DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations - Hell Colosseum Exterior

Hell Colosseum

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During the early blu-sky phase of production on the DLC for Dark Ages, we were given relatively free reign to come up with ideas and settings. There were a few exceptions such as this one which started as a request to see a “hell colosseum”. We knew this would likely be at the ‘highest level of hell’ as in the DLC we planned around having “layers”.
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Easy right? But how do we make it feel special? How do we make something truly feel unique to hell that is something more than just reusing assets in the shape of a colosseum? For the exterior I did keep it relatively safe however as I worked on this I also worked on this intermingled story to explain some aspects of it such as the light-fabric looking elements which I wound up writing some back story that helped me give some narrative for this idea which I will fully go into in this post for ‘The Flay’:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Jwl1NA
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Outside that core narrative factor for this project, exploring the exterior elements to help it feel unique within the world of Dark Ages? I started fairly safe and to the suggestion of our AD Emerson Tung I pushed to to feel less sentinel and changed the setting to an environment of lava or ‘caldera’ of a massive hell volcano. Eventually evolved into a suspended colosseum over said volcano with colossal chains (more iterations done unfortunately lost in transition) leading to somewhere else, as well as Titans (fun reuse idea) holding it for stability.
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Ultimately we went a different direction… and then came back to having a colosseum of sorts where you meet a new big bad. Ethen Evans handled the final exterior polish and Nathan Elmer tackled the interior space.

Art Director Emerson Tung
https://www.artstation.com/emersontung