Welcome to another exciting Fan Friday where we shine the spotlight on creative accomplishments from The Old Republic™ community, as well as share a behind-the-scenes look in the Developer Corner. We also have new avatars and smilies, and don’t forget to vote in the polls we posted up!

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.

Fan Art

Community member Cage has been getting into digital painting, and shared some work with us on the forums. Check out Cage’s Art where portraits have been created based on requests made by The Old Republic forumers. Beautiful work!

To keep himself occupied until the release of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, German community member Crookshanks has been creating portraits of different characters that might exist in the Star Wars™ universe. You can check out his unique style in Crookshanks' Cauldron of Art!

KariaVen is working on her animation skills in the What should the Jawa do... and other animations thread of the community forums. In doing so, she has taken our Jawa smilies and animated them to be more expressive. Also, see how she has brought her pixel art to life in the same thread!

Community member Lankist started a brilliantly hilarious thread titled (Interactive comic) Old Republic Paint Adventures. Forum users were encouraged to help by giving suggestions for the story, and Lankist has illustrated the entire Star Wars escapade. Very creative!

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.

Below is a step-by-step demonstration from The Old Republic Art team, showing how a piece of concept art is created. Senior Concept Artist, Ryan Dening, gives us a break-down of the process involved and some of the thinking that went into this concept of Kaas City.

The purpose of this concept was to revisit Kaas City. A lot of the work had been done earlier on, and we felt there were things we could do to make it so much cooler.

We already had a view of the city since it had been built in-game, but we wanted to integrate it into the surrounding landscape better and give the Imperial city its own architectural style. Also, we wanted to establish a stronger mood and define the Citadel better (main central building). I started with screenshots from the game to make sure I wasn't moving anything important and to make sure I captured the player’s view.

For inspiration I looked to the sketches of Coruscant by Ralph McQuarrie. Some of them have a dark gothic feel and I wanted to portray that in the Sith Empire's capital city. Clint Young had done an earlier concept of the Citadel, and I wanted to re-incorporate some elements from his design. Our style for the Empire is very angular so I felt that should be reflected in their architecture, as well.

I went into the game and took screenshots of the view I wanted to capture looking out towards the Citadel.

I kept the front platform and the building to the left as I knew they were going to stay. I added in some perspective guides to help me keep everything in-line, and then I loosely blocked in some shapes and colors to get the overall composition.

In order to refine the shapes and designs, I began building up forms with highlights and shadows. I cut in some details for the foreground building on the left from an existing concept Clint had done, and started adding some finer details like windows for scale.

The finished concept. I filled out the lighting and continued to refine details. From here, individual elements can be broken out in more detail for the environment artists to build.

Wallpapers

We’re bringing you more wallpapers from space! Decorate your desktop with an inside or outside view of these expertly designed starships. Visit the media section to download the resolution that best fits your monitor.

Forum Avatars

The Bounty Hunter’s path lies along the edge where the stakes are always high and only the most hardened survive. Show your ruthlessness by equipping your profile with one of these callous Bounty Hunter 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!

Smilies

Express yourself in the forums with these Ithorian smilies! When posting a reply in a thread, click “More” in the Smilies section off to the right to see a list of possible similes. When you click on the smilie of your choice it will be entered into your post. Happy posting!

Polls

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

• Who is your favorite character in the Blood of the Empire webcomic series?
• Which class are you planning on trying out first?

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