Warhammer is a rich and vast universe, which started from the tabletop games and has a huge amount of intellectual properties, from which many of Dota 2 workshop submissions took inspiration already.
Warhammer Total War event took place between 29th of April and 22 of August, period in which workshop artists put all their time and efforts into creating the most spectacular items based on a given theme and to convince the community to appreciate their work.
Due to the fact that the number of submissions from the artists was gigantic, I asked Alexandru Mihalceanu, a workshop artist with over 12 years of experience in 3D design, to help me choose 10 out of the 110 sets registered for the competition. Taking a decision in choosing the best sets was overwhelming due to the complexity and unique ideas of the workshop artists.
I also contacted Valery Zhuravlev and Zipfinator, two remarkable workshopers, to give me more information regarding their work and their personal opinion about the workshop competition that just concluded, in the efforts of understanding their concept better.
Different by any other cosmetics on Abaddon, the workshop artist thought about humanize the hero so he designed a face; the first face of Abaddon. Besides this, the entire set is like a piece of art because of its high resolution and the minor details.
Mihalceanu: I love the distinctive silhouette, the fact that he has an actual face but still keeping with the theme of Abaddon. The execution is great and very different from the other sets out here so far. Arthas comes to mind, without being too close to the Warcraft hero.
Winter Wyvern, one of the new heroes that entered the workshop has started to gain more and more attention from the artists regarding set creations. What else can you add to a blue dragon that already looks spectacular? Well, apparently the workshop artists always find new content to surprise the gamers.
Mihalceanu : It’s very pretty, like the snowflake shapes in its tail. I like the alternative version better; he did a very good job!
Mihalceanu, the workshop artist that created the set told us a few words about the contest and what inspired him to make his set.
From my gaming history experience, the Warcraft franchise was partly inspired by Warhammer fantasy universe, and Dota being a mod of Warcraft 3, it's like having a complete circle. I love the idea of the contest; it added a much needed surge of ideas and excitement, in an increasingly stale state of the workshop. Personally, I like the submissions that didn`t just copied the concepts, but added their own take / interpretations to the sets.
I made the Clock set in the last minute, as I liked how a dwarf engineer from the Warhammer universe could fit him. I started from a bunch of Warhammer sketches/concepts as well, and knew that I wanted to fit his lore, and the whole clock/engineering parts/tools thing. As I know that the clock helm only has a moving part for the bottom jaw, I thought that it would fit a cool beard instead to give him a cool dwarf look.
I never liked the skinny arms on his standard suit so I made some bigger sleeves with the same colors as his legs, plus the whole engineering straps/tools. Made the rocket handle into a wrench (like he would just improvise something in short time)
The cog is inspired from Game of Thrones intro (hehe).
Fully geared for battle, Katzeimzack, the workshop artist and creator of the set presents us with seven superb parts that create the impression of a gifted warrior.
Mihalceanu : The materials are very well defined, crisp and saturated details, irreproachable execution. Fits with the theme very well.
Another amazing set for Batrider was made by Zipfinator, a great workshop artist that shared with us his thoughts about the Total War.
I'm not a huge fan of the Warhammer universe or aesthetic, but when a workshop competition rolls around (Especially with New Bloom not being present this year) it's an exciting time to be a workshop artist. With any workshop competition the drive to submit raises for everyone and with only eight sets being chosen for this competition it has felt very tight.
The base of the set was inspired by Night Goblins from the Warhammer universe. That's where the hood, the rough cloth designs, and the moon talisman on the neck came from. The concept artist I worked with on the Batrider, Ike_Ike, translated those elements into the Dota style, along with coming up with the idea for the plague beast mount. A handful of people commented that the mount doesn't fit with the Goblin theme, but we both felt it was a unique idea to expand Batrider's armory and couldn't turn down the chance to make such a gross wrinkled mouth.
The first thing you see at this set is the clown hat. Well executed, with small details that make a difference, the Meepo set is one of those sets which u can't forget easily
Mihalceanu : The bomb strapped to his back suits the explosive nature of Meepo very well . You can just imagine a bounch of these little guys crawling through caves, detonating themselfs to fend off invaders .
A dwarf Omniknight set! What could it ever be more awesome than that? Valery „Crowntail” Zhuravlev hopes to answer my question.
It's more than one hundred submissions with Warhammer today. And no one knows what sets will be chosen for this event. As for me, it is my first contest of such scale and surely it will be like a dream come true for me, if it will be chosen. But I should say that there are many great sets created for this event, and I do like lots of them. The contest is very interesting and it is probably my favorite contest so far. It is connected to Warhammer aesthetics, which I love.
When contest was started i took some time thinking what hero I'd like to make cosmetics for. he idea turning Omniknight into dwarf was in my head long before this contest. Because of how Omni holds his hammer and his animations and voice were pretty close to what i was thinking could work well with the dwarven theme. So i started to work by collecting the references including the total war web site and started to sculpt.
What makes this set unique? Well, my idea was not to copy paste some figurine design or some hero design but creating something unique, but sharing the design aesthetics of Warhammer. It should be a tall mighty dwarven like hero with a nice crafted hammer, because dwarfs are well known and the best metal manufactors with lots of decoration in northern style. I've added a bigger nose to make Omniknight's face be more like face of the dwarf. I was very excited that people showed very good reaction on my submission, because you never know what will be the gamers reaction so first hours after submitting are very hard for me.
Once again, Alexandru Mihalceanu came up with a magnificent concept of Lina, a rebel, punk, bad girl.
I always wanted to make a bright wizard set, but felt that whatever I would make, it was threading too close to the Warhammer concepts, so I didn't want to take a chance on that. With the Warhammer-Dota contest, I finally got the chance to use their license. I used their concept as a starting point, but I wanted to design what I thought a bright wizard will look in the Dota 2 universe so it will get differentiated from other similar submissions.
I liked her arm tattoos, so I pushed that theme further, giving her a punk look; exaggerated some things like the arm/neck guards to make it look like the end of torches, and went with the whole chain/key theme on the dress as well.
An unique mount that catches your look immediately because of his creepy but still good looking face.
Crowntail : Very cool mount, and the set has a Warhammer essential. I don't like goblins in general but this one fits very well and it totally differs from other Disruptor sets, when the oglodi rider is a mighty warrior. With this set he looks like a badass goblin who is trying to get all he can from the battle situation. And the Disruptor is all about it.
One of the least played heroes in the competitive scene drew the attention of Freeheartex, a Chinese workshop artist, that emphasized the ideea of bad, darkness and chaos maker.
Mihalceanu : Looks menacing and evil/corrupted. Fits with the chaos theme well, and I love the excessive use of horns; the execution is all so good.
