Female Tauren Artwork Revealed

Today, Chris Robinson, the senior art director of the World of Warcraft art department revealed the progress the team has made with the female Tauren.

Portrait:

Before(left) and After(right)

Right off the bat we can tell that the old model of the Tauren female pales in comparison to the new model. The textures are more refined. The horns atop her head have better shading. The shaggy mane of hair looks more like hair strands than tufts of chomped grass. She also has a round chest area instead of a flat plane.

Front with various poses:

She has teeth at last!

In the picture above we can see the old model standing side-to-side with the new model. One of the things that Chris Robinson mentioned in the Artcraft reveal was that the Tauren female had exaggerated features even for World of Warcraft. The hands especially were out of control. Although she retains large hands they are not so overtly huge as the original were. Note the pose with braids on the right. The Tauren female now also has pearly white teeth!

Backside with more expressions:

A strong backside and poofy tail

The new female Tauren's backside shows refined shading and textures. No longer does she sport a shaggy back. We can also see that she has elbows and muscle definition that connects to her tail. Facial expressions are now possible with the new model. The original lacked in nearly everything. This is something that was beyond the control of the artists when the Tauren female was first created. Now we can see how far she really has come along thanks to the efforts of the World of Warcraft art department.

Thoughts about the design:

By far, out of all the artwork reveals I think this one shows great improvement over the original form. The Human male comes in a very close second place. Personally, I do want to like all of this design. However, there is something about her face that is throwing me off kilter. I think it's her nose being too large that appears to give her a masculine look and feel. The nose on the new female Tauren looks way too big.to me. If it was a little bit smaller I believe it would give her a more feminine look without destroying the 'monster' appearance that she is nicely displaying. Despite that nitpick of mine I feel that the new Tauren female has come out looking ace.

What do you think? Is this a vast improvement on the old model or is the new model simply not cutting it?

Thanks for reading,
- All My Alts