Ultima Online: Intro Storyboards

Courtesy of Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum, and thanks to the hard work of both him and the team at the Wing Commander CIC, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present 17 images — some of which are 3D renderings, and some of which are sketches — of storyboard concept art for the introductory sequence to the original Ultima Online. Most have to do with the Stranger from Another World (who, admittedly, looks like the Avatar from the Ultima 9 cinematic sequences) and/or Mondain and the Gem of Immortality, but they still offer an interesting glimpse at how concept art and sketches translate into rendered movies.

These drawings and renderings are principally the work of Denis Loubet, who should be known to most Ultima fans for the copious amount of artwork he produced for many different titles in the series. Many of the renderings, in particular, are at an insanely high resolution, far in excess of what was seen in the actual introductory sequence that shipped in the game.

Download the original sketches:
* Ultima Online Storyboards (56.7 MiB, 695 hits)

Now, a few disclaimers.

These images are JPEG copies of the originals; the originals, available for download below the gallery, are in the TARGA (TGA) and TIFF formats. (It would seem that the 3D stills, which I presume were exported from the rendering software, are the ones in the TGA format.)

Also, the images are quite large as resolution goes, though not overly large in terms of file size. Still, they may take a while to load when you click on them. Once you click on them, they will appear in a lightbox formatted to fit your monitor resolution; right-clicking on the lightbox and selecting “View Image” (a feature not available in all browsers) will take you to the full-resolution image.

Finally, enjoy. Pull up the images. Pore over them. Print them and mark them up. Pick apart every little detail you can, and see what you find. This is Ultima history at its finest, and Aiera is indebted to Joe Garrity, Electronic Arts, Mythic Entertainment/BioWare Mythic, BanditLOAF and the team at the Wing Commander CIC, Denis Loubet, and everyone who worked at Origin for it.

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  1. New Gallery: Ultima Online Intro Storyboards : Ultima Aiera
    New Gallery: Ultima Online Intro Storyboards : Ultima Aiera · October 20, 2010 at 16:46:01 · →

    […] Ultima Online: Intro Storyboards […]

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