Meduzarts: AION Asmodia

Hi there!

Finally, I'm happy to present you one of our last productions at Meduzarts ([link]).
The Project is called: AION - The Tower of Eternity ([link]) and is a massive multiplayer online role play game (MMORPG) by NCsoft ([link]). .
In conjunction with Ignited Minds (www.ignitedusa.com) we've created several illustrations for the gaming website and the publicity of the game.
I want to mention, due to the tight deadlines and the shear amount of work, we had a bunch of Artists at Meduzarts working in parallel to realize this piece in time and at the desired quality.
I'm trying my best here to credit everyone who was involved on this project, so it may also give viewers a better insight on the process of the image and the tasks that were to handle.
At the same time, I want to thank here everyone who participated in that great collaborative effort!


Creative Director / Art Director: Jessy Veilleux
- Art Direction: Meduzarts, Digital Matte Painting

Art Director: Garrett Jones
- Art Direction: Ignited Minds

CTO / CoFounder: Jonathan Brosseau
- Client Communication

Project Manager / VFX Producer: Nadia Salvaggio
- Client Communication, Scheduling, Project Management


Character Modelling:

Lead Modeler / Digital Sculptor: Steve Jubinville
- XSI, ZBrush Modelling of Aiva (primary main character), and secondary foreground / midground characters

Digital Artist / Digital Sculptor: Gabriel T. Beauvais
- XSI, ZBrush Modelling of Naga (secondary main character)


Character Rigging:

Technical Director: Sylvain Berger
- Setting up Maya Rig for Aiva (primary main character), file conversion

Digital Artist: Thomas Busque
- Midground / Background characters

Digital Artist: Ricardo Meixueiro
- Midground / Background characters

Digital Artist: Alexander Boucher
- Midground / Background characters


Character Posing / Placement:

Lead Modeler / Digital Sculptor: Steve Jubinville
- Aiva (primary main character)

Digital Artist: Julien Chabot
- secondary foreground / midground / background

Digital Artist: Stephan Brisson
- secondary foreground / midground / background


2D / 3D Texturing:

3D Texture Artist: Christian Menard
- Texturing of Aiva (primary main character) and Naga (secondary main character)
2D Department: Tania Davoli, Elise Frappier, Sebastien Dufour
- texturing of secondary foreground, midground and background characters


Lighting / Shading / Rendering:

Digital Artist: Alexander Tessier
- Shading, Lighting and Rendering of Aiva (primary main character)
Digital Artist: Luc Girard
- Foreground Environment / Aiva's Weapon
Digital Artist: Julien Chabot
- secondary main / midground / background environment and characters


Digital Matte Painting:

Creative Director / Art Director: Jessy Veilleux
- final color correction, final touch ups, final repainting of characters, fx

Concept Artist / Lead Matte Painter: Daniel Kvasznicza
- concept art, matte painting, final touch ups, final repainting of characters, fx


I was involved in most of the production tasks during the process, except for the 3d modeling and character rigging part.
My Main Focus was on the Matte Painting part of the background, midground and partially for the foreground that I shared with Jessy Veilleux.
My 2D Task also involved the painting of Aiva's wings, ears, make up and facial expression as well as the Naga's face.
Overall, Jessy Veilleux and me passed lots of time at the end to repaint most parts, to rid the "3d look" and to add a vast amount of details in a traditional 2d fashion.
Our final result as it's presented here has very few parts that actually expose the "real 3d" to maintain the style, quality and level of detail that we desired.


Some info to the piece itself:

The Original resolution is at 5500 x 3700 and is meant for printing. The whitish empty space on the right is the location for their text and logo.
We had to be sure to respect the framing of the clients text position, therefore we adjusted the composition to enforce that area.
The contrast between Black and White, represents the ongoing conflict between the Asmodians and Elyos.
Those are the two factions opposing eachother in that game. We've created another complimentary artwork to this one, which is not released yet.
I'm looking forward presenting this one as well as we have the publishing rights on the clients side!

In the meantime on Meduzarts: [link] and I-NetGraFX: [link] you can find the hi-res version and close ups from this shot,
as well as the wing illustrations, which I will post later at another time. Steve Jubinville also shows on his website 3d wireframes of our maincharacter: [link].


Used software packages:

Softimage XSI, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, Photoshop and of course my inhouse magic weapon PhotoshopFX


Comments and Critiques are very welcome!
Thanks a lot for watching ...


Update:
Thanks a lot for all your kind and constructive c&c's!!
About her issues with the high heels, you can trust me we fought over this subject several times at production.
Lots of design standpoints weren't on our side, so we didn't had absolute creative freedom ... just as a sidenote