Blizzard has unveiled the latest round of upgraded character models for their upcoming expansion to the popular MMO World of Warcraft, this time offering up male Taurens for critiquing.

As we begin applying animations, we’re extra careful not to stray too far from the original. It’s important to us to retain the essence of the original animations, because how a characters walk, move, and carry themselves help to define their personality. We use all of the original animations as a starting point, and then go through the process of cleaning them up and adding additional articulation. Let’s delve into what that process looks like.

The redesign comes courtesy of a new blog post that not only looks into the various facial changes of the Tauren, but also the animation side of things. Steve Aguilar, lead animator for the World of Warcraft animation team runs through a quite detailed look into the method's Blizzard are taking for the new designs, including discussion on poly counts and more technical changes.

You can check out a glimpse below of the new emotion animations, but be sure to swing by the blog post to see a must more vast discussion on all the various changes to the models. All character model upgrades are being made available for free to all World of Warcraft players, and will hopefully be available on Warlords of Draenor's launch.