Invoice Petras, a veteran of Blizzard Leisure with a profession spanning over 30 years within the video games business, has died. The information was shared to LinkedIn by Petras’ good friend and colleague, former Blizzard cinematics director, Harley D. Huggins II. Petras is survived by his household, who’re planning a celebration of life for Petras within the coming days.
Petras’ earliest recorded credit within the video games business had been with developer GameTech within the early ’90s—he is credited on such deep cuts as Ripper, Star Crusader, and BloodNet. Petras’ first venture with Blizzard Leisure was the unique StarCraft, the place he was credited with storyboard, 3D, and cinematic artwork.
Petras notably served as artwork director on World of WarCraft for its unique launch in 2004. WoW iterated on Warcraft 3’s visible id to create an especially influential artwork type not solely in videogames, however fantasy writ giant: WoW’s DNA discovered its means into comics and tabletop, with each Dungeons & Dragons’ fourth version and Pathfinder taking visible cues from the transformative MMO.
Petras left Blizzard in 2005 to co-found Pink 5 Studios, however returned in 2010 and oversaw the artwork of yet one more massively influential Blizzard sport, Overwatch. In 2017, Petras gave a GDC discuss Overwatch’s artwork the place he revealed that Torbjorn, of all characters, was one of many first, most important character designs the group set in place after scrapping the Titan MMO idea and pivoting to Overwatch.
“Billy and I began at Blizzard the identical week and had been shut pals for 28 years,” Huggins wrote on LinkedIn. “I’ll miss our common, lengthy, rambling conversations about life, sport dev, video games, artwork, comedian books, toys, monster films and Conan. He will probably be deeply missed by me and all who knew him.” Huggins signed off with one quote from Thomas Campbell’s poem Hallowed Floor, and one from the legendary Hyperborean warrior himself: “I’m Conan, and I’m not afraid of demise.”
