The art director for Pirates of the Burning Sea has posted a "State of the Artco" dev log!

When I landed the gig I knew what had to be done, so I got to work right away. The day I started we had five weeks before E3 2005 and, frankly, the game looked like crap. The major pieces were there – sky, ocean, and ships – but everything was just “present” in a sort of mechanical way. I sat down with the devs and requested a couple of small lighting-related features and then started painting – yes, painting, texture maps mostly. (The secret to 3D is that in the end it’s all about textures and lighting. I like to tell my students [I’ve been a teacher at the Art Institute of Seattle for 18 years] that a great texture can save a bad model, but bad texture will ruin even the finest of models – I don’t think they believe me though.)

Beautiful screen shots and a powerful dedication to the art of PotBS is included, and are not to be missed.