DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations - Hell Forge

Hell Forge/ Demon Shipyard
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During the early stage of blue sky on revelations we had freedom to come up with whatever we thought would be cool for doom. Given this absolute freedom of creativity, I wanted to focus on answering some interesting questions while also trying to reuse existing assets and props the art team had made.
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To that effect I focused on the simple idea: Where did all the hell machinery (hell carriers, tanks, destroyers etc) come from and why don’t we see them in the sequel games (2016 and Eternal). So I formulated the idea that there was a massive organic forge under a immora (future hell from the ancient gods part 2) like city.
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With these core pillars in mind I developed the fiction around this forge or shipyard as I sometimes called it. That while the entire thing was generated from demonic energy or magic, likely summoned and formed by the Wizards (also not seen in the other games ) it would be a series of distinct areas , each generating their own hell biomechanical machinery. This would be important from an art perspective but also have a similar goal: Eliminate the master control demon. This is an idea taken from the X-men which I first learned from from the 90s animated X-men show. In the series the Sentinels , a giant robot created to hunt mutants, were all created in a factory run by a Master Mold Sentinel which had all the details on how to create / replicate the robots. To this effect, killing the Master Control demon in each area would prevent the production of hell machinery in the future games in the story. To save a buck, instead of it actually being a mobile demon, just a prop you could smash like a ‘head’ or something similar would have been good enough to convey the idea.
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I started with giant ‘womb’ with hell carriers emerging from amniotic fluid with placenta like material (goats stomach lining reference) with a path that lead directly to the Master Control Demon. As I often work on multiple concepts in parallel I worked on what a master control room could look like in the ‘hell tank’ area as well as hell tank ‘eggsacks’ incubation room. Its hard to tell but I did take the hell tank model from the game and built an ‘eggsack’ around it and spine-like holding arm. From there I built around some other ideas such as the Hell Carrier loading dock which they would then fly up from. I also imagined that after these biomachines took critical damage and returned, Wizards could use their demonic magic to heal and rebuild them. Finally the only completed painting here was of the destroyer ‘hive’, which I imagined was on the inside of a massive organic tube that would lead out to the main structure and docks. Additionally I created notes on how existing assets could be reused with a focus on hell tech and gore reuse.
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Ultimately it was a great exercise in solving a problem that wasn’t really asked while also being a solid explanation. Essentially comprehensive world building that works within the foundation of the complete DOOM trilogy. That said, since there had been no formalized direction yet at this point for the DLC, when the story came in this was not a part of it. I always appreciated the opportunities we were given to come up with and flesh out ideas within the world of DOOM.
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The biomechanical Hell machines featured here designed by Olympia Sweetman:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/y4x39n
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eRXZG6
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L4VbDv
Art Director Emerson Tung
https://www.artstation.com/emersontung