Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

T-Shirt Poll

A selection of shirts.

Arenanet has some designs for t-shirts on their facebook page. You can vote for your favourites there as well.

Me I suppose I like the Lifestyle Logo shirt more than the others, but in all honesty these shirts are kind of what I was talking about in this post. I’m just not into huge prints, shirts that serve as billboards, and art that comes off as loud in the context of a shirt. In my opinion concept art doesn’t serve well as a shirt design.

But that’s my personal opinion. I’m sure lots of people love the designs and are already planning out which ones to buy. Doubt I’ll get one though.

Arenanet’s Walls

If you are a huge fanboy then you know that Arenanet is very proud of their artwork and adorns their walls with it constantly.

Peter Fries posted some photos of he took of some larger than usual examples that recently went up around their office.

My favourite.

Concept Art: June 3D Models

The Guild Wars 2 Guru is the finest source for Guild Wars 2 information, even if it isn’t my favourite. I’ve grown surprisingly attached to my Google Reader, and Twitter feeds.

Nevertheless if I want to stay up to date on art being released I have to read the Guild Wars 2 Art Update thread. Thanks to all the contributors there.

The other day a bunch of 3d models from varying artists was posted. xxx87 kept tabs on several Arenanet employee blogs on blogspot and posted what he found, but kudos to aspectacle for crediting and linking the blogs.

Up first Jake Weberg posted this statue presumably located in Lion’s Arch, as many of the images seem to be centered there. What is of note to me is the fish tail. An interesting hybrid. Very reminiscent of a mermaid of course, which I suppose makes sense as LA has been submerged and taken over by pirates. A logical aquatic theme emerges. Sort of.

I told you I was freaky baby

What I liked most about Andy Kreutzer‘s work were the shots of shanty towns in the Lion’s Arch area.

Despite being called shanty towns, they don't look particularly awful.

This maquette is awesome.

And now people want it.

And of course Carlon Addison has some nice in game renderings of previously seen concept art.

I hope little details like the names of small rivers are included in Guild Wars 2.

Points to Amannelle for pointing out the similarities between game renders and specific concept art in this post.

As always you can find plenty more images on those specific blogs, however there were a few images in the original thread I didn’t see in the cited sources that I thought were worth noting.

This… object, if it can be called that, might resemble a submarine? It would make sense if much of the game takes place under water. I doubt however we’ll be able to steer or move it if we find it. Arenanet devs have stated we won’t get to drive around in some of the charr tanks we saw in the charr race featurette, which to me means we won’t be getting in many other vehicles either.

Interesting defensive strategy, stick a sword on it!

Of course if we won’t be riding around in tanks, siege machines, or submarines, we probably won’t be getting into any airships. We’ve seen a lot of airship design in Guild Wars 2 concept despite Arenanet consistently saying that their focus is on land and underwater. It really does raise the question however, what are you planning on doing with all the airships?

Hmmm needs balloons, a 20th century house, a chinese kid and a dog that yells squirrel!

There is no definite connection between the airship images in the thread and in Guild Wars 2, none that I could find, but it does resemble their work. Note to all OP’s, citation needed. However there is this screen shot I took off an official Arenanet youtube video (Thanks again amannelle) of various airship designs. No exact copies but some similar designs.

Why U no explain airship Arenanet!?

Guild Wars 2 Asset Kit

I foolishly assumed that when Arenanet released the Guild Wars 2 Asset Kit on Thursday it would have little in the way of new screenshots or concept art. Not sure why my mind jumped to that conclusion.

I have over the past 21 months used up about 180mb of image space on my wordpress account. Most of that is devoted to Guild Wars 2 so perhaps I was overconfident because of that.

However when I looked through the selection in the Asset Kit, not only were there new pieces, some of the pieces I was familiar with looked fantastically detailed even in the non-HD version.

I guess that is what happens when you allow WordPress to crunch every image you upload.

Here are a few of my favourites, but you can find more over at Guild Wars 2 Slovenia. Nice redesign Tron.

Ascalon Wall Ruins

What is it about castles anyway?

And here are some screen shots.

Thief Ice Combat

Norn Necromancer

Charrhead

I can see it now, a B movie playing at the local cineplex midnight special. Long ago he was a mild mannered engineer. Now they call him: Charrhead!!!

Katy Hargrove put this up on her blog recently and well, I really like it so I thought I’d post it. It’s called Charrhead.

Artfully Done: May 2011

I’m no artist but I like pretty things and tend to post beautiful art from Arenanet and other game studio concept artists. Lately I’ve seen a few new things.

For instance with the blog post Arenanet made about krait, Kekai Kotaki posted up a few pieces that were featured in the post.

In the blog post not all of this piece is visible.

For me the carved stone steps add a whole other dimension to the scene. My favourite piece from the set.

I’m not overly familiar with Brian Lawver, but I believe Dutch Sunshine from GuildMag tweeted about his pieces the other day, and they’re pretty good. I think Dutch liked a branded bear illustration while I prefer the one below.

A guardian at work against the undead

Possible ghostly weapon set of fame

There are a bunch of pieces at cghub, so check out the undead chicken and weapon sets while you’re there.

Finally, the big buzz over at Guild Wars 2 Guru was about Dave Bolton’s blog updates. He put up 5 or so in the past few weeks. Concepts, architecture, props, orthos and icons.

So what is the big deal? Is it the amazing depiction of the mansion in Beetletun?

Seen in the first Guild Wars 2 trailer

Is it this amazing armour set?

I know people like the Son of Svanir set in the same post but I like this one more

Uh no actually, its the icons. Whether it be the images named ‘creature trophy icons’ which apparently had some trying to unravel the mystery or the skill icons that name various skills and hint at their use.

A variety of possible skill icons for elementalists

Some of these images have been hanging around a long time, but for the most part they’re all new to me. Wonderfully new and pretty.