Enter the Lair of Mere...

ELEMENTALISTS

In Guild Wars: Nightfall, I designed quite a bit of the player character armors. All of the monks, ritualists (for that campaign), some paragons, some dervishes, a warrior armor, some of the heroes, some of the hair choices, as well as these, the elementalists. Each character class comes with its own standard rules of design and strict seamlines, so there wasn't as much leeway to play with when it comes to variety. Each class has to be recognizeable as related to its class, it has to relate to the theme and environment of the new campaign chapter (Nightfall) and it has to individually swap its pieces and parts out with every other armor piece and part from every other campaign made. As you can see, this is quite a tall order for the design team to follow: not only does it have to be new and fresh, but it has to work with everything from the past. However, one comment I hear the most is that the designs seem similar to each other in silhouette, and there are always these split long coats or flared shapes and so forth. And frankly, that's because they're elementalists. ;}

I designed all of the elementalists of Nightfall, more than is seen here, but these are my personal favorites. Some are regional designs, some are more general. The more regional specific would be the Torment area armor, otherwise known as the Primordial armor: that spikey one down below. This armor is found in the very depths of a hellish evil dimension and the armor was supposed to reflect that region. Others are more practical, and some are pure eyecandy, showing off the ballroom-like touches of a predominently african and slightly egyptian design.

Most of these armors I built in the game as well, but not all. I suppose the guiding line is: if you hold up a screenshot of your character armor next to this concept art and it looks nearly exactly like it? Then I probably built it. ;} Hint: I modeled and textured all but two of these example elementalists below.

MONKS

Here are my favorite Nightfall monk designs I did for the game. Monks are marked by rectangle panels, draping straight lines and generally common fabrics with bold weaving patterns. In some cases, largely because of the environment location needed for the armor, we were given the ability to schnazz up their outfits a bit more.

PARAGONS

As reigning generals of the game, the Paragons had a very classic, almost of antiquity style design. Though they're known for everyone — even the men — wearing a skirt, I prefer to remember them for their celestial wings and heavenly golden trim. This is ironic, of course, because my two favorite styles of their armor I designed happen to be the darkest of their varieties, required to be so by location. ;}

RITUALISTS

The ritualists are always fun: marked by yards of fabric and layers of trinkets, these professions have more than a touch of bellydancer and gypsy in their appearance. Oddly, these armors always tested my limits for ornateness, I would often get the concept design to my comfort limits and my art lead would make me go back and add more to match the profession description. Hah!

One particular note of this next design is it had some interesting requirements setting it aside from other campaigns: it was stationed to be in the harsh environments of the desert and required an egyptian feel to it. Coupled with covered eyes, layers of wrappings and jewelry, what else was there to do but design mummies??

HEROES

Finally I also had the opportunity to create a couple of the hero armors for this game. Though I didn't design the concept, I'm rather proud of the model and texturing for one of the campaign's most popular heroes: Koss.