The Making of Morph and Seek

(Click to enlarge)

Here's the comic Morph and Seek in its sketched and inked version.
I work traditionally before I do the coloring, starting with sketching it up with a blue or green pencil. Those are worth gold if you can’t stand/handle light tables and allow you to ink right on top of your sketches. In addition, you don’t have to use erasers, since most scanners can’t pick up the blue and green colors. Later inked with a nib pen – only with one size in this pic. The finished piece can be seen in the comic section.

WoW Comic - Morph and Seek

The title is, as usual, a play with words - morph instead of hide.
At some times when you play you just tend to see animals around you, and I thought that it might be a good idea to make a comic out of it.

The Horde-guys are chasing a pack of annoying Allys that have been ganking them for a while, but they are nowhere to be found! But little did they know...
This comic's up and down at the same time, some get the idea and think it's funny, while others think the opposite because it's hard to see what's going on. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! (Click to enlarge.)

He-WoW

I've always thought that my t11 warrior set has looked a lot like Trap Jaw from He-Man, the animated series. A little at least..! So I started to look around to see if any other Cataclysm set had anything in common with the show.

Here's the result (Click to enlarge):

So what do you think? Is Cataclysm inspired by He-Man? :D

Forgive me, Blizzard

Forgive me, Blizzard. I didn't mean to do it, but it was late... I was tired...! (I haven't "invented" anything of the following really, just drawn on top of existing lines on the loading screens.)


The new Lich King, Bolvar Fordragon, witnesses Cataclysm's influence on Northrend as the continent itself comes to life.


Cairne Bloodhoof as a mammoth, Prophet Velen with his "raindeer" spaulders, Tyrande with a strange fella on her chest... Thus, a cheering skeleton seems to be hiding behind Vol'jin! And who is that weird guy eating on Tyrande's elbow..?


Check out Sylvanas' awesome chibi hat! And why does her spaulders sing, and what kind of living belt does she have?! While Genn Greymane's and Magni's spaulders are having a conversation, Varian Wrynn's armor seems to be very happy.

A nerdy study in Battlegrounds

I’ve been in for pvp and battlegrounds very much lately, and have had serious thoughts about it, besides from having great pleasure in backstabbing gnomes in particular. At some time I felt like I got the same battlegrounds over and over, even though I had selected random, and thought that it would be a fun idea to keep statistics over which battlegrounds I got by selecting random. At the same time I also started a poll at DeviantART where I asked the following question: Which one is your favorite Battleground?

I played 50 battlegrounds and these where the noteworthy results (note that Arathi Basin was the second of frequent occurence battlegrounds):
1^st Alterac Valley: 30,5%
2^nd Arathi Basin: 12,2%
7^th Isle of Conquest: 6%

The poll at DeviantART, with 63 participators, showed the following:
Alterac Valley: 44%
Arathi Basin: 19%
Warsong Gulch: 14%
Battle for Gilneas: 8%
Eye of the Storm: 8%
Strand of the Ancients: 3%
Twin Peaks: 3%
Isle of Conquest: 0%

Note that AV and AB are the top 2 and IoC 7^th or 8^th in both lists.

I wondered why I got Alterac Valley so often, and many of my friends suggested that it was due to the fact that AV requires more players than the others – but if that was the case, why didn’t I get Isle of Conquest more often? As it is now, it is one of the bg:s that occurs the least times.

My theory is therefore that we get the battlegrounds based on popularity, not just by some random factor. Even though we get rewards, such as more honor by picking random, people still queue for their favorite battleground, and we who pick “random” get thrown into those bg:s. So please do me a favor – stop liking Alterac Valley so much! :D

But I may be wrong, and my study isn’t 100% accurate. What do you guys think? Feel free to add links/info/studies! (And those who favor Alterac Valley - do you guys specificly pick that bg when queueing?)

Faces at places

I have this hobby of mine, in which I try to locate faces hidden within the World of Warcraft. They can often be found on floors, especially in dungeons with their different patterns, but this time I accidently looked down while running around with my rogue in Orgrimmar and I found it to be absolutely hilarious!

Genn Greymane

Today I felt for drawing Genn Greymane, one of the most awesome faction leaders in my opinion. I however questioned one thing in particular when I checked a reference picture of Genn in his Worgen-from: why would anyone want to tie a leather thread around ones tooth? What's the history behind that? What's its purpose? The thread is far to big in order to fit during his human form, so he has obviously put it there afterwards. Anyone have any suggestions?

Lady Sylvanas Windrunner

The faction leader project continues, now with Sylvanas.

Man, that bow of hers was a pain in the *beep*! Before I got screenshots as references of it I draw an ordinary bow and was really satisfied with her hands (which rarely happens), only to notice later on that it's quite the advanced structure with a giant cover hiding the hands. Bah! *Picks the rubber*

Oh my (Lo')Gosh!

I sat down by the desk earlier this morning to get some work done on my webcomic. I really had to work with it due to the upcoming page upload in Thursday, but I just couldn’t, wasn’t up for it at all. Moments later I saw a sceenshot of my favorite faction leader, King Varian Wrynn, and I was like: fuck yeah! So I decided to draw him instead :) I’m so disciplined... not. While drawing ol’ Varian I thought that I ought to draw a body shot of all faction leaders, let’s see what happens. Here it is anyway!

Wowabunga!

There’s one thing, only one, that has been bugging me from the very start of WoW. The turtles. Don’t get me wrong - I love them bulky little fellas and in my somewhat nooby first year of WoW I used these ones on a regular basis, even in raids! (I finally came to my senses and switched to a raptor though.) I went on epic adventures to collect different colors of them and named them after my own turtles at home. As a leatherworker I crafted the whole Turtle Scale armor set, and searched for other additional turtle gear, such as the Band of the Great Tortoise you get from Tooga in Tanaris. As you probably have noticed, I was a huge turtles-nerd.

But to the point. Most animals in WoW are anatomically correct except the turtle. Even Blizzard’s own creation, the “zhevra”, looks exactly like an ordinary zebra (with a horn though). The giraffes look like giraffes, the bears are bears and so on. I think you get it. But not the turtles. They are something completely different.

The following are three common prejudices about turtles:

1. The shell only covers the turtle’s back.Wrong! My grandmother once said with a disappointed look on her face when she saw my own turtle: “Oh, I thought I could pat it on its belly.” The shell surrounds the turtle.
2. Turtles have teeth. Wrong! Both turtles and tortoises have sharp beaks.
3. Turtles are peaceful. The turtles are in WoW, with few exceptions non-hostile, but the fact is that these creatures think that most things are food and snap after it. They can even eat themselves to death!

The Warcraft turtles are very non-turtlish. If this is due to lack of knowledge or spaced out creativity I don’t know. Another thing is that these creatures seem to be aquatic, therefore turtles and not tortoises. This is decided by the facts that they’re classified as such in-game by name, in addition that they’re actually living at beaches and oases etc. But here’s the contradiction – they have the body of a tortoise! How can they swim with non-webbed tortoise-feet? My mind gets fucked by these sorts of things. “But you know, there can be a mix between these two”, you might say. Then I answer that turtles have the urge of visiting non-aquatic areas to function normally, which kinda explains why the mobs can be found on land sometimes. The sam thing cannot be said about tortoises, which obviously were Blizzard's main reference while creating these beasts.

What are these creatures? The question is even more confusing now, since Blizzard added sea turtles in Cataclysm. Should they represent the opposite of the former turtles? If that's the case, does this actually mean that they're tortoises living the life of a turtle? WHAT ARE THEY?! Will we ever know?

EDIT (25/3): Found this the other day! :D

EDIT (1/4): An additional video on the subject. Check it out on youtube!

A dearth of ideas

Woah, the deadline for the upcoming warcraft comic is within the week and I completely lack ideas. It’s one of those times when you can actually hear the emptiness in your brain, with the sound of echoes while tapping on one’s head.

I laughed out loud when I came to think of an idea where two allys walk in a corridor filled with statues at the sides. One of them says she feels like being watched, whereupon the other says that there’s nothing to worry about – she’s just being paranoid! It turns out that one of these statues is a dwarf in stoneform. With a smirky-looking face he looks into the camera in the last panel. I giggled over this stupid idea for like an hour and then decided to show a rough sketch of this to my brother who, as expected, turned it down immediately with a “emm...”. Sigh.

Another thing I keep thinking about is the logic of crowd control. I played the Bastion of Twilight with my guild the other day, and there are these two packs of patrolling mobs in the initial part of the dungeon. They overlap eachother, so you have to wait for the other pack to be pretty far away before you can pull the first group. After the actual pull, the cc:ed mobs remain at the same location of course, like sap and sheep, and I was thinking... what the heck does the other patroll think of this when they return? They come back, just walk through like nothing. “Oh, there’s ol’ John, sleeping at work I see” or “Oh my, a sheep. How nice of Cho’gal to put it here among the workers to liven up the atmosphere.” I thought of how I could make a funny out of this one, but the things is... I think everyone have thought the same thing at least once and it’s not really funny. *Throw idea in the wastebasket.*

It’s really hard just coming up with funny ideas. They’re more like revelations – visions that just pop out of nothing when seeing a random picture or hearing a quote. God, give me a sign!

Bananas

As a start I want to give you my opinion of the evergoing subject “Horde is evil! No Alliance is evil!”

We can clearly see the trend of old Horde heroes from the past games that’ve become big bad bosses in WoW. I’m talking about Zul’Jin and Cho’gall from Tides of Darkness, not to mention that Deathwing, the additional hero in the WC2 expansion set Beyond the Dark Portal, will most likely be the finale in Cataclysm. Horde and Alliance are both factions containing different races and nations. The thing with horde is that their allies and pacts during the years, such as Mannaroth for example, have been questionable. “Allies come and allies go. That’s politics." – quote from Valeera Sanguinar in the official WoW comics.

So... at least three well-known Hordies have gone bananas. (Not literally bananas, I know the lore works, but you get my point) Where are all the allys? Some people’d probably mention Arthas right now, but... no. Simply just no. We could all notice while we played that he had some attitude problems in the very start of WC3 where he was first announced, and that he’d become an antagonist in the future. Arthas was made by Blizzard to become this great villain, just like Darth Vader.

Can Fandral Staghelm be sorted in this category? I guess so – but can you really compare the status and awesomeness between a non-playable guy sitting in a tree for six years in WoW and a guy like Zul’jin? That’s up to you to decide. To meet up with these big names in my book, an old hero like Turalion would have to do something drastic. Also the status on Sylvanas sister, Alleria from WC2, says: “missing in action”. Can we expect to see her again? As a boss that’ve finally returned in Cataclysm? The answer is no, because people don’t wanna see nice ordinary humans, elves, dwarves and gnomes as big fat final bosses. We want see evil trolls, scary big ogres and dangerous dragons. Why do you think Blizzard chose Saurfang to be a boss in ICC and not Bolvar Fordragon? The fact is, despite what people say – Horde has less morale than Alliance. That’s the whole point with Horde. They are our very contrast, that’s what makes them cool. That’s at least the reason why I like them.

So to sum this up... I’m totally looking forward to watch Garrosh go bananas in the next expansion.

Welcome to Comic Stance!

Hey guys! My name is Ninni Landin, also known as Lukali at the art community Deviant Art. I’m a Swedish comic artist and illustrator and draw World of Warcraft comics for a game magazine.

The reason why I wanted to start this blog in addition to comics is because WoW consumes much of my time and sometimes I feel that drawing is not enough. I mean, comics take some time to do, and lots of thoughts run through on a constant basis while playing. Everything can’t be printable comics - either it’s not good enough, or there’s simply just too much to tell to possibly fit in one single page! (Or just general whining and thoughts, which’d be awful comics..!) I will talk about ideas that never left the idea stage, perhaps show some scraps and write general stuff of what I do and think of WoW.

Cheers and welcome!