WETA On Crowning Glory for 20 Years Blizzard Veterans

WETA posted photos of the making of the Crown of Glory award designed by Nick Carpenter for the veteran Blizzard Entertainment employees who have worked at the company for 20 years.

As an afterthought, WETA posted a letter by Blizzard Entertainment VP of Art and Cinematic Development Nick Carpenter explaining the initial concept and design process for the development of the Crown of Glory. Here’s just an excerpt:

Nick Carpenter: Coming up with a design for our 20-year service award was no ordinary task. It had to be truly epic and make the recipient feel that he or she was part of something special and rare in our industry. Considering that we award 5-year employees with a sword, and 10-year employees with a shield, a badass crown felt like the right thing to do.

We wanted it to draw from all of our games without being specific to any one of them. It had to stand on its own while still feeling true to what Blizzard is all about. So what we ultimately arrived at, after more than a year of off-and-on concept runs with an army of artists from around the company, was a design that has a touch of the Lich King’s helmet, a bit of Imperius’s armor, some of King Terenas’s crown, and a hint of protoss curves for good measure.

Furthermore, to the naysayers who think the Warcraft film is vaporware — you should know that the featured film is still coming. Blizzplanet found on Twitter that WETA is definitely going to be involved in the Warcraft featured film.

For a quick background on the New Zealand-based company, WETA manufactured the weapons, armor and/or vehicles for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and James Cameron’s Avatar.