Concept101: Reflection on the Past

Azteca is a one-way-or-the-other kind of world. You either love it or hate it. But one thing you absolutely can't discount is the world's beauty. And naturally, where a beautiful world exists, you will find even more beautiful art.

I missed my Friday slot, but I haven't forgotten about Concept101! Today, I'm sharing art from Billy George, one of my favorite artists who runs a blog, too. I talk more about him and his site in one of my latest posts regarding his excellent Marleybone work HERE.

Mounts, Pets, and More

I constantly stress the fact that everything starts with art. Even the plants you see in a world begin here. And with complete creative freedom limited only by an artist's interpretation of a writer's vision, there's plenty of potential.

The concept above is the Triceratops Mount that we see in Wizard101. It was part of the Azteca release. George utilizes the character scaling that I discusses with another artist's work HERE. I'll say it time and time again - what I love about George's work is the colors. There are so many and they are used in such a beautiful way.

This next concept, above, though, really surprised me. The biggest dinosaurs in Azteca were actually the ones we owned as mounts. That was my big irritation with that world - a world of colossal beats and I was sitting on the biggest thing I'd see in all twelve locations. I want the head of a Tyrannosaurus to fill a spot in the battle, and we climb a volcano to fight him at the top! I want to see huge, undersea snakes.

That's why this concept got me excited. A Therizinosaurus could be twelve feet tall and weigh 6000 pounds. However, this is just the pet. As noted, the second one is the final version. The first is "for pose reference only." Beautiful.

Smoking Mirror Zombies

The final concept I'd like to share is this colorful Smoking Mirror Zombie, who, in the concept, seems to actually be smoking. It's unfortunate that those effects weren't carried out on the models. Nonetheless, I was curious about this guy.

As it turns out, "Smoking Mirrors" are actually part of Azteca beliefs. Or rather, a Smoking Mirror, singular, is. That is the translation of the name Tezcatlipoca, a figure associated with "the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, war and strife." In fact, Tezcatlipoca is often depicted as a jaguar. I investigated.

The image below is a depiction of Tezcatlipoca battling
Quetzalcoatl (a feathered serpent, also found in Wizard101 as a plural creature when it is not, in fact, more than one being that is part of a Mesoamerican religion). As you can see, Tezcatlipoca is clearly a jaguar here.

In Conclusion...

...you've brushed up on your dinosaur knowledge all while seeing a few beautiful new pieces of art. Don't forget to check out a few of those posts I mentioned and linked to above, as they contain an analysis of a number of other interesting pieces. Also check out Billy George's blog HERE. What do you think of the art?

As always, thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral.