Stanley Lau is one talented artist. Kotaku previously featured him on Fine Art for his wonderful Street Fighter work. Today, it's time to look at some stunning DOTA 2 art.

DOTA 2 is, of course, the Valve-produced sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), a mod of real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Lau's latest work is a series on DOTA 2 heroines Lina, Crystal Maiden, Windrunner, and Drow Ranger. You can see them in the above gallery. Remember to click on each photo's lower corner to expand the image to its full size.

In case you missed it, have a look at Valve's Gabe Newell talking about making DOTA 2 and this Fine Art of DOTA 2 character art.

If you want to see more of Lau's wonderful art, check out his Deviant Art page.

DotA2 Heroines by 'Artgerm [DeviantArt, Thanks Alex!]

Most gamers know him as the guy who helped create the soulful vibe of Gordon Freeman's world in the Half-Life games. However, way before he came to Valve, Marc Laidlaw was an author with a number of published works to his name. He's kept on writing outside of video games, too, but his most recent work plops him right into another video game universe.

Over on Newsarama, Laidlaw talks about working on The Secret Shop: Are We Heroes Yet?, the webcomic that spotlights the Shopkeeper, a.ka. the guy with all the hook-ups in the popular PC franchise. One of the highlights from the interview offers this:

Lore is continually in development, and we try to work it into all aspects of the game. Mostly, so far, that has shown up in the character vignettes that accompany each hero when you view them in the game. These are meant to give a quick verbal impression of the hero in a heroic moment, with just enough evocative imagery behind them to make you want to go deeper into the story, and they are meant to be very short and highly distilled. Creating the comic was the first place where we had a chance to work our way more deeply into the lore, and to lay out some of the concepts we've developed. Ideally, we can keep finding stories that let us flesh out the underpinnings of the DotA universe in compelling ways.

Of course, the main part of the DOTA experience happens in the games and the release of DOTA 2 is one of the most anicpated things anywhere. People really, really want to get into the beta. As it turns out, the final entry of the Secret Shop webcomic holds a survey that could get you into the beta. You'll need Steam, of course, but most anybody who's itching to get in the DOTA 2 beta probably has it already.

Opening the VALVE to DOTA 2 Webcomics: Are we Heroes Yet? [Newsarama]

While the game's not out yet, Valve's sequel to the super-popular WarCraft mod already gets a thumbs up from this feature for its gorgeous character art.

It's being used once or twice a week to accompany the reveal of new characters and/or features for the game, and seeing as it hasn't been plastered all over the internet, I figured it was worth collecting it all in a single gallery.

Note that this isn't all of it! There are more heroes to dress up this nice as the game gets closer to release, at which time we'll probably check back in and do this all over again.

Also included are the original four pieces of character art released for the game because, well, they're badass enough for a second (or third!) look.

Dota 2 is currently in closed beta, with invites going out, oh, maybe as you read this.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on the "expand" icon on the main image above and select "open in new tab".