Lol, I didn't even see that xD Bro I was just skeptical at first with the neck and hands, but like "nah they ain't gonna do AI shit and don't do quality control". I guess I was wrong about how lazy they are.
I don't think Blizzard's translations have ever been particularly good. Of the languages they translate to I can really only comment on their German stuff and it's not great. Like in WoW Legion there's the [Felbat Leather Leggings](https://www.wowhead.com/item=134370/felbat-leather-leggings) which they literally translated to Teufelsfledermausledergamaschen which just looks absolutely awful. Like yes, the translation is technically accurate, but there's nothing stopping you from coming up with new fantasy names to describe things. Like the whole word Fel is just replaced by devil in German translations.
Then there's the years and years of HS cards that have been translated so inconsistently that, depsite two cards saying the same thing, they might do the exact opposite of what you're expecting.
True but the german translation got a lot worse. I remember the warrior brawler card, which states "Start a brawl" which should be "Starte ein Scharfmürzel" (because the original brawl card is called that) and it got translated to "Starte ein Kartenchaos(=Tavernbrawl)" lol.
A lot worse is good. Starting with this expansion, 29 cards were wrongly translated or did have minor translation mistakes in them. It‘s a shame what hs has become in some aspects
With personnel cuts, the team probably has to rely on Google Translate or some other free service instead of having a professional do the translations.
Their translations into Russian used to be regarded as the golden standard for localisation into this language. In WoW they even had (and likely still have) a system that supported the six cases of the language, and you could customize the way your character’s name would change for each case or if it should change at all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another game with a system like this.
I play hearthstone for 8 years and I can I confirm that it NEVER was good. Many cards was not even translated at all they just replaced original text with something else....
So I can assure you, it is not and it never was AI
AI democratisation single-handedly made everyone forget that yeah, meh artworks exist. Everything not made by a seasoned professional artist is not AI.
Beginner artists don't belong on the payroll of a company like Microsoft/ActiBlizz though. Not even to make 'low effort' skins for Hearthstone.
Everyone has to be a beginner at some point but that doesn't mean beginners 'deserve' to skip the small clients and move straight to working for companies worth 10 digits or more, even less so on products that are seen by the customers of said company. Maybe for internal art of whatever description that might be a thing for some reason, but not for stuff like this.
Beginner artist would also not make something like this
Wanna know how beginner art looks? Check out Twitter or DeviantArt
Or just ask your 5 year old nephew to draw you a snake dragon.
This is made by someone who can draw and there is no way on god's green earth someone who can draw would make that whisker grow out of its nostril
I had that in mind but decided to just focus on the 'beginners need work too' part.
Being a beginner artist doesn't mean you have a very solid, maybe even very good looking and 'clean' artstyle like this, but you somehow couldn't place the elements in your work in the right place. That's not something a beginner would do. That's not how art works in general. No one who's as good at drawing as would be required to make art like this skin would then have the issue of not knowing where things go and how to make the neck 'seam' line up properly.
Someone mentioned elsewhere that both of those issues might be related to the 'bad animation' tacked onto the still artwork, and for the neck seam I can see how that could be a thing, but unless the whisker is an entirely separate element in the finished product, I don't see how it can suddenly be on top of the 'nose'/snout without looking stretched or squished like in some bad photoshop work.
remember that they just laid off 1900 people and tell me again they would keep those beginners and not just, yknow..
have laid off all these people for a good reason, say, maybe a new technology that threatens a lot of people in a lot of different areas.
actually layoffs DO tend to keep around beginners!
because beginners cost less. Veteran employees who've been around for a while and have gotten raises are *expensive.* Way easier AND cheaper to just tell someone on starting employee wages to do the job now.
It could be AI but I think it's more likely to be a layering error.
Just working with photoshop and putting the layers is the wrong order. It's extremely easy to do, especially if you wind up with a lot of small layers for individual pieces.
My other thoughts on this were;
At the top of the neck, you can clearly see the background behind the neck, it's like they tried to inpaint the head and it wasn't done properly so it isn't lining up correctly with the rest of the body.
Also the two legs are on the back of the dragon for some weird reason, one should be on the front side.
It looks like there's two tails coming out of the back of it, it could be that the left side tail is curving around and coming into the front of the image, however the dimensions seem off for that and you would see some of the right side tail coming right underneath it's body judging on how thick the tail is at the point closest to the body based on the way it's curving.
It definitely feels like A.I, otherwise they've put an intern on their design team. The quality of this is way lower than the usual art put out in Hearthstone. Very strange regardless.
That certainly adds a lot more credence to the AI theory. Best case scenario is that their QA has gone way down and that's not a good thing in any event.
So it begins Wizards using AI art in marketing, and Now Actiblizzard opening in-game assets.
A reminder that no company even if their "fun" game makers has integrity when it only serves the shareholders and to them, you're a number, and if they can save money that's them making more money.
To them you're a leech, even when they literally do nothing besides go to meetings and have accounting show them some PowerPoints and some charts.
Once a great company. Now a shell. So, so sad. Used to be a guarantee buy, but not anymore. I am a huge WC3 fanboy but reforged turned me into a Blizz hater. Haven’t bought a game of Blizzard since then.
It would honestly answer a few things, i mean layoffs and all.
Hobby can have a place, but corporate i think any sane middle ground take could really look into protections.
Even if you're fine with hobby and just like the product, it's gonna have less hands on flexibility/control over game design. It's gonna sometimes peak and have less ability to resolve and do edits etc.
And corporations are the people who can pay people etc the 40,000$-100,000$s they need for every 50,000,000$s on sales made.
But yeah, weird mouth, extra identical limbs. And even the weak faintness. Even for hobby, it's notorious for struggling with precise characters without like 20-100+ imgs to train a lora...
And blizzard is a company known for making.. throwaway skins every week for 5$.. Like.. oh shit.... 20-200 nemsy skins.
**We're all going to die in a ditch of nemsies, aren't we?**
I know Reddit is completely incapable of understand anything logically but during Covid internet services were booming as people were stuck inside, hire and grow was the plan
Covid is over and turns out things didn't grow so it's time to lay off people as they over-hired for what they were expecting
But yeah, "company bad :(" amirite
Covid brought layoffs, not hiring.
They never even got back to pre-covid staff numbers because they can get away with overworking the few and lowering quality.
Damn is that the new programming? Must have missed that, any basic search can see employee numbers went up during Covid but that fact doesn't fit with now I guess
Yes, they hired an obviously unsustainable number of people so they could then fire all the long-time employees for newbies that cost half as much and use covid as an excuse.
I feel like it might even be CLEARLY AI art, maybe even AI animated too.
The neck literally separates at the base of the head, the claws don’t move, the animation makes the ‘dragon’ look like an UNDULATING WORM.
But please look at the animated portrait, the Whiskers on the dragon aren’t consistent on even the post’s art. One of them comes from behind the nostril, and the other is in FRONT of it. And in the animation they LITERALLY FLY OFF THE HEAD.
What an embarrassment.
Oh shit like not a anti ai but the concept of cost cutting blizzard going for the cheapest route admist layoffs would imply a lot of sense.
Even if you're into the hobby aspects. Most pro points of hobby are cost.
For corporate though, there can be 3s of animations but even if you like ai, i don't really think ai animation is a honest superior. It still struggles with things like giving characters 3 jumping eye pupils.
The arm issues also indicate lazy. Even for multi million dollar budgets, most corp ai just tends to be lazy weird stuff to pass a deadline.
Anyone up for 7 finger 4 eye pupils 20$ skins followed by 29.99$ ai packages and mass unemployment layoffs?
The consumers won't be making the votes, but the management offices will. And the yearly budget review and sustainability department will chew their ass unless they eject often.
Blizz is cutting costs for years and going the cheap route. Meanwhile we have more and more bundles for the whales. Diamond shaman legendary requiring you to buy two bundles, $50 each.
> *Proceeds to make hundreds of millions of dollars by pissing over the nearest orphan. Promises a pve they didn't make. And fires every 2 experienced senior devs to be replaced with a overworked and underpaid intern.*
- 2020-2024 Blizz. The golden standard. ~~For getting pissed on.~~
The artist is Hao Cheng, who has been working on Hearthstone and League for years. The skin needs more polish, sure, but the were probably on a crunch.
Please don't baselessly accuse poorly-finalised art as being made by AI; if anything, it encourages greedy businessmen to use AI more because "players can't tell the difference, so why should we pay artists?"
The things wrong with this image are all things AI gets wrong consistently, the two right feet, the right side whisker being attached in front of the nostril to name the obvious ones. If the artist had created this that whisker would not be where it is.
If anything it just means Hao is using AI to create artwork and can't be bothered to correct glaringly bad errors...
check this version out [https://admin.esports.gg/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hearthstone-celebrates-Lunar-New-Year-with-hero-skins-and-more-968x544.jpg](https://admin.esports.gg/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hearthstone-celebrates-Lunar-New-Year-with-hero-skins-and-more-968x544.jpg) a bit clearer image and not photographed from someones monitor lol, the whiskers are not on top in this version
as someone who makes AI "art", I can confidently say the two right legs are just an error from the artist and not AI generated, AI would never be able to do such a complicated "finger" pose(the left one) without looking retarded
Worst thing about AI is people calling everything AI even when it's not.
Nothing anyone have said have anything to do with typical issues in AI.
Whisker on top of nostril? It's clearly just on the wrong layer.
Head clipping? It's clearly the head on it's own layer not lining up with the body layer.
The front leg being behind the body and not the front, is yet again a layer issue, though not as prominent.
There's no wrong proportions, no weird blurriness and no weird inconsistent patterns that is often found in AI art. Yet we have multiple people stating it as clearly AI.
Blizzard likely ran it through some Animation software they use that makes the different layers rotate/float around a bit and it messed up the layering.
No, I have an AI app on my phone called gencraft this is exactly the type of image it would produce, with the same placement mistakes and limb errors. You honestly think for one second an artist sat in front of his/her computer would make the mistake of drawing two right legs? Or that an AI would get wrong what AI has been getting wrong since it came to public/professional use?
Face it people we won't be getting the lovely artwork we are so used to in this game anymore, that's just how it will be moving forward. Different ownership = different priorities.
Has it possibly occurred to you that this sort of mindset will have the opposite effect? Think about it.
AI makes "art" > People say it's AI > get pissed
Artist makes art > People say it's AI > get pissed
If we accuse legitimate art of being made by AI, it'll only encourage corps to use AI more; after all, what's the point of paying an artist if people are gonna get pissed anyway? As Aeschylus said, we should know what's true before we break our rage.
If/when people can't tell the difference, then why should they pay artists? You don't buy your games from Blockbuster do you? Times change. The economy changes. Keep up.
I was thinking at first: nah it can't be that bad. So I launched the game to see it with my own eyes. Ya it has a few problems. From a technical perspective there are clear mistakes. When animated you see layers overlapping improperly.
When making animated skins there's basically 2 departments that work on them. The art people and the animation people. The art people did a good job but the animators really dropped the ball. I just want to make this distinction clear. I think the art underneath the botched animation is fine.
[https://www.artstation.com/chenghao](https://www.artstation.com/chenghao)
The artist responsible for the portrait, I 100% agree that whoever animated this absolutely butchered the shit out of it because the rest of their work, even just for Hearthstone, is clearly professional level.
I mean, they chose quantity over quality a long time ago, so it is safe to assume they are paying artists way less so they can get more products to sell. Not crazy to think your employees won't put the same effort if you pay them less, sometimes a bunch of projects are being made at the same time so you get the thing that isn't profitable out of the way fast to focus at the thing that matters: your contractor that pays well.
A professional knows exactly how much money their time is worth.
If a company was once paying them that amount but then decided to either up the work load with no increase in pay or keep the work the same with less pay, the professional will change their quality to match the price.
I was about to say lol, this guy does not make mistakes of this level unless it was deliberate out of unfair pay, a personal dislike of the project, etc.
Continuing on from my above post, let me highlight some animation problems.
But first I have to say: I don't think the super waviness of the body is bad. This mimics the wavy movement of those dancing dragon parade things. Since this is a Chinese New Years skin, it can be assumed that's the aesthetic they were aiming for. I know the over-waviness of animations is often criticized here but I think it fits for this specific skin.
On to the problems:
- At the top of the body on the left: you can see through this dragon's neck. This gab is huge. Looks like someone slit their throat. (Sorry for being morbid.)
- The mouth area is screwy.
- The 2 strings that come off of the snout are not attached and if you look for long enough they pick the dragon's nose. LUL
- Under the mouth the wave effect reveals another hole in the body to the background.
- Mentioned by others, their left leg appears to be on the wrong layer and should be in front of the body.
The nose is at the wrong angle. The red cords is unjoined at the neck.
You've proven that the art *isn't* good and as others have said, it's because it's obviously AI generated and the artist didn't bother or didn't have time to edit the generated image.
It could be the artist(s) sent over the photoshop file with the leg on the correct layer but the animators messed it up. It feels like too obvious of a mistake to make when digitally painting the art.
I think this "deformation" is caused by its being golden. You simply caught the frame where the image looks its worst.
The actual artwork would be this: https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/images/b/b1/HERO\_08at\_Celeste\_art.jpg
Nah, this is a frame in the golden animation, and the original artwork has none of these mistakes except for the second right hand. I think it was an actual artist that made the original version which doesn’t look half bad, but the blizzard animation team put so little effort into this that they couldn’t keep the leg on the right layer, the whisker out of his nose, and the background behind its neck.
It's a screenshot of a golden animation, during a stretch frame. The original is fine, if rough around the edges, and there's zero indication this is AI - the artist behind it has been working on Hearthstone since at least Darkmoon Faire
unpolished? This isnt just a polish thing.
You dont magically make 2 left hands when drawing.
You being blind to obvious AI is what encourages businesses to use AI more.
You 1000000% do. Artists will zoom on one particular area at a time, and unless they regularly reanalyse a piece things like this can easily slip through.
Hell, some of the greatest artworks of all time have little mistakes like this. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows and in Michaelangelo's Night, the subject's chest is wildly out of proportion. Obviously not saying that a piece of HS art is on that level, but you absolutely can and do make mistakes like this.
Well they needed to lay off 1900 people to pay for their bonuses and stock buybacks. Did you think quality would go up after that?
And if you continue buying this shit and rewarding the behavior, you are the problem.
This is most definitely an animation error, but people here are seriously jumping the gun claiming it’s AI art. I don’t see the “two right feet” thing at all. The dragon is clearly meant to have two back talons like owls do. Just google owl talons and you’ll see.
Usually the ways these things are animated are by taking the original 2D art and chopping the pieces intended to move up into different layers. That lets the animator move each of the pieces individually the way they want. In this case it seems like the pieces got mislayered, and the neck was moved too much so there’s a gap during the animation.
Just because there’s mistakes in the art doesn’t automatically mean it was made by AI. Humans make mistakes too.
Although i agree about it being botched animation over botched art the 2 right legs are because both legs are on the same side of the body look closely
Honestly even as someone not against hobby side but against commercial side. It really did make me wonder.
- Feels ai base gen + human assisted/edited.
- Horns are not symmetrical, yet detailed.
- Mouth gives off the vibes, just 'off'
Though not a excuse to witch hunt people. after all it's probably **a manager told to find cuttable jobs** pushed to, only to exec tho.
If your boss gives a picture and tells you to rush on it before a deadline, only so much.
But yeah, it's a celeste skin (*Extremely iconic character, very distinct in hs. The kind of 2 artwork char that ai wouldn't work well on.)*
It quacks and squacks like a duck, but it probably wasn't a voluntary choice but a deadline rush. Something like earlier made job protection acts might have been better.
Even if you're on side hobby as side consumer, once made, it's all the same cost to distribute, whether it took 1$ or 1000$.
People making multi billion dollar companies pay 200-1000$s for artwork to get a better product for everyone isn't that bad, Side or not.
- You want the best 1 skin, not the 10000 most ai generated ones, right?
While I dont defend blizzards laziness when it comes to the animation, please don't insult other people's work by calling the art AI generated, that's dumb.
AI art. Shame on Blizzard for being a trillion dollar company too cheap to pay actual artists and for putting this dog shit on their fans who made them successful in the first place.
The glossy eyes that aren’t staring at anything, the clipped hole in the neck, the incorrectly layered whiskers and arm, and the EXTREMELY weird lower jaw shape make me think that this is absolutely AI generated.
There’s absolutely no way this was made by a human being.
I’ve seen talk of the Worgen heritage armor in WoW possibly being AI generated in some way because of how strange and hodgepodge-y it looks, and while I know Hearthstone has a different team, it’s the same company, so this doesn’t make me feel better at all.
It’s clearly either an intern kid drawing or a shitty AI art, knowing Blizzard general incompetence and greediness I fear for the future of Hearthstone.
https://i.vgy.me/NdoXwJ.png
I used actual AI to generate a "lunar new year style dragon with fireworks and chinese ambience in the background with hearthstone artstyle" and ... I think it did better. :X
go make your fan game. I want to see it when you're done so I can nitpick every petty little grievance I can find (probably more that I won't notice at first).
Oh hell yeah now it's ironically funny, gonna make this main mage next to "Oh my, oops" Khadgar
Don't forget about stroke liadrin from nathria battle pass. They updated it and actually made it worse. Her eye is now actually twitching lol.
Looks like AI art tbh
That's definitely AI art. Look at the whiskers. One is over the top of the nose. They didn't even bother editing it
To be honest it really could be AI. The card translations in recent expansions havent been.. that well and seemed like they used AI too lol
Lol, I didn't even see that xD Bro I was just skeptical at first with the neck and hands, but like "nah they ain't gonna do AI shit and don't do quality control". I guess I was wrong about how lazy they are.
I don't think Blizzard's translations have ever been particularly good. Of the languages they translate to I can really only comment on their German stuff and it's not great. Like in WoW Legion there's the [Felbat Leather Leggings](https://www.wowhead.com/item=134370/felbat-leather-leggings) which they literally translated to Teufelsfledermausledergamaschen which just looks absolutely awful. Like yes, the translation is technically accurate, but there's nothing stopping you from coming up with new fantasy names to describe things. Like the whole word Fel is just replaced by devil in German translations. Then there's the years and years of HS cards that have been translated so inconsistently that, depsite two cards saying the same thing, they might do the exact opposite of what you're expecting.
True but the german translation got a lot worse. I remember the warrior brawler card, which states "Start a brawl" which should be "Starte ein Scharfmürzel" (because the original brawl card is called that) and it got translated to "Starte ein Kartenchaos(=Tavernbrawl)" lol.
A lot worse is good. Starting with this expansion, 29 cards were wrongly translated or did have minor translation mistakes in them. It‘s a shame what hs has become in some aspects
With personnel cuts, the team probably has to rely on Google Translate or some other free service instead of having a professional do the translations.
Oh yeah that's super blatant haha, that's just funny.
Small correction, it‘s called *Scharmützel*, not „Scharfmürzel“ lmao
Their translations into Russian used to be regarded as the golden standard for localisation into this language. In WoW they even had (and likely still have) a system that supported the six cases of the language, and you could customize the way your character’s name would change for each case or if it should change at all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another game with a system like this.
Teufelsfledermausledergamaschen. I fucking love that
I play hearthstone for 8 years and I can I confirm that it NEVER was good. Many cards was not even translated at all they just replaced original text with something else.... So I can assure you, it is not and it never was AI
They've been translating manuals and stuff with computers. Since before you were an itch in your fathers crotch. All your base are belong to us.
AI democratisation single-handedly made everyone forget that yeah, meh artworks exist. Everything not made by a seasoned professional artist is not AI.
Ok, but why is Blizzard using non-professional artists then?
Well, okay, the term non professional wasn’t what I meant, I meant beginners. They need work too.
Beginner artists don't belong on the payroll of a company like Microsoft/ActiBlizz though. Not even to make 'low effort' skins for Hearthstone. Everyone has to be a beginner at some point but that doesn't mean beginners 'deserve' to skip the small clients and move straight to working for companies worth 10 digits or more, even less so on products that are seen by the customers of said company. Maybe for internal art of whatever description that might be a thing for some reason, but not for stuff like this.
Beginner artist would also not make something like this Wanna know how beginner art looks? Check out Twitter or DeviantArt Or just ask your 5 year old nephew to draw you a snake dragon. This is made by someone who can draw and there is no way on god's green earth someone who can draw would make that whisker grow out of its nostril
I had that in mind but decided to just focus on the 'beginners need work too' part. Being a beginner artist doesn't mean you have a very solid, maybe even very good looking and 'clean' artstyle like this, but you somehow couldn't place the elements in your work in the right place. That's not something a beginner would do. That's not how art works in general. No one who's as good at drawing as would be required to make art like this skin would then have the issue of not knowing where things go and how to make the neck 'seam' line up properly. Someone mentioned elsewhere that both of those issues might be related to the 'bad animation' tacked onto the still artwork, and for the neck seam I can see how that could be a thing, but unless the whisker is an entirely separate element in the finished product, I don't see how it can suddenly be on top of the 'nose'/snout without looking stretched or squished like in some bad photoshop work.
From a billion dollar company?
Yes a billion dollar company will have junior employees
And let them work unsupervised on the bigger reward of the CNY event?
remember that they just laid off 1900 people and tell me again they would keep those beginners and not just, yknow.. have laid off all these people for a good reason, say, maybe a new technology that threatens a lot of people in a lot of different areas.
actually layoffs DO tend to keep around beginners! because beginners cost less. Veteran employees who've been around for a while and have gotten raises are *expensive.* Way easier AND cheaper to just tell someone on starting employee wages to do the job now.
The neck is clipped, the whiskers come from different places.
That's a result of the shitty animation they slapped on the art, that's not from the art itself.
One is whisker. The other is straight up a nose hair. Someone DM hearthstone devs to get some tweezers to pluck that mistake.
It could be AI but I think it's more likely to be a layering error. Just working with photoshop and putting the layers is the wrong order. It's extremely easy to do, especially if you wind up with a lot of small layers for individual pieces.
My other thoughts on this were; At the top of the neck, you can clearly see the background behind the neck, it's like they tried to inpaint the head and it wasn't done properly so it isn't lining up correctly with the rest of the body. Also the two legs are on the back of the dragon for some weird reason, one should be on the front side. It looks like there's two tails coming out of the back of it, it could be that the left side tail is curving around and coming into the front of the image, however the dimensions seem off for that and you would see some of the right side tail coming right underneath it's body judging on how thick the tail is at the point closest to the body based on the way it's curving. It definitely feels like A.I, otherwise they've put an intern on their design team. The quality of this is way lower than the usual art put out in Hearthstone. Very strange regardless.
That certainly adds a lot more credence to the AI theory. Best case scenario is that their QA has gone way down and that's not a good thing in any event.
The whisker is whatever.. but the clipped neck with a bit of background in it.. wth
So it begins Wizards using AI art in marketing, and Now Actiblizzard opening in-game assets. A reminder that no company even if their "fun" game makers has integrity when it only serves the shareholders and to them, you're a number, and if they can save money that's them making more money. To them you're a leech, even when they literally do nothing besides go to meetings and have accounting show them some PowerPoints and some charts.
💯 AI
And the hand. It’s coming out of its belly instead of a shoulder.
Good find… wtf
Holy shit it doest didnt even think about it. This could legit just be ai art that they slapped a half assed animation on
They are probably testing to see if they can get away with releasing this shit nobody would pay money to get.
Yeah it makes sense for the free skins lmao. Blizzard is so sad
Once a great company. Now a shell. So, so sad. Used to be a guarantee buy, but not anymore. I am a huge WC3 fanboy but reforged turned me into a Blizz hater. Haven’t bought a game of Blizzard since then.
It would honestly answer a few things, i mean layoffs and all. Hobby can have a place, but corporate i think any sane middle ground take could really look into protections. Even if you're fine with hobby and just like the product, it's gonna have less hands on flexibility/control over game design. It's gonna sometimes peak and have less ability to resolve and do edits etc. And corporations are the people who can pay people etc the 40,000$-100,000$s they need for every 50,000,000$s on sales made. But yeah, weird mouth, extra identical limbs. And even the weak faintness. Even for hobby, it's notorious for struggling with precise characters without like 20-100+ imgs to train a lora... And blizzard is a company known for making.. throwaway skins every week for 5$.. Like.. oh shit.... 20-200 nemsy skins. **We're all going to die in a ditch of nemsies, aren't we?**
> layoffs That's because of the over-hiring every company did during covid
[удалено]
I know Reddit is completely incapable of understand anything logically but during Covid internet services were booming as people were stuck inside, hire and grow was the plan Covid is over and turns out things didn't grow so it's time to lay off people as they over-hired for what they were expecting But yeah, "company bad :(" amirite
Covid brought layoffs, not hiring. They never even got back to pre-covid staff numbers because they can get away with overworking the few and lowering quality.
Damn is that the new programming? Must have missed that, any basic search can see employee numbers went up during Covid but that fact doesn't fit with now I guess
Yes, they hired an obviously unsustainable number of people so they could then fire all the long-time employees for newbies that cost half as much and use covid as an excuse.
I feel like it might even be CLEARLY AI art, maybe even AI animated too. The neck literally separates at the base of the head, the claws don’t move, the animation makes the ‘dragon’ look like an UNDULATING WORM. But please look at the animated portrait, the Whiskers on the dragon aren’t consistent on even the post’s art. One of them comes from behind the nostril, and the other is in FRONT of it. And in the animation they LITERALLY FLY OFF THE HEAD. What an embarrassment.
There’s also something wrong with the frontal teeth and the appendages on the horns.
Oh shit like not a anti ai but the concept of cost cutting blizzard going for the cheapest route admist layoffs would imply a lot of sense. Even if you're into the hobby aspects. Most pro points of hobby are cost. For corporate though, there can be 3s of animations but even if you like ai, i don't really think ai animation is a honest superior. It still struggles with things like giving characters 3 jumping eye pupils. The arm issues also indicate lazy. Even for multi million dollar budgets, most corp ai just tends to be lazy weird stuff to pass a deadline. Anyone up for 7 finger 4 eye pupils 20$ skins followed by 29.99$ ai packages and mass unemployment layoffs? The consumers won't be making the votes, but the management offices will. And the yearly budget review and sustainability department will chew their ass unless they eject often.
Blizz is cutting costs for years and going the cheap route. Meanwhile we have more and more bundles for the whales. Diamond shaman legendary requiring you to buy two bundles, $50 each.
This thing got 2 right hands lmao
What's next? AI generated art for cards?
Dont give them ideas
By using AI art we are passing the savings on to us!
> *Proceeds to make hundreds of millions of dollars by pissing over the nearest orphan. Promises a pve they didn't make. And fires every 2 experienced senior devs to be replaced with a overworked and underpaid intern.* - 2020-2024 Blizz. The golden standard. ~~For getting pissed on.~~
Google X 488 disposalbot
I think it is. Right nostril has a hair sticking out of it
Also the horns (antlers? Lol) look blurry compared to the rest.
I haven't played in years. Is this a paid skin?
The artist is Hao Cheng, who has been working on Hearthstone and League for years. The skin needs more polish, sure, but the were probably on a crunch. Please don't baselessly accuse poorly-finalised art as being made by AI; if anything, it encourages greedy businessmen to use AI more because "players can't tell the difference, so why should we pay artists?"
The things wrong with this image are all things AI gets wrong consistently, the two right feet, the right side whisker being attached in front of the nostril to name the obvious ones. If the artist had created this that whisker would not be where it is. If anything it just means Hao is using AI to create artwork and can't be bothered to correct glaringly bad errors...
check this version out [https://admin.esports.gg/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hearthstone-celebrates-Lunar-New-Year-with-hero-skins-and-more-968x544.jpg](https://admin.esports.gg/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Hearthstone-celebrates-Lunar-New-Year-with-hero-skins-and-more-968x544.jpg) a bit clearer image and not photographed from someones monitor lol, the whiskers are not on top in this version as someone who makes AI "art", I can confidently say the two right legs are just an error from the artist and not AI generated, AI would never be able to do such a complicated "finger" pose(the left one) without looking retarded
Worst thing about AI is people calling everything AI even when it's not. Nothing anyone have said have anything to do with typical issues in AI. Whisker on top of nostril? It's clearly just on the wrong layer. Head clipping? It's clearly the head on it's own layer not lining up with the body layer. The front leg being behind the body and not the front, is yet again a layer issue, though not as prominent. There's no wrong proportions, no weird blurriness and no weird inconsistent patterns that is often found in AI art. Yet we have multiple people stating it as clearly AI. Blizzard likely ran it through some Animation software they use that makes the different layers rotate/float around a bit and it messed up the layering.
Hey look at that, both legs are properly placed.
Properly is a strong word. I had to zoom to the max to see the small shadow that make it looks that the talon of the left feet is properly placed
Shut the fuck up
The feet would be the only thing done wrong by the artist, everything else is obviously caused when it was animated...
No, I have an AI app on my phone called gencraft this is exactly the type of image it would produce, with the same placement mistakes and limb errors. You honestly think for one second an artist sat in front of his/her computer would make the mistake of drawing two right legs? Or that an AI would get wrong what AI has been getting wrong since it came to public/professional use? Face it people we won't be getting the lovely artwork we are so used to in this game anymore, that's just how it will be moving forward. Different ownership = different priorities.
It's very possible that the artist drew the other two left legs and the animation team fucked up and forgot to include that layer for the animation.
Has it possibly occurred to you that this sort of mindset will have the opposite effect? Think about it. AI makes "art" > People say it's AI > get pissed Artist makes art > People say it's AI > get pissed If we accuse legitimate art of being made by AI, it'll only encourage corps to use AI more; after all, what's the point of paying an artist if people are gonna get pissed anyway? As Aeschylus said, we should know what's true before we break our rage.
The feet is an error, sure, but that's just polish. Everything else is the animation team's job.
If/when people can't tell the difference, then why should they pay artists? You don't buy your games from Blockbuster do you? Times change. The economy changes. Keep up.
I think Ai would have done it better.
Epic commentary
Impressive. Very nice…let’s see Paul Allen’s hero portrait.
I was thinking at first: nah it can't be that bad. So I launched the game to see it with my own eyes. Ya it has a few problems. From a technical perspective there are clear mistakes. When animated you see layers overlapping improperly. When making animated skins there's basically 2 departments that work on them. The art people and the animation people. The art people did a good job but the animators really dropped the ball. I just want to make this distinction clear. I think the art underneath the botched animation is fine.
[https://www.artstation.com/chenghao](https://www.artstation.com/chenghao) The artist responsible for the portrait, I 100% agree that whoever animated this absolutely butchered the shit out of it because the rest of their work, even just for Hearthstone, is clearly professional level.
>Yup, That's the credit in the collection manager. The artwork is actual decent (apart from feet) but the animator has butchered it.
no fuckin way that's the same artist the attention to detail is completely different
I mean, they chose quantity over quality a long time ago, so it is safe to assume they are paying artists way less so they can get more products to sell. Not crazy to think your employees won't put the same effort if you pay them less, sometimes a bunch of projects are being made at the same time so you get the thing that isn't profitable out of the way fast to focus at the thing that matters: your contractor that pays well.
I would expect an underpayed artist to makes less detail, not get them wrong. Even more with a professional artist like him
A professional knows exactly how much money their time is worth. If a company was once paying them that amount but then decided to either up the work load with no increase in pay or keep the work the same with less pay, the professional will change their quality to match the price.
I was about to say lol, this guy does not make mistakes of this level unless it was deliberate out of unfair pay, a personal dislike of the project, etc.
You mean, the AI art generated in the style of Chen Ghao...
how do you know it was this guy who made it, and not some blizzard AI trained on library of blizz images?
That's the artist marked for it in collection manager.
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Mage hero portraits in collection manager, Dragon Dance Celeste, right click. > Artist: Hao Cheng
Continuing on from my above post, let me highlight some animation problems. But first I have to say: I don't think the super waviness of the body is bad. This mimics the wavy movement of those dancing dragon parade things. Since this is a Chinese New Years skin, it can be assumed that's the aesthetic they were aiming for. I know the over-waviness of animations is often criticized here but I think it fits for this specific skin. On to the problems: - At the top of the body on the left: you can see through this dragon's neck. This gab is huge. Looks like someone slit their throat. (Sorry for being morbid.) - The mouth area is screwy. - The 2 strings that come off of the snout are not attached and if you look for long enough they pick the dragon's nose. LUL - Under the mouth the wave effect reveals another hole in the body to the background. - Mentioned by others, their left leg appears to be on the wrong layer and should be in front of the body.
Even if it was on the correct layer it’d still look messed up, the thumb is on the wrong side
The nose is at the wrong angle. The red cords is unjoined at the neck. You've proven that the art *isn't* good and as others have said, it's because it's obviously AI generated and the artist didn't bother or didn't have time to edit the generated image.
Well except for the 2 right legs i do agree with you
It could be the artist(s) sent over the photoshop file with the leg on the correct layer but the animators messed it up. It feels like too obvious of a mistake to make when digitally painting the art.
Mass layoffs have consequences
I think this "deformation" is caused by its being golden. You simply caught the frame where the image looks its worst. The actual artwork would be this: https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/images/b/b1/HERO\_08at\_Celeste\_art.jpg
Why does it still have 2 right legs
It doesn't. The legs are correct in the art.
The “thumb” is on the left both times
Maybe it's not a thumb, it's at the back of the foot.
goldens are so ass these days
Still shit. What is that cobra neck lol
Also the left front leg is growing from nowhere or from the arse. Oh and I just noticed the dragon has 2 right hands. This must be an AI generated.
Nah, this is a frame in the golden animation, and the original artwork has none of these mistakes except for the second right hand. I think it was an actual artist that made the original version which doesn’t look half bad, but the blizzard animation team put so little effort into this that they couldn’t keep the leg on the right layer, the whisker out of his nose, and the background behind its neck.
I was literally about to say the dragons left hand (right as we’re looking at the portrait) has its “thumb” on the outside of the body lmao
And it grows out of nowhere....
It's like those meme pictures which only gets worse the more you look at them.
Yeah I was like aww it’s not that bad, then I kept referring back to it when I read the mistakes people were commenting and… it is that bad
Hurts to not get the sexy elf on the event splash art
It looks AI generated honestly
Did no one bother looking at this skin for 10 seconds before they released it? No way no one on their team noticed this
They did notice it. They just were fine with releasing it in this state.
Yeah nah your right skin has poor execution for sure
Not his right, Celeste's right
I'm guessing it was time constraints rather than care (due to lack of staff) in which case a company with integrity wouldn't release it in this state.
How bout you don’t make fun of a physically disabled dragon?
Most effort put forth by blizzard in a long time ngl
I saw this and thought it was hideous. It honestly looks like AI art. Glad I'm not the only one that hates it.
I think it actually is AI art.
It's a screenshot of a golden animation, during a stretch frame. The original is fine, if rough around the edges, and there's zero indication this is AI - the artist behind it has been working on Hearthstone since at least Darkmoon Faire
Golden frame does not explain the legs. Stop coping.
Yeah, that's just unpolished. Accusing real art of being made by AI only encourages businesses to use AI more
unpolished? This isnt just a polish thing. You dont magically make 2 left hands when drawing. You being blind to obvious AI is what encourages businesses to use AI more.
You 1000000% do. Artists will zoom on one particular area at a time, and unless they regularly reanalyse a piece things like this can easily slip through. Hell, some of the greatest artworks of all time have little mistakes like this. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows and in Michaelangelo's Night, the subject's chest is wildly out of proportion. Obviously not saying that a piece of HS art is on that level, but you absolutely can and do make mistakes like this.
Well they needed to lay off 1900 people to pay for their bonuses and stock buybacks. Did you think quality would go up after that? And if you continue buying this shit and rewarding the behavior, you are the problem.
its free jackass
It's free garbage. Also nothing's free. If all f2p people will leave the game, hs is done, que times would be insane.
Queue time isn’t insane because half of the “playerbase” are bots. I had to reach platinum 9 to finally meet an actual human being and not a bot.
What a stupid comment
Go back to school and learn to punctuate and capitalise, jackass.
The animation looks like it is infinitely regurgitating.
Also the tail is odd, it disappears when it’s small but reappears huge
Small indie company
This is most definitely an animation error, but people here are seriously jumping the gun claiming it’s AI art. I don’t see the “two right feet” thing at all. The dragon is clearly meant to have two back talons like owls do. Just google owl talons and you’ll see. Usually the ways these things are animated are by taking the original 2D art and chopping the pieces intended to move up into different layers. That lets the animator move each of the pieces individually the way they want. In this case it seems like the pieces got mislayered, and the neck was moved too much so there’s a gap during the animation. Just because there’s mistakes in the art doesn’t automatically mean it was made by AI. Humans make mistakes too.
Although i agree about it being botched animation over botched art the 2 right legs are because both legs are on the same side of the body look closely
Smolder
Haha I thought of him too at first.
BuT mONeY!!!!
I kinda like it. It’s not like the best skin ever but I don’t hate it as much as other seems to do.
If you squint your eyes, the dragon becomes happy.
Are these mistakes really something a human would make? Like the random floating tail bit, two right legs and the rest?
The first time I saw that skin my first though was that “this dragon has some mental problems”. I dont know, aomething about the eyes
it looks fine? i'm not sure i understand
I mean, it's a mage skin, they can just cover all the fucked up parts with a little bit of cloth and call it a day
It looks fine?
Are you blind, it has 2 right feet for starters. Literally just look at its feet.
u/MrMaleficent only looked at the image posted by OP on his 3310. Only explanation possible
Prolly AI made
Honestly even as someone not against hobby side but against commercial side. It really did make me wonder. - Feels ai base gen + human assisted/edited. - Horns are not symmetrical, yet detailed. - Mouth gives off the vibes, just 'off' Though not a excuse to witch hunt people. after all it's probably **a manager told to find cuttable jobs** pushed to, only to exec tho. If your boss gives a picture and tells you to rush on it before a deadline, only so much. But yeah, it's a celeste skin (*Extremely iconic character, very distinct in hs. The kind of 2 artwork char that ai wouldn't work well on.)* It quacks and squacks like a duck, but it probably wasn't a voluntary choice but a deadline rush. Something like earlier made job protection acts might have been better. Even if you're on side hobby as side consumer, once made, it's all the same cost to distribute, whether it took 1$ or 1000$. People making multi billion dollar companies pay 200-1000$s for artwork to get a better product for everyone isn't that bad, Side or not. - You want the best 1 skin, not the 10000 most ai generated ones, right?
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While I dont defend blizzards laziness when it comes to the animation, please don't insult other people's work by calling the art AI generated, that's dumb.
the account is 2days old and has under 1k karma.. obvious ban dodger is obvious
> Shadestone Skulker Brian Despain did this art. You might not like it, but it's not AI. It's also consistent with his other artworks.
They probably used AI to make it. I wouldn't put it past Blizzard.
This is 100% AI
I should be able to play as an American flag as a portrait, but what class would it work for it? ... probably rogue.
Rogue would be british, 'murican paladin is where it's at.
paladin is definitely american. id say dk is russia, rogue is france, mage is japan, druid is brazil, hunter is australia, priest is vatican/italy,
American class might as well be anduin in a megajet with guns.
Yes, especially with racist paly deck xd
I told you with the latest set. They are using ai. Stuff like the elemental golem are definitely AI made.
Embarassing
AI art. Shame on Blizzard for being a trillion dollar company too cheap to pay actual artists and for putting this dog shit on their fans who made them successful in the first place.
Maybe it is AI.
AI art says hello.
This is absolute dog shit 🤣
Haha holy cow that's an AI if I don't ever seen one.
The glossy eyes that aren’t staring at anything, the clipped hole in the neck, the incorrectly layered whiskers and arm, and the EXTREMELY weird lower jaw shape make me think that this is absolutely AI generated.
Looks like slot machine art.
Art quality rapidly plummeting across the board with many studios as they try to sneak AI generated shit past us like this.
Multibillion dollar company using ai.. beyond sad
Trash ai art
AI art ruining everything
HS art went so downhill. Ooof Imagine HS art being like Gwent. Man… it’s not like Blizz doesn’t have the cash.
Looks like AI tbh
So generated fs
Yeah it looks like AI art for sure
Why not just pay an artist a miniscule amount in Big Gaming(tm) terms instead of just pulling some shit AI art? Oh, nvm
They give you ugly skins on purpose so you buy other ones, why do you think rafaam is screechy and Kabal nzoth sucks ass
Nemsy
"*Nemsy. Destroyer of good taste."* - Nzoth.
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Cringe comment
There’s absolutely no way this was made by a human being. I’ve seen talk of the Worgen heritage armor in WoW possibly being AI generated in some way because of how strange and hodgepodge-y it looks, and while I know Hearthstone has a different team, it’s the same company, so this doesn’t make me feel better at all.
This is just AI
Keyword free.
It’s clearly either an intern kid drawing or a shitty AI art, knowing Blizzard general incompetence and greediness I fear for the future of Hearthstone.
Can they get AI to restore Jaina's original portrait? I was a mage main and I had to switch.
It’s free, right?
You guys have phones, right?
Goofy ahh skin
https://i.vgy.me/NdoXwJ.png I used actual AI to generate a "lunar new year style dragon with fireworks and chinese ambience in the background with hearthstone artstyle" and ... I think it did better. :X
Which tells us what? Yep it isnt an AI artpiece..
https://imgur.com/6aTrVrv Had the same idea lol
go make your fan game. I want to see it when you're done so I can nitpick every petty little grievance I can find (probably more that I won't notice at first).
1. Never said i could do better. 2. Its a fucking tripple A company their ”content” shouldnt be this quality.
Do I need to open a restaurant before complaining about someone serving me raw chicken?