Sunday, March 29, 2009

Old Skool Charr

These were drawn when Guild Wars was still in the stages of defining it's style. The first drawing was used to "sell" the Charr as creatures that could fill the niche of Orc without being yet another Orc in an Orc rich genre. They had to be something fierce and intelligent and feral, and still likable. People both love and fear cats so demonic hell cats seemed like the way to go. The rest of the images were done later as we fleshed out things like Flame Wielders. Between the concepts Doug Williams and I initially put together we got a pretty nice little race going. Doug is responsible for the Axe Fiends and Martyrs, you know, the lovable, bad ass stuff. :) Later in GWEN Kekai Kotaki took these guys over and cranked up the bad ass about 100 fold. That was when Pyre and guys like the tiger Charr were introduced. I've been unbelievably happy with how the race has changed and evolved over the past few years and their inclusion in Guild Wars 2.



2 comments:

Kammorremae said...

That's one of the bigger reasons that I enjoy the mythos in GW so much. The exclusion of orcs and elves, with the inclusion of Charr, was a spectacular choice.

Thanks for helping to make that happen.

Ben K said...

I'm looking forward to seeing the Charr in GW2. Pyre ended up looking quite different from the rest of the Charr - shorter teeth and a more delicate nose, perhaps a little more cute than the other Charr, but I'm sure that's just subjective...

To this day I still can't pick who actually designed his model. Anyway, I'm guessing there'll be a lot of variation between different Charr in GW2.

And, if we're lucky, a hug emote. Hehehehe...