Early KQ6 Artwork
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 2:45 am
I was just recently made aware of a video called KQ6ART.AVI that was included on the KQ6 CD (but apparently not any of the KQ Collections, darn it). This video contains a lot of early high-res backgrounds and closeups from KQ6. Fortunately for those of us who haven't seen the KQ6ART.AVI video, ATMachine has uploaded the various images from it to the KQ Wiki -- and if you're at all interested in the art from that game, going through these images is pretty fun.
Not only are the images more detailed, but there are a couple of unused ones, and a lot of the scenes have been modified in some way. A lot of the images that aren't backgrounds show various scene elements floating in a sea of broad brushstrokes -- very surreal. (I can see where the backgrounds of some of the closeups came from now!) You can see all of pictures at the bottom of this page.
Here's a few of the highlights:
The Winged Ones' city is much closer to the labyrinth in this original painting -- plus, the entrance to the cave is quite different, and the east side of the screen isn't blocked off like it is in the final game (the beach at the base of the cliffs isn't blocked off on either side either).
And speaking of the Winged Ones: A few months ago, ATMachine noted that a few early pencil sketches of the Winged Ones' portraits depict them with blank white eyes with no pupils, and hypothesized that perhaps they were originally meant to be living statues. Then he found this picture in the KQ6ART.AVI video. Case closed!
This is an odd one, not just because of the weird text and images surrounding the picture of Caliphim and Allaria, but because I've seen an unedited version of that picture before, in the "Behind the Developers' Shield" feature. I have no idea where this picture was meant to be featured in the final game, if indeed it was meant to be. It looks like a picture that would be featured in the Green Isles' equivalent of the tabloids: "Royal Couple Addresses Subjects While Intoxicated!"
Check out the sculpture over the thrones. For a while, I suspected the leftmost figure was one of the guard dogs, but it was too pixellated to make it out. Turns out it's a minotaur.
So the decorative sword was originally supposed to be mounted on the wall farthest away from Alexander? That would have made things a bit...inconvenient.
Alexander has a little stray lock of hair in this and one other scene from the wedding. I guess it wouldn't have turned out that well in VGA, though.
It's that unused scene from the Realm of the Dead that I posted here a few months ago...only better!
The tree at the crossroads doesn't have the hole that it does in the final game. Did the artists feel that the scene was a bit naked without at least one red herring in it?
Top-down perspective? In KQ6!? Impossible!
Not only are the images more detailed, but there are a couple of unused ones, and a lot of the scenes have been modified in some way. A lot of the images that aren't backgrounds show various scene elements floating in a sea of broad brushstrokes -- very surreal. (I can see where the backgrounds of some of the closeups came from now!) You can see all of pictures at the bottom of this page.
Here's a few of the highlights:
The Winged Ones' city is much closer to the labyrinth in this original painting -- plus, the entrance to the cave is quite different, and the east side of the screen isn't blocked off like it is in the final game (the beach at the base of the cliffs isn't blocked off on either side either).
And speaking of the Winged Ones: A few months ago, ATMachine noted that a few early pencil sketches of the Winged Ones' portraits depict them with blank white eyes with no pupils, and hypothesized that perhaps they were originally meant to be living statues. Then he found this picture in the KQ6ART.AVI video. Case closed!
This is an odd one, not just because of the weird text and images surrounding the picture of Caliphim and Allaria, but because I've seen an unedited version of that picture before, in the "Behind the Developers' Shield" feature. I have no idea where this picture was meant to be featured in the final game, if indeed it was meant to be. It looks like a picture that would be featured in the Green Isles' equivalent of the tabloids: "Royal Couple Addresses Subjects While Intoxicated!"
Check out the sculpture over the thrones. For a while, I suspected the leftmost figure was one of the guard dogs, but it was too pixellated to make it out. Turns out it's a minotaur.
So the decorative sword was originally supposed to be mounted on the wall farthest away from Alexander? That would have made things a bit...inconvenient.
Alexander has a little stray lock of hair in this and one other scene from the wedding. I guess it wouldn't have turned out that well in VGA, though.
It's that unused scene from the Realm of the Dead that I posted here a few months ago...only better!
The tree at the crossroads doesn't have the hole that it does in the final game. Did the artists feel that the scene was a bit naked without at least one red herring in it?
Top-down perspective? In KQ6!? Impossible!
