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→Summoning Ritual and Death
===Summoning Ritual and Death===
Thousand Pounder is summoned up in a scripted event. The [[Barbarian]] in the [[gameplay movie]] is running through the [[Forgotten Tombs]], when he comes upon a circle of five [[Dark Cultist]]s channelling their energy to call up a [[demon]]. At first there are three pale-skinned youths dancing in the circle. They explode one by one, and then from their blood and flesh the demon is conjured.
[[Image:Mon-thousand-summon2.jpg|center|thumb|600px|Bones form, then are covered by muscle.]]
The brainstorming and work that went into creating this sequence was discussed between [Bashiok]], [[Julian Love]], and [[Mike Nicholson]] during Blizzcast #8, in March 2009. [http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/blizzcast-8-live-with-diablo-iii-goodies]
::'''Bashiok:''' At WWI we unveiled the Thousand Pounder and it had this really grand entrance where it was assembled out of the pieces of these sacrificed uh... I guess virgins, if you will. It was such a grand entrance for that monster, how did that come about?
::'''Julian:''' Well yeah, I recognize that it probably looks like it was really planned out and something that we worked on for a very long time. It was one of those things where we originally wanted it to come busting through the wall there, because breakables being what they are they’re kind of the hot thing in the game, but I think there was some recognition that when you have a monster of that shape busting through a wall it’s starts to look like a Kool-Aid commercial...
::'''Mike:'''" Oh yeah!"
::'''Julian:''' [laughs] Which really undoes what we’re trying to say with the thousand pounder. And it kind of stole some of the thunder of the siege breaker who does that later on. I think, very late in the game, not three weeks before we were scheduled to be done with that we got some concept that looked like he was being beamed in Star Trek style. My department did an emergency powwow and we weren’t really happy with that, and so we asked ourselves so what do we really want to see here? And the hardest thing we could think to do was what we ended up doing, and we’re all scared, could we get it done? It was an enormous amount of work and we were going to have to convince other teams to help us. We needed help from modeling, we needed help from animation. But there was just this really cool commitment from everybody that this was the best thing to do, and we were going to put a lot of overtime in. We just crammed on it in two weeks, and that’s what popped out.
::'''Bashiok:''' Very cool, and is that something we’ll see in the final game you think?
::'''Julian: '''Oh yeah, in fact I think there’s been a lot of off-shoot ideas. Like every other monster in the game, where applicable, we ended building a skeletal structure into him, and even a muscular set and things like that, that you see. And those things are functional, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you see skeletal and muscular thousand pounders running around, maybe half-summoned, and that sort of thing. There’s a lot of leeway with it.
===Death Animation===
When he is defeated his death animation is basically the summoning animation in reverse; his skin sloughs off, then his muscles, before his bones clatter to the ground.
===Thousand Pounder 'Title'===