Samwise Didier

Sam Didier, better known as Samwise, is the Senior Art Director at Blizzard Entertainment. He's been with the company since the mid-1990s and has been an integral part of the concept art and art design for all of Blizzard's worlds. Samwise's designs have strongly influenced the art design of all of Blizzard's titles, especially World of Warcraft.

Personal

Besides his work as an artist and world creator, Samwise is the lead singer in the Blizzard employee metal band Elite Tauren Cheiftain.

Samwise is one of the Blizzard artists whose work is included on the Sons of the Storm website. The following is excerpted from his profile on that site:

Inspirational Artists
Frazetta, Wrightson, Elmore, Ernie Chan and Big John Buscema.

Define your style of art
Over-proportioned, primary colored, bulky armored dudes and monsters.

Where do you do most of your work?
Coffee table in the living room. On the phone.

What are your favorite things to create?
Over-proportioned, primary colored, bulky armored dudes and monsters.

What tools do you use to create your artwork?
Pencil, paper and Photoshop.

Artwork

A huge amount of Samwise's work is displayed on his artist page at Sons of the Storm. His art has mostly been in the Warcraft and Starcraft worlds, but a fair amount of personal art and some Diablo I and Diablo II work is profiled as well.

Samwise hasn't contributed any artwork to Diablo III (at least none that's been released) but he helped with the world design of Diablo I, and did some character design work on Diablo II as well. His contributions to the Diablo series are enshrined in the Diablo II art section of the Image Gallery. A few samples:

• Horadrim concept art from the Diablo I manual.
• Three of the iconic, skulls-on-a-stick Diablo banners. One and two and three.
• Colorful Assassin artwork.
• Angry Druid artwork.
• Brooding Diablo artwork.