When Blizzard first unveiled its intention to explore the world of the undead in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, fans could be forgiven for fearing the possibility of a very dark, grim landscape with little in the way of color or cheer to help break up the monotony. While the cheer is certainly still in short supply - Azeroth's heroes are facing an unprecedented threat, after all - the actual landscape of the Shadowlands is anything but monotone, with incredible environments and variations on some of the game's more appealing aesthetic designs.

Part of the build-up to World of Warcraft's next expansion is Shadowlands Afterlives, a series of cinematic shorts that help explore each realm players will become well-acquainted with during play. These shorts help provide context for the world players will be occupying, which is a very different sort of environment than fans have grown accustomed to with previous additions to WoW. Much has been made of World of Warcraft: Shadowlands' ability to explore the game's past and the lore that is so rich there, but Afterlives has already done an excellent job of that, blending gigantic, larger-than-life heroes like Uther Lightbringer with new characters like the Winter Queen and somehow balancing them out so they're both captivating in their depiction.

Related: World of Warcraft's Main Characters Reveal Arthas' Legacy In Shadowlands

Fans have been receptive to the ideas laid down by Shadowlands Afterlives, and the art direction has helped provide some crucial moments with emotion before the expansion even launches. Just how much Shadowlands Afterlives will help players understand the greater concerns of World of Warcraft's expansion and its world's shifting power balances remains to be seen - but now we've got a bit of a better idea. Screen Rant conducted a Q&A session recently with Marc Messenger, Cinematic Director at Blizzard, to help establish how Shadowlands Afterlives fits into the expansion's story, discuss the process in making cinematic shorts in this style, why Afterlives is making players cry, and whether or not fans might get glimpses at other beloved heroes beyond the ones they've already seen in Afterlives.

WoW Shadowlands Maldraxxus Enemy

What are the challenges porting a game world that’s mostly experienced in cinematics and fluid movement to an animation style that relies a little more heavily on the still visual? Were there any opportunities that opened up with this animated short series in terms of aesthetic that you were particularly excited to explore?

Marc Messenger: This medium of filmmaking - the “moving paintings” vibe - is always exciting, and we’re still exploring what we can do with it. There are certain things we’ve learned over the years in terms of what works and what’s less appealing. Too much movement, for example, can be distracting when you’re not doing full animation. It breaks that feeling of a painting come to life. But really, every new project presents unique challenges, and the final films can be wildly different, which is part of the fun.

With Afterlives, the stories I had the pleasure of directing were “Ardenweald” and “Revendreth.” You couldn’t ask for more contrast between those two stories, so we approached the storytelling very differently. We treated “Ardenweald” earnestly - we wanted to capture the sincerity of the characters, like Ara’lon and the Winter Queen, as they face this existential threat to their world. That wistfulness is reflected in the paintings and the color choices.

With “Revendreth”, we needed a way to convey an equally dire situation that was being created—not by some mysterious drought, but by Sire Denathrius himself. To get behind his mask, we took a much more devilish, ironic tone with both the writing and the visual style, which was a lot of fun.

How long did each Afterlives video take to make, roughly? What’s the process look like?

Marc Messenger: For the last two expansions, we’ve done these films in sets of three, but there are four realms in the Shadowlands, so we needed to find a way to do four this time!

The story development process is similar to our approach to the other mediums: the story and franchise development team collaborates with the game team to jam on story ideas, then we write scripts, create storyboards, and edit them into animatics so that we basically have a blueprint for each movie. These storyboard versions of the films need to be a little more precise than the 3D projects as our rock-star artists will use them as templates to create the paintings. And there are many, many paintings.

Over the years, a large majority of them have been painted by Laurel Austin, who helped bring this whole style of cinematic to life with The Burdens of Shaohao. Laurel has really been the heart and soul of these painted films, I would say. Eventually, the paintings move to a group within the Blizzard animation department called “motion story.” These talented artists provide the animation, as well as create the effects and map elements of the paintings onto simple geometric shapes so that they can create a feeling of dimensionality - again, it’s that “living painting” idea. As the shots come together, they’re brought into the edit by our Blizzard video editors. But well before that, our sound department has been recording actors, composing music, creating sound effects. In some ways, it’s as complex an operation as any of our shows, and a lot of love goes into it. From start to finish, a series like this can take roughly between eight months to a year to produce.

Shadowlands Afterlives Venthyr

While each character showcased in Afterlives gets a chance to shine, the one players will likely be most excited about is Uther. What kind of challenges come with animating and exploring the story of a character as popular as Uther?

Marc Messenger: One of the challenges of an extremely popular character is that they may loom too large. We talked about this early on: would Uther and Arthas overshadow a story that was supposed to be about understanding Bastion? In my mind, cinematic director Terran Gregory did an amazing job with the piece and used Uther well to convey how this realm of the afterlife functions.

We also had other considerations. We knew that we wanted to introduce new characters in the other realms, like Denathrius and the Winter Queen. We also know that Draka and Ursoc are beloved characters but were likely not as well-known as Uther and Arthas. So, there were a lot of discussions about all that, about striking the right balance between new characters and the ones that cast longer shadows.

In the end, though, we just did what felt right for each story. I loved how Brian Horn used the courage and nobility of Draka as our north star in “Maldraxxus”, and it was our historian supervisor Sean Copeland who first suggested Ursoc the Bear God as a catalyst for the Ardenweald story. It’s a great team we have here - we worked the stories together and we couldn’t be prouder of the result.

How has fan reception to Afterlives been? Is this style of storytelling something you’d like to explore more in the future?

Marc Messenger: We’re tremendously gratified to hear from players and fans who love this kind of cinematic, as it is a deceptively difficult medium for filmmaking. It’s high-octane fuel for our creative tanks when people appreciate these films. It means a lot when someone tells us that a moment made them shout, or laugh, or even cry. We seem to have elicited a good amount tears for Ursoc, so thank you…and apologies!

The reaction to Afterlives has been wonderful, and I’ve especially enjoyed watching players do their calculations around which Covenant they want to join based on their emotional reactions to the movies. We’ve been exploring this approach to storytelling since Mists of Pandaria and it certainly seems players have an appetite for more. I wouldn’t be surprised if we continued to make this kind of cinematic, but we’ll just have to wait and see!

Shadowlands Afterlives Uther Angel

We see the return of some truly iconic characters in these shorts, and the way some of them grapple with death is really compelling - it feels like it helps complete arcs that maybe didn’t have the resolution fans may have wanted prior. Are there any characters you wish you’d gotten a chance to do a short on in particular?

Marc Messenger: There are, but I shall say no more. You might meet one in the Shadowlands.

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World of Warcraft: Shadowlands releases sometime in 2020.