Samwise Didier

Samwise Didier is the art director at Blizzard Entertainment. He is responsible for creating much of the artwork for computer games in the WarCraft, StarCraft, and the Diablo series. Among the veteran Blizzard employees, Samwise has been a consistent artist for many years, his unique style greatly influencing the game art. For reasons unknown, Samwise has a healthy fixation on pandas, and was responsible for the Pandaren, a race regarded by fans - and used by Blizzard - as a "joke race" but still with legitimacy within the lore. Among other things, panda icons also appeared accompanying much of Samwise's art, and could be seen in Warcraft 3 as the emblem on the Night Elf demon hunter's warblades, a picture in the Paladin's book, and the ashes that form after the usage of the Blood Mage's Flame Strike ability has a pattern of a panda's face.

Cover art

Samwise does the art for Hammerfall album covers. He has done the following covers:

• 2002 - Hearts on Fire (EP)
• 2002 - Crimson Thunder
• 2003 - One Crimson Night (Live album & DVD)
• 2005 - Blood Bound (EP)
• 2005 - Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken
• 2006 - Natural High (EP)
• 2006 - Threshold

He has also done the cover art for Joacim Cans' (HammerFall Singer) solo album, Beyond the Gates (2004)

Trivia

Samwise's face is used as an icon and unit model in Warcraft III that can be accessed from WorldEditor. The model is a cube with his face on the faces.

His face is also seen in the MMORPG, World of Warcraft, used as an icon for spells and abilities that do not have an image associated with them (see here). For instance, several spells cast by quest givers use this icon. Since they are not real spells, they use this as the icon. They can be visible if you turn on "Show Enemy Spellcast Bar" and target the NPC during casting.

External links

• Profile at Sons of the Storm
• Art Gallery