And for a comparison, this is how HoN does their heroes as explained by Maliken:
Let me point out work flow a bit here. Our Art Director, Jesse, could pop in here and clean up my post but it goes something like this:
Concept & Drawing: You must not only take the time to come up with a piece of concept art, you must concept out what the actual hero is and what their angle will be. Then you have to come up with a good drawing. 2-4 days depending how the complexity of the hero and how many iterations it takes to make something good.
Modelling: This is pretty straight forward. 2 days
Textures: Again, pretty straight forward but remember there are more than just color maps. 2-3 days
Rigging: Getting the unit ready for animation, both a quick rick and a final rig. 2 days
Animations: The rigging is done sans textures and quick rig goes quickly. Then animators are given the quick rig to begin animation work.
Animations are complex and go through the most iterations and unfortunately are the longest portion of the process. 4-8 days depending on the complexity and amount of iterations
Entity Work: Technical part where all the files, skills, etc... are set up for the hero. Also includes tooltips and some other tedious stuff. 3-4 days
Visual Effects: This is the wild card. Effects bring the character together. A simple hero goes quickly. However, a hero like Magmus for example, where you have to work with something new, being the concept of lava, can take a lot of R&D. Also, you MUST wait for visual effects before sound can even be touched. 2-6 days
Sound Effects: Once the visual efx are done, sound efx can begin work. They go pretty quickly. 2-3 days
Voice Work: Due to the nature of studio time etc... this process takes at least a week but you can bunch a lot of heroes together. This also does not just happen at the drop of a hat (thusly notice we have a lot of heroes in the game with no voices). We have to interview and find talent and then work the script and do a few iterations. No time table.
While some of this stuff can be happening simoltaneously it requires anywhere for 9-18 days get a hero in the game. This also does not include ANY balance testing.
I hope this makes you understand things a bit better
yes i did...
And I don't know what the guy who said 4-5 heroes earlier was thinking.. since Demigod's release HoN has added 17-18 heroes. It usually goes 3-4 per month.
