DOOM: The Dark Ages - The Cosmic Realm

~Most work seen here completed in 2022~

A highlight of my time on DOOM: The Dark Ages involved the opportunity by creative management to guide the visual design direction for the Cosmic Realm! Starting with our favorite Lovecraftian sources (and listening to hours and hours of stories I knew, and many I did not) I worked to develop something familiar but truly otherworldly. Developing something 'new' was truly a challenge with so much existing art and entertainment based around the legendary source material.

I have included some sections of the StyleGuide I created in the images here including the basic lore I came up with to help explain the world. I wanted a way to explain the organic elements of the world"

"Living architecture"

- a theme that introduced and maintained through development, working with art and material teams to help execute on a new cohesive look and feel. Staring with the "cyclopean" forms mentioned in the source material (which translates to large stone structures, often depicted as massive solid stones carved and smoothed to go together).

-Materials also played a big part in this. The widmenstatten Pattern found in ancient (4.5 billion year old!) asteroids/meteorites that have crystalized nickel-iron that when sliced, create a fascinating and interesting triangular pattern. I have tried to get this in a video game since my first project in 2009!

-I've included a lot of development sketches, drawn with pencil on paper and scanned in with tones added in photoshop. This was a fun exorcise to explore 'otherworldly' elements i found fascinating such as fungus and the typical themes found in lovecraftian descriptions of architecture.

-Ive also included some of the earliest work that didn't really hit the target but still helped explore some larger ideas and concepts for the realm.

Art Direction By Emerson Tung https://www.artstation.com/emersontung

All Images © id Software, Zenimax Media Inc.