World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the 4th expansion for World of Warcraft. The intro cinematic is the only pre-rendered cinematic for this expansion. It debuted at Gamescom 2012 in Germany.
Harkening back to the original orcs vs. humans premise of the early Warcraft games of the 90s, the cinematic begins with the familiar races duking it out true to form. Slowly, however, a new character is introduced to this struggle and the enchanting world of Pandaria is revealed. You'll notice that this cinematic moves through a number of lighting scenarios throughout the course of the film. It starts in darkness, then daybreak, followed by morning in the mist and finishes with a gorgeous, sun-filled landscape. The concept team and the lighting artists worked closely together to keep everything lit properly over time.
Concept Art
One of the concepts that drove the overall style direction. Concept by Mathias Verhasselt.
In contrast to much of their previous cinematic work, the Blizzard cinematics team strived for a more stylized aesthetic for this cinematic. Character proportions were less realistic, and facial expressions were pushed more with things like squash and stretch. On the whole it gives the cinematic more of a designed and fun look that is more faithful to the highly stylized game art in the World of Warcraft series.
Cinematic Credits
Project Director:
Marc Messenger
Project Art Directors:
Fausto De Martini,
Chris Thunig
Senior Project Producer:
Phillip Hillenbrand, Jr.
Cinematic Script:
Marc Messenger,
Chris Metzen
Vice President, Art & Cinematic Development:
Nick Carpenter
Vice President, Cinematic Operations:
Mike Ryder
VFX Supervisor:Jeff ChamberlainProduction Director:
Noel Wolfman
Director of Technology:
Mark A. Brown
Lead Producer:
Scott Abeyta
Project Producer:
Kim Kotfis Horn
Project Editors:
Brian Horn,
Rebecca Lilienfeld
Department Supervisors:
John Burnett,
Shimon Cohen,
Scott Goffman,
Steeg Haskell,
Arthur Jeppe,
Mike Kelleher,
Jared Keller,
Brian LaFrance,
James McCoy,
Fin Teo,
Seth Thompson,
Xin Wang
Project Leads:
Vitaly Bulgarov,
Aaron Chan,
Steven Chen,
Emanuel Druckmann,
Devon Fay,
Joe Frayne,
Jason J. Hill,
Chung Kan,
Ryan Leasher,
Laurent Pierlot,
Jamie Pilgrim,
Dennis Price
Cinematic Artists:
Salvador Arditti,
Scott N. Army,
Till Aschwanden,
Jongha Baik,
Becca Baldwin,
Ben Barker,
Jason Barlow,
Stephane Belin,
Barry Berman,
John Berry,
Ricardo Biriba,
Ted Boonthanakit,
Toni Bratincevic,
Alvaro Buendia,
Jason Burton,
Bill Campbell,
Scott Campbell,
Hosuk Chang,
Daniel Chavez,
Ray Chih,
Tae Young Choi,
Joanna Cleland-Jolly,
Matt Cordner,
James Crowson,
Graham Cunningham,
Drew Dobernecker,
David Durand,
Anthony Eftekhari,
Mustazar Essa,
Chris Evans,
Casey Fulton,
Shuntaro Furukawa,
Hunter Grant,
Eric Grimenstein,
Jeremy Gritton,
Chris Ha,
Mike Hardison,
Benjamin Min Huang,
Steve Hui,
Ray Hsu,
Rodney Iwashina,
Joe Jackman,
Jim Jiang,
Sheng Jin,
Jeramiah Johnson,
Jessica Dru Johnson,
Ren Kikuchi,
Yonghyun (Eddie) Kim,
Andy C. King,
Mike Koizumi,
Bill La Barge,
Mark Lai,
Scott Lange,
Jon Lanz,
Hung Le,
Alan Lee,
Hoya Lee,
John F. Lee,
Moonsung Lee,
Yeon-Ho Lee,
Shawn Liang,
Dyllan Lu,
David Luong,
Brandon Martynowicz,
Brett McConnell,
Mathew Mead,
Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen,
Lucas Merino,
Sada Namiki,
Tuan Ngo,
Kurtis Paddock,
Corey Pelton,
Troy L. Perry,
Levente Peterffy,
Joe Peterson,
Kirti Pillai,
Zachary Podratz,
Reo Prendergast,
Wei Qiao,
Dominic Qwek,
Glenn Ramos,
Jarett Riva,
Casey Robinson,
Davy Sabbe,
Kazuhito Shimada,
Fabio Stabel,
Peter Starostin,
Takuya Suzuki,
Geordie Swainbank,
Jon Teer,
Sofia Vale Cruz,
Brandan Vanderpool,
Mathias Verhasselt,
Kishore Vijay,
Matias Volkert,
Nelson Wang,
Wei Wang,
Christopher Y. Yang,
Jae Hyun Yoo,
Kenson Yu,
Simon Yuen,
Fabio Barretta Zungrone
Technology Team:
Brett Achorn,
Michael Beal,
Cameron Chrisman,
Rudy Cortes,
Jeff Hill,
David Keegan,
Piotrek Krawczyk,
Huong Nguyen,
Chris Rock,
Billy Shih,
Peter Shinners,
Michael Su,
Yun-Chen Sung,
Robert Thomas,
Theresa Wolf,
Tom Craigen, Jr.
Production Team:
Patricia L. Adams,
Tok Braun,
Joshua Burnett,
Leonard Chang,
Eric Davis,
Bejan Fozdar,
Janet Garcia,
Steve McIlwain,
Jennifer Owings,
Jason Michael Smith,
Brandy Stiles,
Taka Yasuda
Studio Engineers:
Johann Helgi Agnarsson,
Kenneth Lloyd Ayers III,
Douglas Beal,
Jim Bush,
Sean Laverty,
JJ Lee,
Ramon Rodriguez III,
Rob Tomson,
Leo Wang
Cinematic Project Directors:
Ben Dai,
Matt Samia
Cinematic Art Director:
Jonathan Berube
Additional Artists:
Craig Brown,
Patrick Dalton,
Tina Fu,
Tyler Hunter,
Bernie Kang,
Ronny Kim,
Slavomir Kaslev,
David Lesperance,
Eric Yi Lin,
Frances Lin,
Sherman Ohms,
Diego Garzon Sanchez,
Richard Slechta,
Cedric Tomacruz,
Rainer Zoettl
Additional Production:
Rie Arai,
Lauren Gragg
Supervising Sound Designer:
Paul Menichini
Sound Design:
David Farmer,
Stuart Provine
Music Composition:
Neal Acree
Casting and Voice Director:
Andrea Toyias
Voice-over Design/Editing:
Chris De La Pena,
Michael Johnson
Foley Artist:
Gregg Barbanell
Foley Mixer:
Darrin Mann
Cinematic Re-recording Mixer:
Thomas C. Brewer
Additional Cinematic Sound Editing:
Clinton Jones,
Caroline Hernandez
Sound Producers:
Caroline Hernandez,
Jay Maguire
Voice of Chen Stormstout:
Keone Young
