Happy Friday, everyone! We have new creations to show off from the English, French, and German community forums, as well as a special treat in the Developer Corner.

Also, we’re following up on the Penny Arcade Expo, and providing more “Hope” wallpapers for your desktop. Check out all the cool stuff, and be sure to see the new forum polls and avatars!

Community Creations

There is a vast amount of paintings, fan fiction, and other works of art in the Community Creations section of the forums. We’re limited by the amount of content we can highlight in our monthly Fan Friday, so be sure to check the forums for an inspiring look at our communities artistic abilities.

Seithe has been sharing his talents with us in the community forums for quite some time, and it’s definitely worth a look. Check out Seithe's Imperial Palace....of awesome to see his character portrait along with several portraits he has created for other fans of The Old Republic™.

Community member NitWhit is a self-taught artist with an impressive collection in the Art by NitWhit thread. As new images are finished, this thread will be updated to display them. Incredible work!

Be sure to check out Kentoh’s finalized bounty hunger art in the German thread 3D - Software Fan-Art ;). Gorgeous!

Keodero, from the Germany community forums, shared an incredible piece of fan art in the thread [Fan Art by Keodero] Bounty Hunter. Excellent details!

Going along with the general Bounty Hunter theme in the Community Creations section of this Fan Friday, Theladril from the French community forums created a breath-taking painting of a female bounty hunter. Fantastic job!

MasterKai from the The Old Republic forums put some time into organizing The Big Art Gallery Thread (B.A.G.T), an idea that was originally thought up by community member Roushlamn. It is a place where forumers can browse through a catalog of art that was initially requested in the Big Art Request Thread (B.A.R.T.). There is a ton of great stuff here!

Developer Corner

Welcome to the Developer Corner! This area is reserved to give you a sneak peek at work-in-progress art, animations, and other exciting information from The Old Republic development team.

This week the Art Team is pleased to share a step-by-step demonstration of how a piece of concept art is created for The Old Republic. Senior Concept Artist, Ryan Dening, will give us a break-down of the process involved and some of the thinking that went into this particular concept.

The Republic Capitol ship shown in this concept art was originally going to be smaller, but we realized in the sketch phase that we needed something that could go up against our Star Destroyers. We already had a design for the Sith Empire's Capitol ship so we wanted something that contrasted it in silhouette and design language.

Our classic Republic style is similar to what we see in the trilogy, except that we try to make sure there are rounded elements that stand apart from our angular Imperial designs.

When creating this design, my major inspiration was drawn from the medical frigate and rebel transport; those ships are some of the coolest looking because of their odd shapes and 'greebles'. I tried exploring some ideas based on these, but incorporated smooth, cleaner looking shells that related to other ships we'd already designed. I also wanted to make sure this ship felt somewhat tied to the Endar Spire from KOTOR.

In the end, I think we got something that hits the notes we were going for and looks really cool modeled in the game.

I started with some rough thumbnail sketches (left side). Once we decided to make the ship bigger, they all felt too small or similar to existing ships (left side). I took some of the elements I liked and did a couple new designs that had the mass and feel we were hoping for. Ultimately, we went with the ship design highlighted in red (right side).

Next, I took the sketch and scaled it up to a higher resolution. I broke out my silhouette on a top layer to help me keep it down the road. After defining certain elements like the hull and engines, I went on to add lights to make sure the scale was going to work. I flipped my rough and painted over it to get the front view (bottom right).

At that point, I painted my background in to make sure the colors I was going to use would work over the entire image. I added some highlights to the larger shapes, which helps break them up and adds form and volume to the ship. I then added in some loose detail to hint at decks and technology, and varied the windows a little for scale.

Then I added some panel detail by creating simple texture and warping to fit the shape of the hull. I continued to refine the details and added lighting under the shell (I imagined Tie Fighters could crash into these areas during a dog fight). I also added some red paint in keeping with the theme of our existing Republic fleet.

The main concept is finished. I kept the front view loose because the people building it in 3D only need information on the shapes. If you click on the image for a larger view, you’ll see at the bottom I did call-out to help the model builders. The top/front/side/back views ('orthos') help them understand the shape better since the painting is at an angle and is only seen from the side.

Events

The Old Republic got an explosive response from fans at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Washington. Thanks to everyone who came and got to be a part of our first North American consumer hands-on event!

During the on-stage presentation, we gave attendees an exclusive in-depth look at Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. We announced that players will be able to forge their own Lightsabers, and provided hints about the Mysteries of Knights of the Old Republic that may unfold in the game. Visit the Events page for a wrap-up on the convention.

Wallpapers

We’re bringing you more “Hope” wallpapers to decorate your desktop. Visit the media section to download the resolution that best fits your monitor.

New Forum Avatars

Honor the Republic by equipping your profile with one of these brave Trooper avatars! To update your forum avatar, log in, go to My Account, and click Avatar. From there, navigate through the pages until you find the avatar of your choice. Enjoy!

Polls

We want to know! You can find these polls in the Surveys and Polls section of the website.

• What is your favorite area of the forums to visit?
• Which Game Systems section do you find to be the most informative?

Discuss this article