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felassan · 22 days ago

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard art book pages, under a cut due to spoilers:

Top left: Lace Harding in travel gear. Top right: Rogue Taash in a dragon-skin suit. Center: Imshael, a choice spirit in human form. Bottom right: An Antivan Crow Dreamer who is covered in tattoos that remind her of her identity when she returns from dreaming.

Top left: In his earliest form, a potential Qunari companion was a saarebas (a mage). Top right: Trying to find the right balance between Warden and Dalish hunter in an early exploration of Davrin. Center right: Lucanis started as a Tevinter agent. Bottom left: Calpernia was to return from Inquisition, this time as a party member. Bottom right: A potential Qunari companion evolved from saarebas to dapper Qunari spy, offering a deeper look into Qunari culture.

Top: Long ago, the Kal Sharok were cut off from the rest of the dwarves by a Blight. They survived by hunting darkpawn, becoming like Grey Wardens. We explored what scrappier dwarves with an even closer relationship to the Stone would look like. Bottom: Tevinter found the last tatters of the ancient elven empire and copied what they could. We wanted Tevinter designs to look like simplistic copies of elven designs.

Top: The red rope of the Qunari represents their ideology, the Qun. Each member is simply one section of the continuous thread that will one day wrap around all Thedas. Bottom: Early exploration of the Crows. These weren't luxurious enough.

Top left: Nevarra is largely a desert nation, so we came up with a design language that was light and flowing. Top right: Nevarran dragon hunters might wear ceremonial dragon-skin cloaks with large crested helmets. Center: For the Mourn Watch, we explored dermestid beetle and fly motifs. We also researched the embalming process and how undead bodies might decay with neglect.

Top: A tal-vashoth from Rivain. Center: Some of the first costumes designed for Joplin were mercenary outfits. The idea was to come up with a cheap, standardized uniform that would be easy to mass-produce. It would be the common gear for mercenaries and bandits alike.

Top: A normal day in Tevinter. Center: Tevinter was built on the corpse of the elven empire. Thematically, we explored costumes for Tevinter citizens that resembled scavengers (such as a vulture, a fly, a maggot). Center right: We also tried to see if access to water would make for a good class distinction (the more wet someone looked, the wealthier they were).

Top: We designed the Tevinter clothing style based on Dorian and the Venatori soldiers from Inquisition. Bottom center: While Tevinter is full of powerful mages and shady characters, there are still people living their lives there. We wanted to design the full spectrum of Tevinter society. Bottom right: We tried taking the serpent motif to its logical conclusion. Oftentimes you don't know where the line is until you cross it.

Top: Academic robes for the mages' college. Bottom: Exploring the various categories of Tevinter slaves.

Top: The party explores an ancient elven ruin, but it's protected by a magical security system. Center left: A draconic motif for the Antaam. Center right: A Tevinter gladiator enhanced with magical irons.

Made You Look There can be a tendency to race through environments. To help teach players to pay more attention, we explored creatures that would be deadly to the unobservant. The wizard scissor chair was a favorite. Enter a fancy dining room or the luxurious hall of a magister's tower, and you'd never know when one of these was ready to snap. Center: Certain barrels might have extra webs on them, and maybe they occasionally shudder.

Top left: The sewer slug. Center left: We tried to develop some hybrid creatures, things that Ghilan'nain might have experimented on. Like this cyclops-dragon-centaur. Center right: The spider man was meant to read like a normal crowd character until you got within grabbing distance. [drawing is annotated "Surprise!"] Bottom: Some creatures are designed to solve a problem. In this case, keeping players away from the ocean. This was meant to be Ghilan'nain's version of a mermaid.

The turtle was another creature that would force players to pay attention to their environment. It would be passive, unless you got too close. Later on we would explore what was possible with domesticated versions of this animal.

Top left: Messenger dolls. When you light the candle, it comes to life. You hand it a scroll and tell it the name of the recipient. Not many messages actually make it to their final destination, so it's best not to use a messenger doll for any critical information. Top right: Hourglass construct. As long as the sand is flowing, the creature can fight. It's particularly weak when it's flipping itself over. Center left: The practice of blood magic in Tevinter has created a black market for blood. Sometimes there simply aren't enough volunteers. Bottom right: More of Ghilan'nain's hybrid creatures, this time a vulture-bear and a giant. Drawing annotations: Perfectly innocent scroll-carrying hooks, Inactive when unlit, Used to deliver non-critical messages, Attacking, Tired, Vulnerable

We explored this idea for public transportation in Minrathous: domesticated giants that act as a taxi service.

Top: Every wizard needs a wizard tower, and we thought it would be fun if Tevinter had an entire suburb of them. Center: Early diagrams like this help to flesh out the visual language of a location. Starting with the Tevinter tile sets and props we made in Inquisition, we expanded on the sharp, angled, proud shape language. Bottom: Minrathous has a specific location on the map of Thedas, with the Nocen Sea to its east, and the Valarian Fields and the High Reaches to its west. It was exciting to try to bring this location to life. Drawing annotations: Pagan ritual site, capped with Chantry chapel

Minrathous Non literal maps and diagrams like this help to keep track of complicated locations. Tevinter has been referenced since the first Dragon Age game. There are many locations and landmarks that have been mentioned in dialogue and journal entries. As we began to build Tevinter for real, we tried to organize these elements into a cohesive whole. Drawing annotations: Chantry, Colosseum, Forum, Archon's Palace, Dwarven Embassy, Slave Quarter, Market Street, Upper Class, Lower Class, Guardians, Front Gate, Imperial Highway, The High Reaches, Valarian Fields, Nocen Sea

Part Three The Veilguard

A symbolic map of Thedas. Rather than providing specific cartographical information, it expresses the character of each region.

Art Style Dragon Age has never exactly been photorealistic. Dragon Age: Origins was loosely based on fantasy paintings, filtered through the limitations of the technology of the time. In Dragon Age II and continuing in Inquisition, we wanted to push our characters' designs to support their strong personalities. For Veilguard, we wanted to take a confident step away from the uncanny valley and toward even stronger characterization. The goal was to make personality and emotion read more clearly, in the same way theatrical makeup exaggerates an actor's features. Center right: We briefly discussed doing extensive focus tests, but the core leadership believed in this direction, and we knew we'd use any data we received from focus testing to just do exactly what we wanted anyway. That easily saved us half a year. Bottom: We set up a design hierarchy with shape at the top. Silhouette was the primary concern. Personality needed to come through loud and clear at this stage. Each subsequent design element supported what came before it. Value helped to strengthen and clarify silhouette, color supported value, and texture tied it all together. Drawing annotations: Inquisition, Veilguard, Inquisition, original shape, exaggerated confident shape, removed details, repeated shape, removed details, value, lighter background contrast from snow, original, adjusted, color, overall, color, adjustment

The box: We were pushing personality in characters and environments, but the real test of our principles was this box. Various drawing annotations: Inquisition, Veilguard. Inquisition, Veilguard, surface response Notes - foreshadow that: there's a huge horrible green hole in the sky. Use atmosphere haze with one purpose: strengthen silhouettes. Lil: holy killer, mercurial, evasive, dancer, bard Cass: sharp, lithe, hard shell, soft heart Exaggerated: shape, color Realistic: surface response Photo 90° angle Rich color value contrast warm/cool contrast Breaking straight lines Silhouette Exaggerated details Reference Veilguard Believable personality: push the shapes to tell the story. Value, color, texture support shapes Example: dominant shape, exaggerate unique features, more variety in stone size, decadence + entropy = faded painting Tevinter description: 1. Dominance: iconography, aggressive, pride, surveillance 2. Entropy: decay, neglect, dust, forgotten 3. Decadence: seductive, indulgent, luxurious

Elgar'nan The elven god of tyranny, vengeance, fatherhood, and the sun. All-Father of the elven pantheon. In previous games, we've seen powerful human mages that obeyed evil gods, broke into the Black City, and were corrupted. This time we were going to see the evil gods themselves. We wanted to make previous characters like Corypheus and the Architect look like crude copies next to Elgar's controlled visage. Top left: With Solas, we established that hair loss would be the only outward indication of an ancient elf's age. Elgar wears a wig attached to his crown. Center left: The shards of lyrium around his collar were each taken from a slain Titan during the war between the first elves and the Titans. They have become corrupted by their time in the Black City. Center right: Elgar uses an eclipse shape language, a reference to being the god of fire and shadow. Center: His costume was meant to reflect the general or dictator archetype: he proudly brandishes the medals of his previous conquests as a symbol of his authority. The badges on his coat are more modest at the bottom but become more and more ostentatious as his victories (and his pride) increase. He also wears around his neck a vial of dust, taken from the same spot where his spirit self-formed his body from the dust. Drawing annotations: "Body imagery", "'Spirit' nerve wings", "Show growth", "General", "King", "God-Emperor", "'God'", "Black City", "Blight Dreams", "Tormented Elgar"

One direction we explored had him badly desiccated, with only magical living armor keeping him alive.

Ghilan'nain Goddess of monsters. Mother of the Halla. Ghilan'nain was once an elf chosen by Andruil, the goddess of the hunt, to become a god as reward for her devotion to the world's animals. She then became part of the elven pantheon. Top: She is the goddess of monsters, creating countless twisted creatures. She has modified herself so much over the years that whatever her face may have been, it's long forgotten. Center left: Her mask tells the story of how she was made the youngest of the gods. On the first day, she struck down the monsters of the air. On the second day, she drowned the giants of the sea. On the third day, she killed the beasts of the land. Center right: Ghilan'nain is our sinister mad-scientist god, using her blighted magic to create horrors out of Thedas' people and wildlife. She mutates the darkspawn into even more powerful and "efficient" forms, for example, and also warps the Antaam who foolishly come to her for power. Bottom left: Ghilan'nain's horns are meant to reflect a hunting bow in reference to Andruil.

Top: Ghilan'nain wants to restore the old elven empire so she can continue her work. Analytical and curious, she sees everyone as potential stock for experiments (except for fellow god Elgar'nan, with whom she gets on well). Ghilan'nain is pitiless about her work - she'll happily slice open a hundred people for parts - but she's got a soft spot of pride in her monsters once they're complete. Center: Her Archdemon, Razikale, is an enchanted dragon that gets modified even further. Bottom: Razikale was inspired by the Jabberwocky from Terry Gilliam's film of the same name.

some other pages -

Some opening pages

Foreword

Google Books preview pages Part One

Google Books preview pages Part Two

Amazon preview pages

Page batch

Book art credits:

BioWare art: Matt Rhodes, Ramil Sunga, Albert Urmanov, Christopher Scoles, Nick Thornborrow, Steve Klit

Volta art: Gui Guimaraes, Stéphanie Bouchard, Akim Kaliberda, Alejandro Olmedo, Alexey Zaryuta, Julien Carrasco, Maksim Marenkov, Marianne Martin, Mariia Istomina, Marion Kivits, Matti Marttinen, Mélanie Bourgeois, Pablo Hurtado De Mendoza, Rael Lyra, Rodrigo Ramos, Thomas Schaffer, Tiago Sousa, Tristan Kang, Vladimir Mokry, Yintion J, Joseph Meehan, Stefan Atanasov, Julien Carrasco

Additional art: Marc Holmes, Thomas Scholes

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