The Heroes in Heroes of the Storm are an eclectic assortment of personalities who hail from very diverse locations across Blizzard's many universes. In this week's Community Showcase, we're spotlighting an artist that's traveled to many of these locations in his art, Atryl, Gabor Pataki!

Whether diving into the depths of Heroes of the Storm, Diablo, StarCraft, or Warcraft or beyond, you're sure to recognize familiar faces in Atryl's fantastic illustrations, and he was also nice enough to sit down and answer some questions we had for him:

Q. How long have you been creating art?

Since I was very little, this was the first thing I did basically.

 

Q. Your pieces are incredibly ambitious with fantastic characters, vibrant colors, and great, moody backgrounds. What’s your favorite part of working on a piece?

Sketching, designing, giving character to the character.

 

Q. What is the most challenging part of the process?

The last part, final touches, and to know when it's enough, when is the picture ready to be shown to the public.

 

Q. Where do you get your ideas from?

My pictures were inspired by things I love: games, movies, books and music.

 

Q. Which is your favorite piece of Blizzard fan art that you’ve created?

The Abathur wallpaper I did recently. I like the color purple, and Abathur in general. In my opinion, he's one of Blizzard's most unique characters (design and personality-wise). I had a lot of fun drawing him.

 

Q. We have to ask: who is your favorite Blizzard Hero?

Samwise Didier, because his art inspired me when I started to take art more seriously. If in-game: that’s a tough one. Vol’jin: it has to be Vol'jin because I am in love with the trolls of warcraft. I hope he will get more screen time as he is the Warchief now. I like characters that act differently than you would expect from them.

From Heroes of the Storm, it's Zagara: I loved her in Heart of the Swarm, and I generally like to play with her.

 

Q. Do you have any other Heroes-themed pieces in the works?

I would love to draw all of the heroes in due time, I have a bunch of them sketched up, but it's really hard to choose who to draw first.

 

Q. What programs do you use to create your pieces, and how long do your pieces usually take you to create?

I use paint tool SAI and photoshop CS6 for digital art, and my pictures take 4 to 16 hours to make, depends on many things (character/background complexity/number of characters, atmosphere, action, etc.). I would like to draw more complex, complete pictures in the future.

 

Q. What tips do you have for aspiring artists out there?

Observe your surroundings, bring passion and time into your works, never give up no matter what others might say. Try to improve. Try to get better and better and don’t let yourself discouraged if you don’t feel good enough cause you get better with time (I am never satisfied with my work either). Listening to feedback is important too.

 

You can also check out a look into into all of the hard work that Atryl puts into his art in the drawing process video below, featuring Tyrael!

Eager to check out more of Atryl's work? To ensure you get all of his latest updates, make sure to follow him on deviantART, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter! 

Are you working on any Blizzard fan creations or Heroes fan art? Make sure to tell us all about them over in our Community Creations forum!