Dungeons & Dragons Online Developer Diary

Ten Ton Hammer has posted a developer diary for Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, in which Turbine art director Todd DeMelle talks about creating new dragons for the game’s Module 4 update.

Dragons are among the most well documented denizens of the D&D® universe. The role of the concept artist in the case of dragons is to represent the creature consistently with its lore as detailed in the Draconomicon and elsewhere in such a way that the technical goals outlined in the monster strike team meeting can be achieved. That means working with Wizards of the Coast (WotC), production and tech artists to generate an orthographic rendering that can be closely adhered to by the modeler/ texturer and that can be supported within the limitations allowed by the predetermined rig that will be used for animation. In the case of the M4 dragons, in order to generate all three being introduced in the relatively short module production timeframe, dragons with similar proportions were identified. Coordinating with WotC through concepts, it was agreed the differences between the proportions of the white, black and blue dragons could be supported on the same rig. With signoff from WotC and Turbine, the concepts are ready to be modeled, rigged, textured and animated.