LL Spoilers: Our New Art Process Revealed!

http://cdn.shadowera.com/llspoilers.jpg

Ever since Shadow Era was launched so many years ago, one of our main bottlenecks has been quality art. It simply takes a lot of money and a lot of time to produce all the art required for a set of cards. Does anyone remember the days of Placeholder Puwen?? Being the game's creator as well as the original designer and lead programmer, it has always been a personal goal of mine to become self-sufficient on the art side as well. Being proficient in Photoshop is one thing, but creating art good enough to appear on the cards is quite another!

I am pleased to formally announce that I have now accomplished that goal. Thanks to advances in technology as well as a sizable investment into training, modeling, and programmatic artistic AI, (and a bit of Aldmor magic!) all of Shadow Era's art requirements can now be accomplished in-house at a fraction of the cost and time. Instead of waiting sometimes weeks for a piece of art, it can now be produced in a matter of hours. Using sophisticated 3d software and a custom-designed AI painter, the results are quite impressive.

But is it still art? Speaking as someone who has spent hours positioning objects in a scene, adjusting lighting, and posing the fingers just right, I can say for certain that it is. Perhaps "computer-rendered art in a painterly style" is more appropriate, but the results are really what matters here. For Shadow Era, that means quicker set releases, alternate arts, more special sleeves and playmats, etc etc

Below are a few samples of upcoming art for Lost Lands Part 3, all of which were about 3-5 hrs of work.

http://cdn.shadowera.com/llart1.jpg


http://cdn.shadowera.com/llart2.jpg


http://cdn.shadowera.com/llart3.jpg


The best news is that our process is still being refined. Each image is saved as a full 3d scene and can be easily adjusted, changed, or rendered again with ease.

So, what do you think? Is this good news for Shadow Era, or will the cards lose their artistic charm? Let us know!

I think its cool if the process can be refined. Some new carts haven't looked as smooth as others :-). More so, I think art consistency is something I look forward to, which can be accomplished with alt arts.

Very interesting. I think as long as this new art can get generally close to the old style it'll be fine. And if arts can be easily adjusted that's good too. As with jonmaciel I've also seen some of the less refined arts, but the ones above look good.

I think they look very clean and sharp compared to hand painted ones but if it's for the good of the game I guess it doesn't matter that much. I'd also love to see this style of art in a card template. They might look better that way.

I have a question to add, some of the cards spoiled so far (like Barrabus and Ipshteur) have previously seen arts done by other artists. Will there still be the occasional art that is licensed from another artist or made by another artist specifically for the game? Or is all the art for the future planned to be done in this method? Just out of curiosity.

I could understand this for a new set but this change of style to complete LL looks really bad. If you want to use it for the remaining 41 to get them released and then steadily swap out some for commissioned works then that would make sense. I’m sure the community will let you know which they think should be prioritised for replacement.

On PC these look a lot more painterly. Previously, I had looked at them on my phone.