Seven Dragon Saga Gets New Art Director

The folks at TSI have announced their new art director Lee Dotson, an industry veteran who worked on titles such as Anachronox, Star Trek Online and Diablo 3, with a blog post from Dotson himself, who explains his aims for the art direction for the title. It’s certainly worth a read, and it includes a before and after picture of one of the game’s characters that promises not only a more on-point art direction, but extremely increased fidelity over the prototype shown during the first (canceled) Kickstarter campaign:

Enough about me, here we have a small example of where we’ve been and where we’re going with the style and look of 7DS. The goal here is to push for a look that merges the sense of fantastic realism found in classic fantasy paintings by the likes of Brom or Easely with the rich colors and clear designs from classic dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder so there’s a feast for the eyes when zooming in on characters while keeping everything legible from far away. For me this is particularly key because while it’s important to have a clear view of the game on a tactical level I love being able to immerse myself in a game’s world and see changes in my character.

There’s also a ton of work that here that’s not really immediately obvious, an engine change, armor that’s designed in a modular format for player customization, animations for the cover system and a lot more but we’ll have to save that for future updates.

In the meantime let us know what you think about this first tiny glimpse into the new direction. We’re super excited about how things are coming together and we hope you are too. I know a lot of people have a thoughts on 3d vs. classic pixel art, isometric vs. classic first person views that we’re happy to discuss our thoughts on over in the forums, facebook, twitter or wherever it is that you like talking.