, and those make a big difference for us as well. At the end of the day, I very rarely feel like the technology is stopping me from achieving something with an effect that I wish I could. :)

Hopefully that answered your question, if it created even more feel free to let me know. And really glad that you enjoy the FX, thank you! :D

Not Arfus?

All seriousness though (this is a very serious matter to me), I think Arfus, Gnomeferatu and Happy Ghoul were all pretty cute in their own ways, but Snowflipper Penguin's nearest actual challenger probably isn't until the Potato Elemental.

Hey there! Sorry for the late response, I wanted to make sure I didn't rush an answer to you and miss something. :)

I approach VFX a lot like animations that have to communicate gameplay, so I usually start by really roughly blocking and keyframing the whole thing out (if it's going to have a direct gameplay impact, this is always where I start - is it single-target or AoE, how powerful is it and how fast does it need to be, what's the base class or element that I should be basing the palette off of, etc.?; if it's a legendary animation then it's a little more of just a straight up mini-story kinda keyframe of major beats) with just a few particle emitters, a loose animation clip if I'm gonna need one, an existing effect if there's one that works to stub in. Once I'm feeling good about the gameplay clarity, timing, space/real estate it's taking up, and basic palette (in order of how much importance I'm going to place on getting them right up front), I'll start swapping materials and textures for final ones that work for the overall and internal shapes of the effect, layering in more emitters and secondary elements, and noodling the motion, color over life, etc. of individual emitters. If there's an actual character/token animation in all this, it gets fairly refined pretty early on (probably as soon as I'm feeling good about the effect blockout), as it's generally a really central pillar of the whole effect. As the effect gets more detailed I'll usually go through everything, including the base stuff from the blockout, and do a second pass on the color palette to make sure everything's looking nice and feeling like one cohesive effect. I test in-game a lot to make sure nothing's wandered off course and become unclear, that nothing's dragging on unnecessarily, anything like that.

It doesn't have any notes because I suuuuuck and have been putting off properly noting it up for months now, but here's the PDF of a VFX talk Jason Keyser and I gave about the artistic principles we use for building our VFX. The sequence on those slides full of images is generally an underwhelming version, an overwhelming version, and then the shipped version. But, here's the gist of it:

• Gameplay First: Your FX should always be complementing and enhancing the gameplay. Exactly what this means is completely dependent on what your game needs - a turn-based game, a twitchy real-time game, and an environment-based exploration game will probably all need very different things out of their FX, and you're only going to know exactly what those needs are by having a good understanding of the gameplay and communicating well with your designers and other devs. I find it really helpful (and fun) to approach the game as much from a design perspective as an artistic one, and always keeping both halves in mind so I'm not accidentally drawing an effect out too long, obscuring too much screen, etc. just because it makes the effect look cooler. :P

• Shape and Area of Effect: Area of effect is a hugely important part of any gameplay-impact effect, pretty much because of what it says on the box - it tells people what area they can expect to be affected, so they can decide whether or not they want to be standing there. Shape plays into this a lot, a fair bit because you can use cool shape elements in AoEs to maintain a clear area without just throwing a rectangle on the ground to indicate that 'effect go here', but also because shape can also so a lot to direct the eye, tell you a lot about whether an effect is friendly or not, etc. If you, say, take a look at Frozen vs. Immune - they're both essentially a light blue overlay, relatively little motion and what is there is very slow, but one is covered in spikes and is relatively noisy/high-detail, while the other is very big, soft shapes and textures and the only notable noise is a few equally soft, smooth wisps around the edges. And they really feel negative and positive, based pretty much entirely on shape and noise frequency.

• Contrast and Focal Point: Contrast is a great way to draw focus to the most important elements of an effect - for most games/ability FX the bright core of an effect is the clear 'no touchy' part or the peak of a build-up that you really should have run away from by now, but you can use it as a come-hither for environmental FX, dropped buffs, things like that as well (or, of course, swap it around and have sweet black holes everywhere). Really great way to get players looking where they ought to be looking, and keep it clear which parts of your effect are going to actually affect the game, and what's just there for flavor and to look pretty.

• Color and Identity: There are two major ways I like to use color. For something where a super quick read is important, you can lean on established or real-world palettes (red fire and green leaves will read in a quarter second no problem - swap the two and you'll need well-established lore for people to be able to understand the same shapes as quickly; liquid is in this goofy place where real-world connections like blue water, black oil, red blood and green acid all require a lot of prior world-building to break players of). On the identity side, you can dedicate single colors or color palettes to a given character, class, mechanic, story element, whatever you want, to create a clear connection between that palette and the source (I lean really heavily on color in reinforcing Hearthstone class identities). General color theory also falls in this category, just for the sake of makin' your palettes look good. :)

• Timing and Threat Level: Timing can be exploited as a very gut-level way to make the intent or threat level of your FX clear. FX full of frenetic motion tend to look more aggressive, something with smooth but still fast-paced motion might look more energizing, something slower can look either soothing or burgeoning and ominous, depending on how you want to play it. One of my favorite shorthands here is the heartbeat test - make the overall pace faster than a heartbeat rhythm if you want the effect to feel unfriendly, slower if you want it to feel friendly and safe. On an overall FX sequence, rather than discreet elements of an effect, you can start really playing into more of the gameplay and story elements, depending on how long of a build-up an effect has, how fast it's going to resolve, what the falloff after it's done its thing. I also love Disney's 12 Principles of Animation - a lot of them can be applied directly to FX as-is or with just a tiny amount of rejiggering. Ones such as Slow In Slow Out, Arcs, and Secondary Action are really wonderful for getting your FX to feel smooth and organic, while Anticipation, Staging, and Follow Through can be huge for overall gameplay (think broadcasting a skill that's about to get cast, making it clear where it's coming from and going to, leaving clear falloff so you can spot the source or understand what just went down even if you missed the actual impact of the effect, etc.).

As for the education - I learned all of my FX stuff on the job (I was a technical artist and an environment artist at other companies previously, and started helping out the FX team) and in my free time from online tutorials. I really don't think you need a degree, you just need to be good at what you do (you'll be very hard-pressed to find a game art job that requires a degree). I got a degree in game art and design, but I wouldn't really recommend it unless you really need the structure of going to school. And we never covered FX even in passing - even now, very few schools have even a single class dedicated to FX. As a bonus, the self-taught route is about $120k cheaper, so that's pretty awesome. ;)

I imagine you've already seen at least a few of these, so I apologize for any redundancy, but hopefully at least some will be new and helpful:

• RealtimeVFX is a really great and active game FX forum, there are all levels of FX artists on there and they're always game to give feedback and guidance.

• imbueFX is Unreal-specific, but goes over a lot of really cool stuff incredibly thoroughly - Bill Kladis is one of my favorite tutorializers and a big part of how I was able to learn enough about FX to get a proper job doing it. :)

• [Gabriel Aguiar]() has a playlist of FX tutorials specifically for Unity that he's been updating regularly for quite a while now.

• Jason Keyser does loads of high-level FX process and philosophy videos and they're all amazing.

• Leroy Kevin did a bunch of absolutely gorgeous FX in Unity and has released all of the project packages for people to download and pick apart.

Anyways, hopefully that helps and if you have any more questions please feel free to ask! And hit me up if you ever have some FX you want to show off, I'm always stoked to have more people to talk shop with!

As far as animations - I was chipping away at Elise the Trailblazer on and off for like a month... I knew exactly what I wanted to do for her the moment I saw her art, but getting all the little moving pieces working together and feeling just right took quite a while.

Curious Glimmerroot was different in that it's a relatively simple effect that just needed to communicate something very specific. But that needed new tech from engineering (which I would then grab and iterate on the FX until I found something else we needed, hand it back off to engineering, etc.) and lots of feedback from Design to make sure it was saying exactly what we wanted it to. It was most of a few weeks of iteration and handoffs - made me really grateful that our designers and engineers are so fun to work with. :D

First off, sorry for the late response… I’d typed most of it up and accidentally closed to tab, and was too cranky to come back to it right away. :P

• Haha, I can dig some real talk time. The reuse is intentional, yes, and largely for the consistency reason that you mention - everyone knows roughly what to expect gameplay-wise from a holy heal/buff, a halfboard fire AoE, a small fireball, etc., and it makes for a quick read while still having a cool visual to reinforce the numbers. I also think having a core set of smaller FX that we reuse a lot lends itself really well to maintaining the clean and simple art style of Hearthstone. There are some other positive side-effects - it frees us up a ton to really polish up the unique FX that we do make each set (and to do more of them, where we can really max out on set- or card-specific flavor), it’s really useful for keeping the download size… well, less big, - but quick-read clarity and a clean base aesthetic are the big ones. Legendary animation updates happen whenever I have enough net free time to turn it into a new animation, which is unfortunately rare, but they’re my first go-to when that free time does crop up. It does mean that even I don’t know what the timeline is though. :P

• I mean, I always want to improve everything, all the time, but I’m pretty much full-time on FX these days, and I can’t volunteer someone else to update all the goldens to the new fancy-pants tech ^no matter ^how much ^I want ^to. It would have to go in the same passion project bucket as classic legendary animations, and there's not a whole lot of free time in between expansions to chip away at them. We’ve done goldens updates to a few one-off cards before, so never say never, but for my time specifically, my main retcon priority for now is classic legendaries.

• Thank you! I can’t wait to get more of them done and in the game! :D

At some point midway through the year, there's a team-wide e-mail for people to suggest names for the next year. The initial offerings are pared down by the Directors, and the shortlist is sent back out to the team for final voting. Depending on how many votes each name got, the voters then choose champions from amongst their numbers to represent their name. These champions then fight to the death in glorious combat, and the victor's name is chosen for the upcoming year.

This is also how we determine what job openings we're going to have that year.

Thanks! :D They're absolutely something I want to keep doing; they just have to happen when I have free time in my schedule (so that all the new content gets proper love and looks as good as it can), and that's... quite rare, so they happen kinda slowly and sporadically. There are a lot of classics that I have ideas kicking around for and am really excited to get to make, it's just a matter of finding enough time to get everything done to the level it deserves.

I'm honestly not sure if we'll ever have time to go back and fix the Ebon Blade game-winning effect specifically - there are a lot of evergreen cards that I think deserve to have more-than-no effects first, and those are probably going to be keeping me busy for a while yet. But those sorts of mismatches between experience and visuals are something we really try to be conscious of, and make sure that we learn from any that do happen (even if the lesson is just 'try not to do that again' :P). So even if there isn't time to redo Ebon Blade specifically, hopefully as we go forward we get more and more consistent about making sure that those really crazy moments get equally crazy effects. :)

"Plan" is a very strong word, because things like classic legendary animations tend to happen sporadically whenever some free time magically pops up in my schedule (which isn't often). :P But I do have a list of the ones I'd like to work on when I do next have time, and to jot down ideas for their animations. I love getting to revisit them, it's always a blast getting to add something new to these older (and often lore-steeped) cards! :)