Talking Architecture With Guild Wars' Art Director [What A Nice Castle You Have]

[GamePoster]

I love architecture — and still have days where I think I probably should've gone into architectural history — so I always enjoy BLDGBLOG's game-related posts. This week is a chat with Daniel Dociu, Chief Art Director of Guild Wars. The interview is worth reading for a look at the pictures alone, but a look at how gorgeous environments are created is interesting, too:

... I look back all the way to the dawn of mankind: to ruins, and Greek architecture, and Mycenean architecture, all the way up to the architecture of the Crusades, and castles in North Africa, and the Romanesque and Gothic and Baroque and Rococo - even to neo-Classical and art deco and Bauhaus and Modernist. I mean, there are bits and pieces here and there that make a strong impression on me, and I blend them - but that's the beauty of games. You don't have to be stylistically pure, or even coherent. You can afford a certain eclecticism to your work. It's a more forgiving medium. I can blend elements from the Potala Palace in Tibet with, say, La Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí's cathedral. I really take a lot of liberties with whatever I can use, wherever I can find it.

You can find more examples of Dociu's work at his website or BLDGBLOG's Flickr photostream.
Game/Space: An Interview With Daniel Dociu [BLDBLOG]

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