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Week 1: Researching the Art of Diablo IV

  • Writer: Stevie Tewfik
    Stevie Tewfik
  • Jan 23
  • 2 min read

Updated: May 6

Like any project, I had to begin with gathering reference. As someone who has never played any of the Diablo games, I spent quite a while on the Artstation "Art Blasts", in particular the Environment and Concept/ UI pages (Daniel Wade, July 2023) for Diablo IV.




These both contained a tremendous amount of screenshots, test renders and concept art that have given me a comfortable idea of the general style of the series, and the sorts of workflows that I will implement for my level. After having scoured these sights, I came to the conclusion that I want to make a catacombs area, with a large, central bridge.


Upon further inspection into these Art Blasts, I found that a lot of the renders, modular kits, and tileable materials had the authors linked on the bottom. Following through the images lead to each of their artstation profiles, where I found even more examples of areas created by specific "Dungeon Artists".


From those who I looked through, 3 stood out. Mina Kim (featured in the resources given to me by the Uni) whose majority of work was toward the "Vessel of Hatred" DLC (October 2024). She has a talent with creating trim sheets for large circular assets, which inspired me to want to place something similar around my "shrine asset".



Next up is Michael Manfredi, who is a Senior Dungeon Artist at Blizzard. Also within the Vessel of Hatred DLC, his culmination of natural, sculpted elements like overgrown bushes, vines and tree trunks with tiled rock elements was very visually pleasing. His use of strong atmospheric lighting also exemplified how lighting can express the scale of a scene.



A lot of his tasks were to "dress" scenes and composite all the props within unreal. Considering this will be a major part of this project, and the final piece of the puzzle, I wanted to take notes from the best in the business.



Lastly was Balazas Damjan, another Dungeon Artist. He did a very good job at disguising where is UV seems were, in particular by piling objects (bones, dirt build-up etc) in corners of rooms and edges where two similar materials collide to make clipping objects intersections less noticeable.



In his "Ancient City Ruins" map, he incorporates a large suspended staircase, which is also something that I might consider. I am thinking of a similar design though through the form of a crumbling and derelict bridge.



My Pureref mood board of my research so far
My Pureref mood board of my research so far

Bibliography/ External Reading:

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