Life as a Wrath of the Lich King CONCEPT ARTIST at Blizzard.

Tutorials/Templates/Brushes - gumroad.com/trentk
Trents Books on Kindle - www.amazon.com/shop/trentkaniuga
Twitter- / trentkaniuga
Equipment I use- www.amazon.com/shop/trentkaniuga
Whats it like to work as a concept artist on the worlds best selling video games?
This is a pretty lengthy look at many of the concepts that I contributed to the Wrath of the Lich king. This was my third AAA game, and one of my favorites, as it was created during a time when Blizzard Entertainment was still a small studio working on one game at a time.
Things I've worked on:
Overwatch (PC, PS4)
League of Legends (PC)
Diablo 3 (PC,PS4)
Hearthstone (Mobile, PC)
Burning Crusade (PC)
Wrath of the Lich King (PC)
Final Fight Streetwise (PS2)
He Man (GBA)
Terminator 3 (GBA)
CannonBallers (Mobile)
CreeD
Twilight Monk
Ikeda
Nova Colony
Galaxy's Edge
SodaPopSoldier
Millenium Actress
Goblins and Gnomes

[@dhado]

Grew up playing TBC and Wrath, was so amazed by Wrath’s environmental feel. Now 15 years later, watching your videos and getting inspired by art I was amazed as a kid. Thank you for the valuable lessons you are putting up for us!

[@inklinedecline]

Back then you didn't have the skills, but you had the right ideas. Later your art got better so you could sell your ideas easier and more accurately. Many people today think is the other way around. Learning to paint and draw requires time, but "getting it" when it comes to design and good taste is an art by itself.

[@johnhio1843]

Agree. Drawing pretty pictures is worth little without good ideas - whereas a good idea can transent into cool finished art, despite being poorly rendered in the concept. Remember a stream with Craig Mullins showing some of the early Starwars concepts. Some looked as if drawn by a 5 year old, but the concepts where cool - now considered iconic. Its easy to fall into the trap of becoming a illustrator first and concept artist second, especially when looking at other peoples awesome work. But thats not really the job (IMO of cause).

[@jonmoore7387]

great video got me painting backgrounds

[@Makelek0]

It's really interesting how different this is to the art in "The Art of Blizzard Entertainment". It's crazy too how standards have risen , no wonder pressure and stress is so intense on younger artists. I'm glad to see you don't have to be insanely good in drawing just to create cool ideas that you can base a project off of. You never fail to motivate me to keep going on my weird and wonky way of computerscience and art, thanks for that :) .

[@windwalker9477]

These professional tips deserve a lot more than jus 21k views. I love this channel! Trent TOP

[@slurp3194]

Not everyone has time to watch it

[@Painted_Owl]

2 years later, 47k views and ONLY 11 dislikes! That. Is. Crazy. Amazing content

[@pauliuslizdenis5936]

Thank you so much. I am an old wow player, also artist and concept artist working in game industry, what you shared is priceless! thank you

[@pewpewcat7679]

I'm in the process of getting all of the "art of world of warcraft" books. Still waiting for the wotlk copy to get here in the mail. It was probably my favorite expansion of all because of the heavy Norse influence. Love love love this. All of it. Seeing wow art just immediately sparks this good feeling i had when gaming back then. Those times are sadly gone now but man... strolling down memory lane is really nice. Thanks so much for sharing this and I can't wait to see more of your work in the book I also wanted to say that I've always loved wow mostly for it's very specific style. It wasn't fully candy like and not too realistic all at the same time. To me, it was perfect. I don't think any artwork could ever illicit more of a positive feeling in me than this does -and isn't that the best thing art can do for us?

[@rumsto1]

Was really great seeing your concepts from Wrath. I remember going around the studio because I had some friends that worked on the WoW team as well, and they'd give me tours or just let me hang out for a bit. I 1000% remember seeing your work and I never knew that you were the one behind it. Boom. There you go.

[@starduck2]

Stook til' the end and it was an amazing journey! Thanks for being my companion through some weight painting work haha!

[@devinascott1521]

I didnt believe that you drew all these until i saw your impromptu dragon drawing. Im glad to have the chance to learn from a master such as yourself :)

[@jaybills437]

Your one of my biggest inspirations. I get bummed out and your videos inspire me. Stan Lee, Jim Lee, Joe Maduria, Simeon Bisely, Azapiri, Frank Cho, Coop, Soryama, Frank Frizetta. I am murdering these spellings but I hope u get how huge of an influence you are for me.

[@thatguy928]

Pretty awesome that your job was mainly to INSPIRE other artists with your skills and ideas, now, you're still doing that with young artists. Thanks for the video, man!

[@rhedtengson9120]

Thank you Sharing your Work and Experiences Sir.. you inspired us..

[@mcastream]

this made my eyes have some weird droplets . reminded of my dreams I had of becoming you when i was 12 maybe . by you i mean your work and art , wow was my first contact with the digital art world. I didnt know what was digital art before that and It made me dream I could one day be one of the artists. It's a beautiful world and thank you for sharing your experience .

[@mauku1910]

You sounded like starcraft 1 jimmy raynor in the beginning of the video, fresh off your vulture bike.

[@gwenc7805]

Even back when I didn't play video games or even know what Blizzard was, I knew Wrath of the Lich King, and I knew that whoever created these were on a different plain of existence Kudos on everything in this video!!

[@deleonyx]

Thanks for this Trent! Your work and ideas are incredible, and I loved hearing stories from your days at Blizzard. Looking forward to seeing more of these videos.

[@danyo8512]

Appreciate this so much

[@dlf4298]

Thank you for sharing this. It gives me a lot of inspiration and insight thoughts, great video!

[@tacticslc4805]

At this period of time when I was playing the game, I didn't even think that all the world around me, the characters etc were done by a human behind. Even the loading atworks, I was just "it's pretty". Concept artist on youtube are great, I discovered them recently. Art is not just elite gallery painters, it's also video games.

[@isabellealgrin9300]

This is amazing to see the very beginning of this game and your concepts, It is so important that you tell you had a very few time to make each one, it was so different back then !

[@samthorne1905]

Great video trent was really nice to see the concept art for wrath

[@riccardomoscatello2030]

These are not bad at all! Just simple in terms of rendering maybe, thanks for sharing! It's great to see how most of the areas and creatures i know from those expansions took form! Ps: yes, there were flying ships as transportation in the final game, not as mounts but still.

[@EpidemicExpansion]

Well, this is gold. You give an amazing overview of how the industry grow up in such a short amount of time, how the need and process of working on pre-production evolved. thank you for everything, as a young artist, you can't imagine how valuable this is (and as you said this is HISTORY damnit!!)

[@dr.dejnairb7022]

Timeless pieces of well preserved artwork from a well received and loved expac of WoW which we are we now revisiting in story,theme and aesthetics.

[@dustyyyyyyyy7]

That was so great when you were working on a couple of those pieces while talking about them. xD Awesome video! :D

[@rabsrabble5415]

OMG this explains the big snake tail in Gundrak, I think.

[@alanzheng7019]

Your old world is also really good!!! I can't seem to be able to tell the comparison from your old stuff with your new stuff.

[@DigitalArtcast]

This is amazing Trent I love the whole walkthrough of your ideas and approach to design language. I also agree warm winter scenes are always fun and play a good contrast to the theme of the lich king. Also you’re too hard on yourself your 2006 paintings were awesome even back then you were super talented

[@RobertoGattoArt]

While I agree that this is good I also recognize that he's just being objective. Some of the stuff Trent showed wouldn't cut it by today's standards. Especially when he showed and explained how he realized that it could be useful to do cutaways and callouts to help the modelers while ON the job. Today you won't even be considered if you can't show your thought/design process, how stuff works and other skillsets that can aid the dev team (like 3d modeling)

[@doomguy606]

Beautiful artwork. Love it

[@kristanbenson803]

Lovelly style Trent, I can see it developing then..

[@tylerpeters4382]

Your ability to story tell visually is inspiring, thank you for all the golden advice and just great content. I would also like to thank you for creating so many amazing, stories, ideas, and images that really made playing the games that you worked on an awesome experience!

[@DigitalArtcast]

Tyler Peters I agree 😊

[@zarzunker2451]

I like the stout little ice troll at 10:24 on the far right with his rice hat. Too bad at the end of the day, they just took the normal trolls and made them blue-er. I feel like a dwarf rig would have worked on that design and scale the model up so he looks bigger. Whatever...

[@totnorbi]

ah man I've been waiting a loong time for this vid! :)

[@DiMoNico1981Swe]

Another video full of Masterpices =))) Thanks for you sharing this amazing Art!!! =) Did you create art for SC2 to? =)

[@kacperk5526]

Love this kind of videos, so much to learn from them

[@maynardshellholeofrandom5069]

"I didn't know values" The hell you didn't this looks amazing 5:15

[@aqualust5016]

Thanks for sharing all that Trent. It's cool to see how far off the designs were from what actually made it into the game.

[@iclaimthisname9767]

Wow even back then you're art was amazing, but you can definitely tell that you have improved A LOT!

[@jdm6784]

Entering Grizzly Hills, hearing the music.. Ahhh the wonderful memories.

[@fnustudios1781]

Damn... Nostalgia... Played WoW hours... Was GM in vanilla PvP. Love your work it's now part of gaming history!

[@SecretSquaff]

Those penguins are great

[@TheRazorlash]

Alot of this is starcraft like! Very good concepts!

[@FrancoisSchnell]

Beautiful concept art, thanks for sharing! I have the WoLK artbook :)

[@MichieMouse1]

wotlk was my favourite period in WoW, very insightful video :)

[@tb8865]

Awesome seeing your progression, I'm getting into digital painting and it makes me wish I had started years ago. And I like your warm winter palette; in fact, I think Bob Ross did it first :P

[@randomolli]

This was really interesting thank you! :)

[@viktorstanik]

Man that art is looking still stuning becouse it has some character i love it inspiring

[@donoventroy3118]

Would love to see you do an over paint of an old WoW character or landscape using today's concept art standards and Treantness treatment. Loving the look backs and all your knowledge.

[@TrentKaniuga]

Donoven Troy the only difference is that I would render everything like a hearthstone card, and set my callouts sketches off to the side.

[@wordragon]

To me, this is about the ideas, not the rendering quality, and all of that is there. Trent, wouldn’t you bring in a person who had all these ideas, like you, even if they weren’t the greatest render artist? I think some AAA modern games look slick, but are missing some of the creativity in design like we see here. There is really this inspirational thinking through the design being displayed here.

[@justintokarchuk9193]

Really enjoyed this. Looking forward to. Diablo as that's the one I spent years from 1 through 3 playing

[@estebansanz1125]

THANK YOU!!!!

[@JeffReilly]

Don't kid yourself Trent, you draw extremely well.

[@joanner1094]

Multiplayer mounts are now actually in the game, though I wonder it's in the shape you imagined it.. they do, or did, have a rocket kind of mount that you would get if you ''recruited'' a friend into the world of warcraft. It has space for a friend so you can ride together. after looking it up, it is called the "X-53 Touring Rocket"

[@still2kewl]

Inspiring - I love how you dared to dream! Nowadays, seems like you can't put pencil to paper without the spectre production costs hovering over your shoulder.

[@SuperFlyGhost]

I realize looking back on your old work is hard. But it is a bit scary to hear you say, old you would be "unemployable" . I realize I'm outside looking in, and what I see is a mountain of great explorations and ideas. I will keep working, to reach old you levels, I guess that's a realistic goal.... For now.

[@MikeJones-mj6qp]

The whole then and now thing is crazy u got so much better.... I made it to end... And after i go put cash on the card i use online imma buy ur class set!

[@varsilia]

Hi Trent, I can safely say a lot of your designs remained pretty much unchanged :D I’ve been playing wrath of the lich king on a private server for a long time and a lot of what you drew are straight up in the game as they are

[@Ceilvia]

35:15 I was painting spiders with antlers when you said that lol

[@jordannull454]

Hi Trent, thanks for letting us have a candid look into your early work! You said something near the end that really resonated with me about how bad rendering can ruin a good concept and good rendering can save a mediocre one. I have been working purely on fundamentals (line quality, perspective, form, etc) for the past year and feel like I'm ready to take the next step into rendering. I was considering one of your box sets, do your older box sets have info that the new ones do not? Do you have a specific one you would recommend? Thanks!

[@bogdanyar3527]

Thanks, awesome vid

[@gabrielruizaraujo2714]

WOTLk was my favorite game of all time probably, i dedicated so much time into it as i was a kid, and i got hooked on it because of the amazing design and visuals, also storytelling, of course. May the Lord Jesus bless you Trent, thx for being part of an maazing game that marked my life!

[@MrCaradras]

The concept art of WOTLK and TBC inspired me to become an artist in the gaming industry... I'm in professionally more than 5 years so far.

[@Mintzoid]

they did in fact use that ice hole idea in world of warcraft to setup the azjol nerub dungeon in dragonblight

[@timk7508]

Would you mind doing a full overpainting of one of your old work? Or perhaps just a reimagining of some concepts to show how it should be done these days?

[@RSidd]

To be fair,..2007 was the year I became aware of videogame art because of WOW, Prince Of Persia and other such titles. I can also recall seeing few of your artworks on forums and popular gaming websites back then and for me, those were some of the most epic artworks I've ever seen.

[@ParadiseofDarkness]

I liked your fur-tree in 4:20. They are adorable. Honestly these are still amazing if they are blown out, a little wonky, or weird ideas. But hey, if you didnt explore those ideas and think of all this stuff. You wouldn't be here teaching us your mastery ways of the might way of art.

[@kylegraslie3997]

I video where you show all of your concept art? Awesome!

[@Sjem554]

When a good artist say's its bad art but its actually amazing 😔

[@TrentKaniuga]

Standards in the AAA game industry are high.

[@RealSB]

I was in the Army playing WOW during my free time when this expansion came out.

[@atilab99draws58]

Doctor Fantastic extreme

[@kaelthas9970]

They added two player mount and we datamined some five player mount.

[@0rugos246]

Ark: Survival Evolved has a really great very large hidden area where you can drop down through some holes and enter a massive lush underground cavern world!

[@debilita9999]

I love this. It's good to know that I think the correct way. I am making my own comic and i woudl lvoe to be a concept artist but when I create a race I go all in. How od they look like, what do they wear, where do they live in, what is the religion, what do they eat etc.... I liked that you mentioned few tips of what not to do which are the same as few other people told me as well But man 2006 I was a kid but been born sooner I might have worked at blizz :D

[@eselcukart6578]

Thanks for every minute of this video! Curious about your personal opinion. Comparing Character Design and Environment Design opportunities: Do you think (today) is it harder to find a position as Character Artist rather than Environment Artist. I mean; do you think artists prefer to focus on character design because of it is more fun and easier to prove your skills? :) And do you think there are less "good" environment artists, comparing with character artists, because of it requires perspective / value/ composition knowledge. Thanks again!

[@TrentKaniuga]

I wouldnt even bother trying to be a character designer. Just go for environment. it's less stressful and more fun.

[@DigitalinDaniel]

At 25:12 you'd just shown the Tuskar and I just jumped to the conclusion that you were designing a barnacle monster for the ocean environment full of walruses : ^) But I don't play WoW...

[@MegaToren]

@34:15 looks like a boss from Metroid or something.

[@itsjonesh]

Dude, i am at that stage that values are killing me. Seriously: i'm getting a serious hatred for values. I can't seem to stablish even simple values! D: Funny thing is, that is only on digital, on traditional media, my values are quite alright. But that is in drawing, i'm a newbie in painting. Amazing video. Is nice to hear you experience as a concept artist at Blizzard. 5 paintings a day? Damn, man. I need to get gud. I struggle with one, imagine five! XD

[@jezuzu2078]

Trent - LOOK AWAY ITS HORRIBLE! Me - a beginner. This are all so AMAZING x.x

[@christophwieland7827]

I`m curious: Were you also involved in the actual Lichking (the character) design? Amazing video btw! :)

[@glMILAN9800]

Man I am all for multiplayer mounts

[@diidimeh]

I promised I listened and watched the entire video, but Im still trying to understand what parts of these were "bad" enough for you to consider your old self not good, or unemployable. You were (and still are) a very talented story teller. Major points for being able to self critique, and being super humble though. :)

[@aleksahrnjak4311]

You mentioned your rendering technique was not so good during this period... tbh I really liked it, it was cartoony, more design based and overall exact and clean.

[@jacobbergholtz9563]

24:43 ... Is that Scroop from Treasure Planet?

[@aimee9925]

who were the concept artists for MoP? I loved the aesthetics of Pandaria as well. Would also like to know what inspired them to create Boralus.

[@lowprophet3087]

Even though you mentioned that you feel you overworked yourself with doing concepts for props, characters, and the world. Do you feel like you learned more working on all of those different facets, or in hindsight do you feel like your skills would have improved more focusing on one particular area then moving into another as you progressed in your career?

[@Razvan528]

6:01 "I would do a sketch like this" -Trent I could barely do that in a good amount of hours wdym sketch man u re scary

[@Nerdicaful]

Trent: I'm not gonna re-work all of these drawings, let's move on. *continues to re-work another drawing*

[@artandchill2117]

Hey Trent would your autodesk brushes work on procreate on the Ipad do you know? Or should i jist download autodesk then buy your brushes?

[@ahmadhaider1508]

1:10 your art is so good man xdddddddd and you are sayin this is old btw i have a question for you is it a bad pratice to use 3d models as a reference or 3d base so you can back your 2d ?

[@TrentKaniuga]

No. Pros use 3d geo for most of their paintings.

[@XDvard]

Wow! 1 hour of Wow

[@alexbardh9735]

ayyy cool

[@varsilia]

Hey Trent at 25:47 is that a Fen Strider?

[@martinolivares1567]

Man you use to work with Chris Metzen! Hope to meet him someday

[@alexpalmer7018]

Hey Trent, I want to ask you what the best way to practice concept art is in your opinion

[@TrentKaniuga]

I don't know. I just do it every day. thats the practice. Create a story through visuals, with callouts and planning for a modeler.

[@t3du]

Did you created the librarian character from Diablo 3 at the beginning archive.org/details/ss83-hires

[@erichidalgo2155]

Thank you for sharing a World of Warcraft games

[@aSillywizard]

love it id like more vids about wow

[@lehfeldt1]

WOW

[@primordial6966]

Sooo, what kind of standards do most companies have today? More photo realistic or just more details in general? Also do you think that with SketchBook alone one can do decent artwork for games? Or should I try to get Photoshop there ? Nice Video btw.

[@dustyyyyyyyy7]

I think looking up concept art for recent video games will give you a good start. Trent does some amazing things in Sketchbook so the quality would be fine. Photoshop is industry standard - so while other painting programs do mostly the same thing, you'd want to know how to use Photoshop if you want to work in-house somewhere.

[@primordial6966]

Dusty Hill thanks for the advice 👍🏻

[@RobertoGattoArt]

It's not really about photo realism or details, cause that depends a lot on the style of the project. It's mostly about your design sense, form language, how well you can visually communicate your ideas, thinking process etc

[@iggorr25]

Very cool story :D You keep saying that this and this image is rendered so and so... how do you RENDER in PS...? I come from 3D so I know what is rendering in 3D....but not in PS.... :P

[@brucemashbat240]

Who designed or came up with Illidan Stormrage?