Remastered Portrait: Tassadar

The latest rendition of Tassadar is very visually impressive. I quite literally gasped out loud when I saw his face in the latest community update. It's very aesthetically pleasing and the distinctive head tilt is there too! 

Last time I mentioned the idea of a discrepancy between something being "anatomically excellent" and atmospherically so. This portrait is fantastic, but there are some minor differences that change up the feel just slightly. Those differences are in order: the skin, eyes, and facial features of the portrait.

Skin:
Tassadar looks quite impressive with his new portrait, we can see his armor and nerve cords ("hair") in much clearer detail than before. Let's dive into the most visible part of the image, Tassadar's smooth skin.

Let's take a look at the skin of the remastered portrait. 

The skin we see here is relatively smooth on the center of his face, down to Tassadar's "chin". The ridges on the top of the head are also a bit different from the original (below), as instead of being a bony crown on top of the head, they appear as different colored skin. Let's transition to Tassadar's old portrait which I just referenced.

Here there are very subtle differences in the skin. Instead of smooth, the skin is slightly rough and segmented. It's less about smooth skin with wrinkles and scratches, and more about tough skin with segmentations. This ensures that the Protoss do not look too human and/or elf-like.
To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, let's look at some concept art and unit portraits of Protoss in StarCraft 1 (warning, barrage of images ahead!)

Above is our boy Tassadar

Judicator (Arbiter) Pilot 

High Templar wearing a Khaydarian Amulet

Dark Templar 

_____________

That was a lot! But what were some common themes in all of these Protoss? They tend to have rough, segmented, and possibly even scaley skin. Their faces and heads have hard, ridge-like structures. 

Note: Zeratul and Artanis, in cinematics, tend to have smooth skin, but this is something special for Artanis and is slightly inconsistent with our boy Zeratul's portrait. 

Why does this detail matter? Because the visual aesthetic of a species helps shape how an observer feels and associates with that race. In the first picture, Tassadar's skin (like the Archon's) is smooth and perhaps even elf-like. While it is easy to view the Protoss as the "elves" of the Korpulu Sector, they are ultimately very different. 

The Protoss are a race that form in tribes. They are written and taken to be taken as primal and even gladiatorial. The manual even hints they were so metal, that if not for the Khala, the Protoss would have destroyed themselves during the Aeon of Strife. Nonetheless, Protoss are warriors, with a strong sense of honor. Tassadar is a paragon of, rather than an exception to this. 

Also (as I mentioned before)  the segmented, rough, and sometimes scaley skin of the Protoss helps make them feel more alien and distinct from humans. Whereas the smooth skin tends to have the opposite effect, simply because this style has the Protoss sharing more physical characteristics from humans, instead of being radically different. That being said, Tassadar's skin isn't nearly as segmented as some of the other Protoss shown above, but it's not quite smooth either. He's somewhere int he middle. 

For further comparison, I'm going to use a fan made (not an official Blizzard depiction) by another forum friend of mine, the great and noble GnaReffotsirk who let me use his artwork iin order to illustrate the point of skin. It isn't completely true to the original, but it's the closest thing to a close-up on the original skin.

Of course, this fan-made portrait is not completely true to Using this fan made portrait as a "magnifying glass" of sorts, we can see that Tassadar's skin is rough and segmented as we mentioned before. He looks much more alien and less human. Far more fearsome, more contemplative, and less friendly. The skin in this portrait is also uniformly gray, a skin tone that we tend to associate with the classic "gray alien" motif. 

The new portrait is again, very beautiful, and I'm quite happy to have gotten it for a community update. However, there are still some touches to the portrait (and that of the Protoss in general) that can help them feel much closer to the original portraits in both anatomy and soul. 

Eyes:

As the old saying goes, eyes are the windows to the soul. Humans are hard-wired to notice the incredibly subtle movements of the eye that accompany emotions like sadness, happiness, anger, etc. That's why including eye irises (the "eye" part of your eye) is a great way to make you empathize with a character. Let's look at the eyes of the remastered portrait.

Here we can very clearly see the "Irises" (the round part) of his eyes, again, it is quite an immersive and beautiful sight to behold, but it still breaks with the identity of Tassadar and the Protoss just a little bit. Why, you ask?

Because, we don't necessarily want to empathize with Tassadar, or the Protoss. Both the Protoss and the zerg feel very alien in Starcraft 1. The Protoss especially felt enigmatic and mysterious during the campaign. Having a "window into the soul" (eye irises) is something that we want to be very careful about. While it is very cool to connect with Tassadar in this light, there is an element of Tassadar we are not supposed to connect to. Part of the beauty of Tassadar's character and the StarCraft 1 campaign is that we come to empathize with a species as different as the Protoss through their actions despite their lack of human physical characteristics. 

To look at the eyes of the original again....

Of course, the extremely limited resources of 1998 couldn't have allowed the irises of an alien to be treated with the nuance they deserved (if one wanted to portray them that way). However, this nonetheless still contributed to the mystique and identity of the Protoss in SC1, especially Tassadar. We can't see into their eyes like we can other people, and so an element of them is unknowable. It helps make them feel alien and different.

Aside from the irises of the eyes, there are two minor differences in terms of the eyes. The black circles and the "lens flare effect, to compare once more...

Many Protoss in StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void have eyes that "flare" at the camera in a horizontal direction, affectionately known as "lens flare eyes". While this is certainly a cool artistic liberty that I enjoy, it isn't necessarily how the Protoss were in StarCraft 1. Generally, Protoss (and Tassadar) had glowing eyes, I personally feel that this helps the Protoss come off as mysterious and supernatural, but that's just me. 

The "black circles" refer to the pitch black spots that cover Tassadar's eyes in the classic portrait. While we see a little bit of that in the remastered version, the circles are largely covered up by the eyelids and surrounding skin. 

While it is a minor detail, it is a memorable detail of Tassadar's face and the lack of eyelids helps make his portrait look even more alien and less human. While the pitch black contrasts well with the glowing blue eyes of the original.

Facial Features:

OK OK, so if you've read this far I really appreciate it. This section is very short.

Basically tying back to some points made before, Tassadar's chin length is just a little bit too long. His head is slightly wider than "tall" in the original than the remastered version. Again to the remastered version:

Here, the face looks slightly "skinny", in that the face is more tall and long than it is wide. The ridges which protrude from the eyes are well done and beautiful, however, they are toned down a bit from the original portrait, to compare....

Here, some of the features of the remastered version are slightly inverted. The face is slightly more wide than long compared to the remastered portrait. The ridges that protrude from the sides of his face don't just surround his eyes, but almost form "cheeks" that widen his face. Tassadar's "chin" also stops a little sooner than it does in the remastered portrait.  If an alien without fat or muscle could look "stout" than Tassadar kind of looks like that here.

Finally, the "crown" (I know I'm "using" a "lot" of quotation marks) seems to be more of bony structure than simply a differently colored part of the skin, but of course, that is hard to tell. 

Credits:

I've had the pleasure of speaking to many people over the years, especially on the StarCraft Legacy forums, and I like to bring out what people have said over the years out here. 

In the words of Aldaris "you represent what is greatest within us all" thanks for reading!

Protoss Archon Comparison

Note: Virtually all portions of this post have been modified from other sources that I have personally written. This is more of an adapted version for public viewing and use.

Portraits are some of the most intimate pieces of art in StarCraft. Especially in 1998, when both resources and time were extremely limited, developers only had three avenues to realistically express what a unit should look/feel like: Sound files, a pixelated model on screen, and a portrait. 

Myself and others I have talked to largely view the new remastered portraits as anatomically excellent, but not yet atmospherically so. What do we mean by that? The remastered portraits have all major physical features intact, but the mood, feeling, and identity of the unit is still a bit different, take the new archon model versus the old one. 

There’s no denying it. This new guy looks like an absolute badass (much like his real life counterpart!). All of the iconic physical features are there: purple eyes with flickers of lime, psi cloud background, etc It’s an anatomically phenomenal portrait, BUT there is one minor but nonetheless very interesting difference in the original.

In the original portrait, you can only see the outline of the face, with the eyes of the portrait obscured by purple smoke. You can only vaguely tell that the figure in the cloud is a humanoid alien. When you couple this with the heavy-metal voice modifier of the Archon you get something that's not only intense, but mysterious, enigmatic, and quite intimidating. 

When you tried to make an archon in SC1, the training bar didn't say morphing as it does in SC2, but instead, it said "summoning". For a better understanding of this kind of characterization, lets look at the Archon's description in the original StarCraft manual.

“These swirling, burning effigies of the Protoss spirit radiate incalculable power, and their devastating psionic storms can be unleashed against cowering enemy forces both in the air and on the ground….”

What’s odd about StarCraft is that for all it’s grittiness…sometimes you get straight up references to spirits! Case in point here, the nature of the Archon was so ambiguous that describing one as a deity was not out of place. That's a good demonstration (in my opinion) of how the Archon's aura on the player was one of unknowableness. In order to achieve that feeling with limited resources, the developers at the time opted to obscure the face and eyes, letting our imaginations do the work.

Compared again to the new Archon (with a different shot for variety) 

This guy, again, is very cool-looking, but he is also very visible. We can look directly into the irises of his eyes and have a connection with him (eyes are windows to the soul!). Whereas we can’t do that with the old model. Of course, many of these differences are a result of technical limitations, but the tricky thing about SC1 art is this just like how pathfinding helped make StarCraft 1 the E-sport it is today, technical limitations helped construct it’s look, feel, and atmosphere. To quote a good forum friend of mine:

“When developing StarCraft I, with their processing power and resources extremely limited, Blizzard artists were forced to think outside the box to push character and atmosphere. Today, many artists focus on minute details in texture and models -- because that's what people expect. But this leads them away from implementing the additional atmospheric details.” - Visions of Khas

There’s an enormous temptation in StarCraft Remastered to showcase all of the little details we missed the first pixelated-pass around, and to be clear, that is perfectly legitimate. However, it is also important to remember that one can’t just remaster the body of the models/portraits, one also must remaster their souls (woooah). In order to properly remaster SC1, the unit models/portraits must invoke the same feelings and not just the same physical features.

Of course, artistic liberties will happen without question in a remaster of any game, especially one in which the original source material is so damn pixelated. Differences will happen, but if one sticks to the original written source material, any disrepancies will follow the beloved image of the original. 

-Tarik

Mission

(Originally this blog was on a separate account, but I choose to move it to this one hence the repetition of the "mission" page)

Hey there! I've been an enormous fan of Blizzard Games like StarCraft, WarCraft, and Diablo ever since I was a kid. My real love of those games stems from their world-building, characters, and stories. On top of that, one of my favorite ways to procrastinate is to go back to the old models and cinematic of those old games and analyze the way they achieved such a strong sense of atmosphere with limited technology.

The point of this blog at the moment is to chronolouge the StarCraft: Remastered development and give feedback on all of the art so to help make it as close to the original as possible. I plan to do the same with WarCraft 3 Remastered and Diablo 2 Remastered when they go public as well.

Many of the posts on this blog will be taken from my own writings on forums elsewhere. When this is the case, it will be indicated.