Two DigiPen art students went on a raid that earned them some truly legendary loot — top placements in the 2024 World of Warcraft Student Art Contest. Announced in March, MFA in Digital Arts student Drew Mitchell’s 3D “Crimson Dream Gorger” model won the contest’s character art category, and BFA in Digital Art and Animation student Sasha Ponomarenko’s “Chains of Regret” spell animation won the runner-up spot in the FX category.
A big fan of the Warcraft universe ever since playing Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Mitchell says the prospect of creating his own addition to the lore excited him. “Both the gameplay and the art style really appeal to me. I get a buzz attempting to make something that could exist in the same universe,” Mitchell says. A similarly devoted fan of tapirs — long-snouted, pig-like animals native to South America and Asia — Mitchell found inspiration in the supernatural Japanese “baku,” a mythical creature that resembles a tapir. “The baku is known for being a dream eater,” Mitchell says. “It seemed like a perfect fit for something involving the druid class and the Emerald Dream.”
Druids in the World of Warcraft universe have a special affinity for the Emerald Dream, a verdant spirit realm that reflects what the planet Azeroth might look like untouched by intelligent beings. Mitchell imagined his Crimson Dream Gorger character inhabiting the game’s “Emerald Nightmare,” a twisted reflection of the Emerald Dream. An evil counterpart to the baku, Mitchell’s character devours the essence of dreams and wipes the memories of its prey in the process. “When designing the Crimson Dream Gorger, I tried to include some subtle anatomy of all the races that have the option to play as a druid, along with certain other animalistic features that match descriptions of a baku,” Mitchell says. “The character design had a lot of different parts to it, so transitioning it to 3D while matching the contest’s technical parameters was both super fun and challenging.”
Appropriately enough, Mitchell says he got the phone call that his submission had won the character art category while he was sleeping. “Honestly, the call woke me up,” he says. “It felt really surreal, and I wasn’t sure it had really happened or if I was still asleep. Looking back, it’s kind of ironic considering the character I made.”
President of DigiPen’s Tech Art Club, Ponomarenko decided to submit to the contest’s FX category both as a challenge to grow and as an ode to the many Blizzard artists she aspires to. “In recent years, as I began pursuing visual effects (VFX), the ArtStation accounts of WoW VFX artists have become a great source of inspiration,” Ponomarenko says.
Before starting on her submission, Ponomarenko watched a 2023 Game Developers Conference presentation on World of Warcraft’s visual effects pillars by former lead VFX artist Sarah Carmody. “If there is one thing I can do well it’s take notes,” Ponomarenko says. “The GDC talk emphasized having both gameplay and emotional intention behind an effect. Analyzing the previous [contest] winners, I noticed a lot of them focused on the purples and pinks of Void and Arcane magic, which I liked too, but I decided I needed to do something the judges wouldn’t have seen as often.”
Going for a less common green color palette, Ponomarenko’s “Chains of Regret” spell animation isn’t just an effect, but a self-contained story as well. “Chains of Regret was meant to tell the story of vengeful souls on the battlefield, clinging onto their still-alive comrades,” Ponomarenko explains. “The original gameplay animation called for the main target to be rooted in place and for their allies to be slowed and set to take great damage unless they escaped the rune in time. It tied back into [the idea of] desperate soldiers, both currently alive and dead, abandoning their friends to save their own hide and being filled with guilt.”
Taking roughly two months to complete, Ponomarenko made daily screen recordings and kept detailed behind-the-scenes process documentation to motivate herself. All the hard work paid off. “I just got home from a late class and was lazing about the kitchen when I heard my phone ring,” she says of the late-February call informing her that she had earned the runner-up spot for her submission. Although Blizzard told Ponomarenko not to tell anyone until the official March announcement a month later, she successfully got one special exception. “Giddy, I asked if I could at least tell my mom, who I assured them isn’t one to post on the internet,” she says.