The Art of Heroes 3

[Oakley]

Hi guys!! I'm new to the forums, although long time member in the website itself

More than being a huge fan of the gameplay, I'm a huge fan of the unique art and music atmosphere in Heroes 3 which inspired me since I first played it. I'm mostly collecting images from it, including original illustrations, sketches, 3D Etc.

Most of the art can be found in the personal websites of the artists, such as the lead artist Phelan Sykes and the rest like George Almond, April Lee and Brian Kemper.

If you are interest, please visit the artists' personal websties for more unique art!!

Phelan Sykes
http://www.phelansykes.com/

George Almond
http://members.aol.com/gcalmond/GA_hm.htm
http://georgealmondillustration.com/

Jeff Bigman
http://home.pacbell.net/bbigman/
http://bigmanart.com/

Rebecca Christel
http://www.illustratz.com/

John E. Gibson IV
http://jgibsoniv.com/

Louis Henderson
http://complementarycolor.com/index_v1.htm

Tracy Iwata
http://tygriff.tripod.com/project/index.html
*Sadly, Tracy Iwata had many more art in the past, which can be partial found with the Internet Archive. If someone here still have her early art, please let me know!!
From the Internet Archive:


Steve Jasper
http://hound-of-war.deviantart.com/

Brian Kemper
http://www.timetoyagers.com/bkemper/

April Lee
http://members.tripod.com/~AprilLee/index.html

Kenneth Thomson Jr.
http://www.demonslayers.org/

Tony Rizo
http://www.tonyrizo.com/

and the last one, Steve Wasaff
http://www.stevewasaff.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/200406130917 ... t/~wasaff/

As for the rest artists, I couldn't find any art of them...

let's don't forget about our masters of music!! Paul Romero, Rob King and Steve Baca
http://www.greenstreetstudios.net

If you have more art of Heroes 3, please post here!!

Sorry for the crappy English if you can
Thanks!!

[Akul]

Thanks for the links to H3&4 art

[Dracomancer]

Wow, I hadn't seen these before. Thanks!

Edit: There's some MM stuff in there too:

[Metathron]

Welcome to our little asylum, Oakley.

Thanks for sharing!

[theLuckyDragon]

Yes, welcome to the Round Table and thanks for sharing, first of all

Heh, some pretty nice art over there. I didn't know the Grail for the Forge was supposed to be a Tesla Coil.

This looks strange, I don't think it would have fitted the theme.

The book over here looks really nice. The way it's opening kinda forebodes the serie's bright future

Here are some spell icons from H4 I haven't seen before. Does anybody know what's with the images from row 11/column 1 and row 10/column 5?

[Metathron]

I like that alternative Dungeon town a lot; I actually prefer this one to the one in the game.

[theLuckyDragon]

I think it's too colourful. Especially the blue and the pink.

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Welcome, Oakley. Awesome art.

Glad someone likes the H3 art. Most people here seem to prefer H2 or H4 art

[Metathron]

Up close, the HoMM III art is great, like these dragons here for example.

What I tend to dislike are the bland, blurry creature portraits that just fade in comparison to the other games in the series.

[ThunderTitan]

H2 still looks tonnes better... but these are better then most other games at the time.

[theLuckyDragon]

like these dragons here for example.

Yeah, I've never seen the dragons so up close before!

[Oakley]

Thanks all of you!!

Welcome, Oakley. Awesome art.

Glad someone likes the H3 art. Most people here seem to prefer H2 or H4 art

To be honest, I used to dislike Heroes 4 from the very beginning since I first "tried" to play it, and was so disappointed. First, looks at the awful monster designs, how they looks bad compares to Heroes 3:







You've got the point, the game isn't strong with the monster designs. I ask myself, what happend to the designers? most of them worked on Heroes 3 as well... While the Devil design of Heroes 3 is the best devilish design ever can be found, Heroes 4 Devil is so pathetic.

The game atmosphere isn't enough strong like was in Heroes 3, the battles isn't emotional, the towns looks like shelfs, the music isn't catchy (with all the respect to Mr. Romero, King and Baca) and the art especially, false in big...
Apologize to all Heroes 4 fans out there.

My all friends, after trying Heroes 4, tell the same that it's better than Heroes 3. Only I left with Heroes 3

Anyway, if that wasn't true then this website won't hold so many Heroes 3 maps

[ThunderTitan]

while i don't think H3's renders are very great, you're right about being better the most of H4's...

But not all of H4's suck... case in point:

[Akul]

@Oakley:
Art is not subjective. Everyone has his own tastes.

[Metathron]

So it IS subjective.

In those pictures, HoMM III sure beats IV, but the thing is you never get to see the creatures like that, in either case. In-game, the HoMM III creatures are far less detailed and kinda hazy-looking, while the HoMM IV ones look much better when they're not up close and personal which is how they appear in the game.

For me, HoMM IV has got the better style in many areas; off the top of my head, heroes and adventure map locations. Just look at these dwellings:





And they look even better ingame, especially if found on the adventure map, as can be the case with dwellings and those magic shrines. Divine!

[Vlaad II]

Were these for NWC's H5 (the Phoenix!) or for some other game(s)?

[Pol]

Yuy, thread composed of genuine prettiness. Wholeheartedly appreciated.

@Vlaad
I don't know how you are managing to getting them, you are like Acid drawing art from the hat. And if so, these are prettiest images from H5 which I had ever seen. Would like to watch this green 'chinese' dragon in action once...

[BAD23ro]

Nice Phoenix

[Dracomancer]

If they had the funds for it, that is. Kind of hard to understand why they started work on HoMM5 when the financial situation was so bad for HoMM4 that it lowered the quality of the game. At least it resulted in some great artwork.

[BAD23ro]

@Dracomancer

Heroes IV isn't a poor game, they tried a new concept and I still enjoy Heroes IV. At least Heroes IV has some new ideas