As promised the official unveiling, (somewhat dampened by the unofficial unveiling a few days ago), of the female monk has gone live on Blizzard’s Diablo 3 site tonight.  There is the caeser-esk concept art on the monk page we revealed in our collage news item from Sunday but of course it’s much better quality.  What is new however is the cool animation of her at the top of the page.

The female monk has received mixed reviews since the snapshots taken from the Jace Hall show first appeared, the massive pauldrons and the peroxide blonde hair being two minor gripes but now that you have seen her in a her full regalia in a high definition full body shot what do you think?  Does she epitomize Sanctuary’s martial arts warrior?

• Official Monk Page
• Monk at DiabloWiki.Net
• Monk Gallery
• Monk Forum

Update: A second, more action-y piece of female monk concept art was added to the official site. Click it for a much larger view.

 

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Since we’re now all FeMonk, all the time, here are couple of more useful images. We just created a new D3 Team folder in the image gallery, and besides a bunch of photos of the various key individuals on the D3 Team, it’s got quite a few high quality images of the team and their giant conference table, as seen on the Jace Hall Show. Thanks to MD for all of the screencaps.

One of those shots featured a better look at her heavy armor look, so I cut it out and posted it separately. It can be seen below on the left; click it for the full size. Not only is the armor worthy of study (comically high shoulder pads and all) but check out her half-profile view. The different angle shows off her hair to nice effect, and I like her face a lot in this one. The expression gives her a thoughtful, contemplative look that’s more in keeping with the Male monk’s expressions and lore.

Elsewhere, Inkarnus put together a nice collage of images that explore various aspects of the Female Monk’s look, features, and personality. Click it on the right for a much larger view.

 

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Everyone’s got an opinion on the newly-revealed Female Monk, but not everyone used Photoshop and modified their original artwork to make their point. I don’t much agree with it,but it’s worth debating. Here’s the quote from Sentioch.

If you want a battle hardened warrior feel, you usually go with the male class.

If you want a sexy looking body, you go with the female class.

But the female monk is really not sexy in any way…it really defeats the purpose of having a female version at all. Most guys who want to play women (which compromise the majority of the people that would play her) really just want to look at a hot avatar.

Most girls who want to play her…will also want their avatar to be hot. Nobody wants to play a butch girl.

Bashiok tried to dismiss this with sarcasm, saying only, “Nice story bro.” but I think there’s more to say than that. Personally, I’m not sold on Blizzard’s view; this coed blonde beauty is a battle-hardened warrior? But Sentioch’s changes make her look like one of those pretty, pouting, fashion model characters from Guild Wars. Furthermore, his description of why people pick their characters seems absurdly simplistic. Does everyone pick their game avatar for hotness? That might have some validity in a game with a trailing-camera-FPS style view, but Diablo 3 is isometric, and the characters are always in heavy armor and helmets anyway!

Other arguments, pro or con, are welcomed in the comments.

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Bashiok added a couple of replies to the ongoing Jace Hall Show thread, confirming the reality of the female monk, and promising us a better look fairly soon.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Yes, that is indeed the female monk. We’ll have an official site update and a couple high-res goodies soon. Although the shoulder pads do look ridiculous, you gotta remember that you’re not going to see the character zoomed up. I have to agree that these screenshots make it look like the monk just stole some spare shoulders from the barbarian while he was sleeping. End game is going to be really hard to distinguish which class is which if all the armor looks like this. Bashiok: Yeah, didn’t I just make that post yesterday? Anyway, considering the level at which the artists control the looks of the heroes and their progressive armor appearances I don’t think there’s any chance you’ll be able to mistake one class for another. Being able to easily read the heroes on screen is probably the first and biggest bullet point for our art design. Her hair being a near-white blonde wasn’t a random choice or simply for aesthetics. You’ll be able to identify any class out of the corner of your eye, or almost wholly obscured by effects/monsters. It’s absolutely necessary. The heroes are designed at every step of the way with that in mind. Gameplay first.

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After all the jokes and snide remarks we all made about the silliness of the Jace Hall show as they pretended to film secret material that Blizzard didn’t want them to show, episode 2 of their new season went off tonight and… they debuted the female monk. Not very clearly; but the camera panned across a number of colorful print outs of her various looks, and we’ve assembled the best available images in the gallery. Click any of these thumbs for a larger view.

Let’s hope that Blizzard has something bigger and better planned, and that they’ll release some full quality images and screenshots later today, after letting Jace Hall get the publicity and attention for the big reveal.

Player reactions so far seem to be fairly tentative, with, “A blonde?” leading the early comments. thanks to FriskyDingo in comments, for the tip.

   

Update: Cleaned up the images quite a bit. New headshot uploaded.

Update #2: Full Jace Hall show and summary of the Diablo 3 content on the click through.

Update #3: Check MD’s post at BlizzPlanet for lots more screen caps.

 

 

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We’ve made a new post in the Monk forum asking you guys to vote on your favorite of the fan-created female monk looks. Bashiok posted quite a few fan submisisons, and when you added those to the ones we’d already had submitted, that put us up over 40 pieces of fan-made female monk concept art.

With all those on hand, and the official reveal imminent (we sincerely hope), we thought it would be fun to let everyone have a say. So head to the Monk forum thread, look over the semi-finalists we’ve picked, and get in your votes. (You may vote for more than one option.) We’ll pick the top 4 or 5 and run a main page article/vote on that next week, to arrive at the ultimate community consensus as to how the female monk should look. And then when the real game version is revealed, we can all be surprised, gratified, or disappointed.

A few of the semi-finalists are thumbed below, just for the bonus eye candy.

Update: Even though the “real” female monk has been revealed, go ahead and vote for your favorite fan versions anyway. We’ll run a poll next week with the most popular fan ones against the official, and see which you guys prefer.

     

 

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Bashiok kept updating the femonk (female monk) concept arts that fans submitted for the nontest (non-contest) through February 1st, and here’s the last of them. The more aesthetically pleasing submissions (in my humble judgment) are visible here; click through to view the whole 22. You can view the previous entries in our first or second post on this issue, or see every single one of them in the fan art gallery under the female-monk tag. 

           

No word yet on when we’ll see the actual female monk, but after all this build up it would be great if we got a proper unveiling. Not just one screenshot or piece of concept art, but a whole selection of images; several concept arts, and some good views in screenshots. Bashiok’s talked about her hair length changing during development, and it would be interesting to see before and after. Come on, web team. Impress us. What, are you saving it up the content for… the D3 collector’s edition?

 

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Bashiok was hopping in the forums today, and here’s the rundown on a couple of his juicier posts.

In reply to a fan who wants the Barbarian to be larger, compared to the other characters, Bashiok says that he/she is, at least in the game, and even offers a (quickly retracted) visual aid:

	Blizzard Quote:
	They aren’t to scale on the class selection page. ... Well fun fact - technically the witch doctor male is still the tallest when standing up straight, but his hunch makes him a much shorter character when he’s actually in the game. Aside from that technicality… The male barbarian is, and is intended to always be the tallest character. He’s at least 7’ tall. The female wizard is probably somewhere around 5’10. ... All you really have to do is compare screenshots. Our camera angle/distance hasn’t changed too dramatically so comparisons are pretty easy. That’s female wizard vs female barbarian obviously. edit - I take that back. Even slight deviations in the camera distance completely throw comparisons out of whack. But my previous statement still stands; able to compare screenshots side-by-side or not.

Elsewhere, Bashiok let us know that the BlizzCast wouldn’t be posted very soon, and that it wasn’t exactly worth holding your breath over either.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Next BlizzCast this week?  Yes/no/maybe? Bashiok: No, and don’t get too jazzed on it. It’s just a few questions being answered. It was fun to record so hopefully it’s enjoyable listening to it, but there’s nothing in there that’s mind blowing. sigh unfortunately most of us get mad when you “promise” something awesome and our hopes get to high, so if this isn’t that mindblowing and you’re being 100% truthful now, be prepared for an onslaught of nerd rage Bashiok: Asking people for some questions is promising something awesome? I can only do so much to realistically manage expectations.  If anyone took the request for questions and built it up that much then they should be prepared for far more impactful disappointments in their life.

Say what you will about the CM-appropriateness of Bashiok’s sarcastic mannerisms, but he’s got a point there.

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Bashiok has posted an uber list of the fan submissions to the “Guess the FeMonk’s look” non-contest. See our first post on this for the previous submissions, only some of which were Monk-in-a-pink-tutu jokes. Or just browse the fan art gallery for female-monk tagged images.

Here’s Bashiok’s post, with the new submissions thumbed below it.

	Blizzard Quote:
	A couple days ago I was thinking “I sure could go for a breakfast sandwich.” And then I thought “HEY! We’re pretty close to revealing the female monk, let’s see what people think she’s going to look like.” And since those crazy kids on the twitter love this kind of thing, what better place to post an art challenge. Following is the original twitter request and the responses to date. If you want to show off your female monk artwork it must be done through twitter. I’ll keep this list updated until around February 1st.

Everyone still seems to be going for an updated Mulan, despite the male Monk’s Rasputin-in-a-robe style? Not that some of these are exactly detailed enough to intuit her ethnicity. *cough*

                     

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Via their @Diablo twitter feed this morning, Blizzard asked what fans thought the still-secret female Monk might look like. Several fans leapt to the challenge with quick pencil sketches, which @Diablo retweeted for all to see.

	Blizzard Quote:
	Art challenge! We’re a bit closer to revealing the female monk, but what do you think she’ll look like? Draw/paint it and we’ll RT the best —Diablo at least give us a deadline, heh —Luchko Well don’t work too hard on it, there’s no prize. But how about, “Due by the 1st”?—Diablo

The quick pencil efforts so far (seen below) are all very Eastern/Asian looking, which would be a good guess if we didn’t know that the male monk looked like a bald Rasputin. Yes, he’s wearing saffron robes, but Blizzard intentionally mixed cultures on this character. The female Wizard = Asian girl. Female monk = ? But wouldn’t it be odd to have the male monk European while the female looks like Mulan?

       

Happily there are some more thought-out (thought not necessarily more correct) female monk images already available in our fan art gallery. Check out the illustrations by Knight Wolf (one, two, three,), Tepes, and HorseRotovator.

Clearly, this is a rare opportunity for fan artists. Anyone can try to predict a release date, but how often do you get the chance to try to predict what the next Diablo 3 character will look like, thus potentially earning yourself years of bragging rights?

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