I mean they hired me, so you know they're desperate. :P

Real talk though, if doing art for games is something you're interested in, UI and VFX are both really understaffed. UI relies heavily on a combination of graphic design, and game design/user experience, although I don't know any specific tutorials for it (part of why they're so hard to find, I guess :P). For VFX, these are my go-to freebie VFX spots (copy-pasta'd from Kirshire):

• Jason Keyser's VFX breakdowns and tutorials : These are some really fantastic breakdowns of all the different pieces going into some League VFX. And a bunch of tutorials he's done as well.
• Sirhaian’s Unity VFX tutorials : THIS GUY. His stuff is so good. ;n; He also has a bunch of his FX available to download and poke at in Unity, which I think it a great way to learn as well. :)
• ImbueFX : These tutorials are in Unreal, not Unity, but this guy's stuff is most of how I learned VFX. And all game VFX engines are mostly the same, so it's transferable info. :P
• RealTimeVFX forum : We have a forum now! There are literally dozens of us!

Makes sense! Thanks for replying!

These are my go-to freebie VFX spots:

• RealTimeVFX forum : We have a forum now! There are literally dozens of us!
• Sirhaian’s Unity VFX tutorials : THIS GUY. His stuff is so good. ;n; He also has a bunch of his FX available to download and poke at in Unity, which I think it a great way to learn as well. :)
• ImbueFX : These tutorials are in Unreal, not Unity, but this guy's stuff is most of how I learned VFX. And all game VFX engines are mostly the same, so it's transferable info. :P
• Jason Keyser's Youtube channel : Lots and lots of cool stuff on the art side of FX, especially for stylized stuff.

If you're working on FX stuff, also, feel free to hit me up if you ever have questions or want feedback, I'm always happy to try and help people learn up on them. :)

Hah! Freaking jerkface Atiesh.

Normally it's a fairly straightforward cutoff of 'This is where the art stops being pure story about the minion and starts communicating Battlecry gameplay,' which usually (not always, but usually) tends to split out into an entrance summoning localized to the minion that makes sense in isolation (so if someone is playing reeeally fast or there's an interrupt between the summoning and the Battlecry, the summoning won't look completely broken), and the stuff that needs to communicate the gameplay of the Battlecry, or is more part of the Battlecry's story than the minion's story, goes in the Battlecry section. For instance, Krul's split is between his animation out of the portal and slamming into the ground with the smaller leylines, and the Battlecry with the dimmed lighting and board-wide FX - it'll never look as cool when it's broken into two pieces, but neither half looks too janky on its own. And we can tell a Battlecry to start playing before the entrance animation is over, so thankfully those can usually segue into each other fairly cleanly. In Atiesh's case, the technology just wasn't there yet to give a weapon its own entrance animation (Karazhan had a lot of crazy elaborate engineering work that was important to supporting missions gameplay and card mechanics, but someday hopefully they'll have some free time for weapon entrances <3), which meant that hooking his sparkles up to Medivh's Battlecry instead would immediately play the normal weapon animation and there wouldn't be any time for me to do any anticipatory summong FX beforehand, so I cludged it into Medivh's entrance animation instead by just hard-coding the location and timing of the Atiesh 'summoning.' :P

:D Thanks! Audio really killed it on him.

Haha thank you! Really Becca Abel gets most of the credit for them, she made Soggoth's entrance, and I just stole Soggoth for the Abyssals and then stole that (from... myself) for the Infernals.

Honestly, right now if we found someone who was already doing FX/entrance animation fan art and was able to hit our style and implement their animations in Unity (our game engine), we would probably just hire them, not let them go to waste on a contest. :P

I love lurking around and seeing the fan art legendaries and animations though - even if they're something we couldn't possibly implement (I think a lot of the fan art here relies heavily on AfterEffects, which is unfortunately a completely different ballgame than Unity), it's really awesome and inspiring to see what people come up with. :)

:D John Zwicker made the Hero Skin animation; I made the animations for Medivh the Guardian's collectible card (well, mostly - I also stole a raven from WoW, so they made part of it too. But I added disco sparkles.).

I wasn't around for the beginning of Hearthstone so I can't speak a whole lot to this, but I think the lack of little 3D characters specifically mostly comes down to the fact that Hearthstone is intended to look and feel like a card game. There were a huge number of iterations that were gone through before they settled on the minion tokens, including some that did involve actual little dudes and critters onto the board, but it does start to feel a lot more like Star Wars chess, and a lot less like Star Wars poker. (Although with all the games I affectionately dub wizard poker, wizard football, etc., I do dearly hope that wizard chess is a game too some day.)

If you're legit interested in this, like '30 minutes of video'-level interested in this (no judgement if you aren't :P), my AD did (I think) a really freaking good talk about the artistic choices of Hearthstone back when it first shipped. :)

I think I've got somewhere around 20-ish(ish,ish) legendaries live so far (plus random other stuff for spells and non-legendaries), but Wickerflame, Moroes, Krul, Medivh, and Kazakus are my favorites that I've gotten to to work on out of the live ones. :)

I uh, I somewhat awkwardly accept (which is fortunate; it's the only kind of accepting I can do). Hello friend-fan. I'll try not to botch future fx-things up for you. <3

Thank you! Not exactly a nice tidy AMA, but if you have questions you're welcome to throw 'em at me here and I'll answer them if I can/actually know what I'm talking about. :)

Projects as in individual summonings/FX? (I'm going to answer assuming that, correct me if I misunderstood and I'll re-answer properly. :P)

I tend to approach all VFX as a sort of mini-story, even if it's something super simple and gameplay-oriented like a missile or a buff, and go through building the whole thing similarly to how you would an animation short. So typically I start with "What's the gameplay need here?" (for a missile it's probably something very practical like "indicate that this arcane minion is the thing that dealt five damage to this target", with a legendary summoning it's usually more literally just "tell a cool story"), and then block in the basic 'keyframes' of the story arc (Missile: here's the size and shape of the idle, the missile and its path, the blast radius of the impact, etc.; Legendary Summoning: here's how we're going to build anticipation, here's for how long, this is how they're revealed/spawned, and then segue that into falling action or a Battlecry, and with a Battlecry we're off and running with something closer to the Missile example above since we're back in gameplay territory), and then once the functionality and story arc are clear, layer in the color palette, details, any unique bits of flavor and so on until it feels like a proper effect. Our initial FX descriptions are usually pretty loose ("sweet arcane summoning" or something similar), and sometimes that and the gameplay mechanics, available lore, stuff like that are enough for me to be off and running with something I'm excited to make. If it's something that's a really big part of the set (key characters, just something I know the designers are super excited about) or it's something where the FX are really important for gameplay clarity (looking at you, Glimmerroot), I'll often have at least one and occasionally upwards of a dozen conversations with them to make sure that I'm selling the fantasy they had for the card, that it all makes sense, stuff like that.

Holy crap that's a lot of awesome thoughts, thanks for writing all that up! Especially while super tired...

Yeah, the perpetual FX thing is really tricky outside adventures and brawls because they can stack up really quickly from even two or three cards being played, and then we get back to my arch-nemesis Gameplay Obstruction and sidekick Chug (Chug has a way better villain name...). But having all of these so well-laid out is really helpful, it gives me a lot to consider and hopefully I can find ways to hit on some of these wants in that only improve the game experience and dodge the potential drawbacks. I'll do my best! So again, thank you! I really appreciate all the time you obviously put into your reply. :)

'U' Thanks! Krul is one of my favorites too, I love Demonlock and I was sooo excited when I saw his mechanic on the roster for Mean Streets. I'm glad no one else wanted to do his summoning, I might've gone to fisticuffs for that one if I'd had to... :P

Oh god... ticket format... my... weakness...

(I'm glad you saw this, I saw you mentioned the Deathwing animation as well but was worried about being 'that girl' and splitting the topic into two threads. Thanks for replying! It's especially helpful having so many different examples of how this would affect the game for you - perpetual effects are a really tricky thing because they can stack up into a chuggy unreadable mess with even just a few cards played, but having all these different 'wants' from the effects laid out means I can try to find lots of different ways to hit those goals. Thanks for putting so much time and thought (and formatting) into this.:))

Well if there's anywhere to let your imagination get away with you, it's when giving feedback to artists! :P This is really interesting and helpful, thank you!

Hahaha, well now my end goal is "stupidly badass" for as many legendaries as possible! :D

"Hadidjah what are you doing for this legendary?" "Stupidly badass." "Coo'."

Seriously, right after I started they were like "We're doing magical disco next" and I just about died right there of happiness.

Glad you're digging the Un'Goro animations so far, thank you! :) From the announced stuff I did Swamp King Dred, Pyros, Tarim, Amara, Crystal Core, Volcano, Kalimos, Megafin, Zavas, Nether Portal, King Mosh, Elise, Hemet, the pack opening, and a bunch of smaller stuff. John Zwicker did the overall Adapt and Quest FX (so freaking cool, he's amazing at those huge dramatic moments in a way I can only hope to be), Carnassa, Galvadon, Sherazim, Ozruk, and loads of smaller or unannounced stuff. We have a few other artists who jumped in and helped with some other FX too, unfortunately nothing that was announced yet but they did a gorgeous job as well.

That'd be sick, I hope whoever does his animation is able to get something like that in there.

There are so many badass Deathwing FX even in his cinematic alone, it's hard to pick stuff for him, but the flaming wings are definitely one of my favorite parts.

Haha thanks! Now see here managers...

Most of it just comes down to the sound guys being awesome - mostly I just hand stuff off to them and it comes back sounding completely badass. We're also right down the hall from each other, which helps a lot - we can IM each other or just swing by each other's desks if we have questions or suggestions, we run into each other in the snackatorium and talk about stuff that's in progress or ideas we have for upcoming pieces, it's just a lot of really positive back-and-forth. That's probably not a very exciting answer, but most of it's just good communication and rapport.

Hahaha thank you! Not gonna lie, my favorite part of making those videos has been picking out the music and then trying to time everything to it. :P

Yeeeah that's definitely one of the things I'm paranoid about. It's a lot of legendaries to be adding animations for; I'm trying to do them carefully so I'm not wrecking someone's disk space just for the sake of having fancied the art up.

First off, thank you! That's awesome to hear. :)

I'm a little paranoid about using that exact effect anywhere else - it turned out it chugged some computers something fierce, and I feel really bad about that; I really don't want to risk degrading someone's game for the sake of the visuals. At the very least I would have to optimize it significantly before it went anywhere other than a Brawl.:)

I'm really curious, if you don't mind me asking - for you, what's the appeal of those perpetual effects? What's the fantasy they're fulfilling, in the cases where they don't have gameplay functionality (like Deathwing + Cow Level ash wouldn't)? There are a few reasons we're pretty judicious about when we use it - performance (see above failure of mine with some people's chuggy Cow Levels), readability, gameplay implications, things like that - but I do see it brought up as something people want a lot, and I'd love to be able to hit the fantasy for people even if I can't necessarily do a forever-effect (at least without setting some people's phones on fire).

Hope you don't mind me asking, it's something I've really been curious about for ages and haven't gotten an answer before. :)

I'll let the lady in charge of these sorts of things know. ;)

Oh! Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant to say in my first comment (I'm so bad at writing things clearly, sorry D:), I work on Hearthstone. :)

That was before my time, that's one of John Zwicker's (I told him and he's trying to give audio all the credit - which is pretty true, our audio guys really do an amazing job bringing all our FX to life). He still does a lot of summonings and VFX, especially the really crazy ones (he was the one behind the Patches cannon, for instance).

Thank you! :D They're wicked fun to get to work on.

Heh, I'm glad you asked now instead of a month ago, I only got my act together and started recording this stuff recently. Here're a bunch of the FX I made for the last two sets.

Aww, thank you! That makes me really happy to hear. :)

I feel really lucky to get to work with a team that's so excited about their game and all those myriad little details - it's really incredible to be surrounded by that while I work on my dorky magic explosions. :P

Haha I wish I were that clever enough to have thought of that, I was just thinking of filesize lingchi.

!! How do you know my weakness??

Kind of, unfortunately, but they're loads of fun to work on and I think it's something well worth doing to keep the cards feeling cool, even if it does take some time. And I love reading/seeing the legendary entrance ideas people post up around here; it's really inspiring and always cool to see all the different ideas people come up with for them.

Yup! A while ago I got to go back and gussy up Cenarius and Jaraxxus's Infernals (and we snuck a few smaller FX in there like Wild Growth). I've got a few more now that I'm chipping away at whenever I have time, and a very, very long list of candidates to work my way through after that. :D

I would really love to eventually! 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, it's really fun getting to revisit them. :)

Source: I'm a Hearthstone FX artist, just speaking for myself and my own workflows and opinions here, not for Hearthstone or Blizzard.

Aw jeez, sorry, I meant to reply to this sooner!

I didn't get into it until I was like four years into the game industry (I'd been a technical artist and an environment artist prior), so it's certainly one of those never-too-late kinda things. Hell I barely know anyone who came out of college with an interest in VFX, they pretty much all learned it later.

Once I did get serious about learning VFX, I think it was about a year of practicing before I was offered a job (plus another year and a halfish before I fooled Blizzard into hiring me) - the first few months of that I had a coworker who would give me feedback and answer questions, but the rest was self-study, almost entirely from ImbueFX and his purchasable tutorials. It was certainly about equivalent to a evening part-time job, but I think just about anything you're really serious about learning turns into that. :)

I agree it can be a little overwhelming, because it's a weird mix of half art and half tech (I had the unfair advantage of having previously worked in both) and a creation system that's wildly unlike the rest of a game engine, but you can start with the artistic principles and then layer in gameplay and animation as you learn the tools, and I think that makes it a little less crazy.

What's your degree in, if you don't mind me asking? Implicitly I'm assuming it's games related? Doesn't really make a huge difference in the game industry - we just like sweet portfolios - but if you're in a game program you can always try talking to your teachers about biasing towards certain things for your assignments if they'll allow for it.

If it's something you're interested in, you're more than welcome to hit me up for more tutorials or resources, snags you hit, feedback on anything you're working on, whatever you like. My reply delays are pretty always about this bad, but I'm more than happy to try and help if you ever want to give VFX a go. :)

Hey Kensike, sorry, I just got reminded about this comment and how I forgot to respond to it initially because I'm a butthead. Hi!

I hope your studies and your friend's are both going well! Hit me up whenever you guys have a project you want to show off, I'd love to see! Best of luck to you! :)