Blizzard Monthly Gallery Fine Art Releases

[eternalblue02]

Originally Posted by Luminous

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that info, eternalblue. Love it when companies actually care about what their customers think. Some good info in there.

No problem. Just my way of saying thanks for the heads up.

Originally Posted by s_paulik87

Oh no! I better buy the rest of them now if blizz is going to promote them as well lol.

I've been checking on the WoW forums and MMO Champ nobody is mentioning these so more power to us.

[CookBeck]

Hi there,

My colleague Joy pointed me to this thread, I'm Maarten, one of the founders of Cook and Becker. I thought I'd jump in as I'd love to answer any questions or give some feedback. I remember looking at Statueforum a while back to see if it was OK to talk about prints besides statues but couldn't find a thread then and didn't want to spam

We are of course super excited to be working with Blizzard (after maybe 3 years of talking lol).

What is maybe of interest to share is why we started C&B 6 or 7 years ago. One of the reasons was that we wanted to preserve video game art and video game art history via these prints and to show video game artwork in museums and contemporary art fairs because we think it is important culturally. That means we make these prints at the highest archival standard, including the frames and finishes we offer. And that is also why we do so much original concept art because these images are most directly tied to the creation of some of the most important games. We're branching out into commissioned works now too though.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. If there is any question I can answer, please do!

And yes, somewhere in the near future Blizzard will promote this fine art line via their channels so stuff will likely move then (but we're keeping it off the Blizz store). For now only the large Lich King is already close to selling out (5 left) and the large Pandaren is moving quite fast in case you were considering those.

[Blacksunn]

Originally Posted by CookBeck

Hi there,

My colleague Joy pointed me to this thread, I'm Maarten, one of the founders of Cook and Becker. I thought I'd jump in as I'd love to answer any questions or give some feedback. I remember looking at Statueforum a while back to see if it was OK to talk about prints besides statues but couldn't find a thread then and didn't want to spam

We are of course super excited to be working with Blizzard (after maybe 3 years of talking lol).

What is maybe of interest to share is why we started C&B 6 or 7 years ago. One of the reasons was that we wanted to preserve video game art and video game art history via these prints and to show video game artwork in museums and contemporary art fairs because we think it is important culturally. That means we make these prints at the highest archival standard, including the frames and finishes we offer. And that is also why we do some much original concept art because these images are most directly tied to the creation of some of the most important games. We're branching out into commissioned works now too though.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. If there is any question I can answer, please do!

And yes, somewhere in the near future Blizzard will promote this fine art line via their channels so stuff will likely move then (but we're keeping it off the Blizz store). For now, only the large Lich King is already close to selling out (5 left).

Thanks Maarten for jumping on to answer questions.

Congrats on the partnership with Blizzard and look forward to getting pieces from you!

[Luminous]

Hello Maarten, welcome to the forum. I have always appreciated the art on your site and am glad I finally placed my first order. I look forward to seeing what your company provides in the future.

[twstd]

Originally Posted by CookBeck

Hi there,

My colleague Joy pointed me to this thread, I'm Maarten, one of the founders of Cook and Becker. I thought I'd jump in as I'd love to answer any questions or give some feedback. I remember looking at Statueforum a while back to see if it was OK to talk about prints besides statues but couldn't find a thread then and didn't want to spam

We are of course super excited to be working with Blizzard (after maybe 3 years of talking lol).

What is maybe of interest to share is why we started C&B 6 or 7 years ago. One of the reasons was that we wanted to preserve video game art and video game art history via these prints and to show video game artwork in museums and contemporary art fairs because we think it is important culturally. That means we make these prints at the highest archival standard, including the frames and finishes we offer. And that is also why we do so much original concept art because these images are most directly tied to the creation of some of the most important games. We're branching out into commissioned works now too though.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. If there is any question I can answer, please do!

And yes, somewhere in the near future Blizzard will promote this fine art line via their channels so stuff will likely move then (but we're keeping it off the Blizz store). For now only the large Lich King is already close to selling out (5 left) and the large Pandaren is moving quite fast in case you were considering those.

Would you be able to shed some light on how/why you guys got the license for these specific prints? Since the start of the year Blizzard was promoting their own fine art program labeling it as images that were classic and iconic. They instead chose to sell artwork based on their new and current products. Your line on the other hand is exactly what you'd expect when you read the words classic and iconic, at least for WoW.

Were these images your idea, their idea, do you guys choose the artwork?

[s_paulik87]

Man that MoP print is beautiful, I want it but I skipped MoP so hard to justify hahaha

[CookBeck]

Thanks all!

Sure, I can talk a bit about how the coop with Blizzard came to be. We approached Blizzard because we were interested in their art (of course ). Specifically the franchises Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. These series have the most heritage and therefore fit our own focus best, and that of most of our customers and fellow collectors most of which are 30+. Plus, both my brother and I are fans of these series so we love to work on these.

Blizzard up until then did all their art prints inhouse (I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that was the case and still is), but out of all the 2nd party printing houses/art companies that vied for their art licenses we came out on top in terms of the quality of our reproductions and that is how we got the rights. We're a small company but Blizzard foremost cared about the quality of the product, which was nice. Maybe our tenacity in pursuing this for several years also helped haha.

How the art selection goes (with every studio). We ask for as big an art selection as possible. The roughs, the drafts, the key pieces etc. We go through everything we get and narrow down a selection for approval by the studio. They veto certain works, suggest some of their own and this is a back and forth until we end up with as great a selection as possible. The best collections I think are when studio's also let us share the rough sketches, the early drafts etc. and not only the polished finished pieces. Sure, these won't always sell (we did 31 images for The Witcher for example many of which we knew won't sell) but we are OK with having non-commercials works in a collection if it helps show the context of an entire body of work. Which fits the mission of our gallery.

[RadAsGhoul]

Hey Maarten, good to see you here! You'll find quite a few new supporters I'm sure! We should create a separate thread/section for C&B guys.

[twstd]

Originally Posted by CookBeck

Thanks all!

Sure, I can talk a bit about how the coop with Blizzard came to be. We approached Blizzard because we were interested in their art (of course ). Specifically the franchises Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. These series have the most heritage and therefore fit our own focus best, and that of most of our customers and fellow collectors most of which are 30+. Plus, both my brother and I are fans of these series so we love to work on these.

Blizzard up until then did all their art prints inhouse (I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that was the case and still is), but out of all the 2nd party printing houses/art companies that vied for their art licenses we came out on top in terms of the quality of our reproductions and that is how we got the rights. We're a small company but Blizzard foremost cared about the quality of the product, which was nice. Maybe our tenacity in pursuing this for several years also helped haha.

How the art selection goes (with every studio). We ask for as big an art selection as possible. The roughs, the drafts, the key pieces etc. We go through everything we get and narrow down a selection for approval by the studio. They veto certain works, suggest some of their own and this is a back and forth until we end up with as great a selection as possible. The best collections I think are when studio's also let us share the rough sketches, the early drafts etc. and not only the polished finished pieces. Sure, these won't always sell (we did 31 images for The Witcher for example many of which we knew won't sell) but we are OK with having non-commercials works in a collection if it helps show the context of an entire body of work. Which fits the mission of our gallery.

Awesome thanks for the great reply

Interesting that you mentioned the Witcher. I was looking over those and would love a Witcher print but didn't find any that have Geralt as the center piece. The available Geralt and Yen is a fantastic image, but Geralts in the back. Are there any plans to release more in that series or is it more once a collection is released you guys don't go back to release more.

[cyrax83]

The Lich King print looks so amazing, but at $385 AUD shipped, I think I'd prefer a statue... No idea why Blizzard aren't putting these type of prints on the Gear Store.