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Text Menu: Art Portfolio 1Portfolio 2SpotlightArt Artchive 1Art Artchive 2Diablo II GalleryChildren's ArtworkSketchesPrints Downloads Tips Links All images copyright (c) Blizzard Entertainment except for the walrus who is copyright (c) Michael Dashow Page last updated on August 5th, 2005 |
From 1998 to 2005, I worked at the majorly-successful game company Blizzard Entertainment. This page spotlights some of the magazine covers and other promotional art that I created for them. All feature characters from the game Diablo II, for which I did a ton of in-game art as well. Please keep in mind that this is work done explicitly for Blizzard. I do not own copyrights to any of the images or characters so I cannot sell you prints or give you permission to use them for a fan-site or anything like that. (So please don't e-mail me to ask. Even though I did the art, Blizzard owns the copyrights, so I can't give you permission.) However, a lot of these pics are available as desktop images. You can download them from the Blizzard Diablo II Desktop Wallpaper page. If you're curious about the work that I did for Blizzard and how the art process differs from my painting, you can see more of my in-game 3D art from Diablo II here. There's also is an interview with me from about five years ago on one of my favorite Diablo II fansites, Diabloii.net.
July 1999 My first cover, the Barbarian in light armor on one of the Act II desert cliffs. There were some Sabre Cats in the lower left that were edited out of the image. The Barbarian was the second player character that I modeled for the game. I learned a lot by doing the Sorceress first: A lot of textures that look good in a high-resolution render don't look good at game-size. All of this page's high-res renders of the sorceress have some very different textures from what was used in the game art. But having learned some tricks, the Barbarian you see here is the exact same as he is in the game (only larger!)
June 2000 The sorceress attacking a plethora of monsters in the Act III city of Travincal. I reworked a lot of the Sorceress' medium armor to look good in a high-res render, but CGW wanted her pretty small with a camera angle similar to that in the game. Monsters attacking her include the Thorned Hulks at the bottom - my first monsters modeled for the game - the Bat Demons on the upper left, and Phil Shenk's "Big-Heads" on the upper right. Because of the requirements for the cover art direction, this piece doesn't stand well on its own and is not my favorite.
October 2000 Now this, on the other hand, works quite well on its own. It's Diablo himself, in his fortress in hell, at the end of the game. Once the game released, I was very excited to finally be able to put this guy on a magazine. Pity that the art director took out some of the glow effects from the stained glass window and squashed the image horizontally a bit to squeeze him into the page. I intended for him to bleed off the sides and be all that much bigger. Now you see why I like art directing my own covers when I do work for publishers like Tachyon!
August 2000 (Japan) A striking image of the Barbarian in full heavy armor in the Lut Gholein sewers. Dave Glenn, background artist extrordinaire on Diablo II, did both the background set and helped me do all of the lighting and effects in this piece. I'd never done too much fancy with lighting before, and I learned a lot working with him.
September 2000 (Japan) The Barbarian and Sorceress take on the Den of Evil in the beginning of the game. These are the actual models used in the game, by the way. I did very little modification to them for these high-resolution renders... Just some of the sorceress' metal textures have been swapped out to add a bit more subtle detail as I mentioned earlier. They just don't look as good when rendered 75 pixels tall, do they? This image was originally going to grace the game's credits page, but was swapped out at the last minute. I don't know why.
Load Screen Nearly three years after Diablo II shipped, Blizzard is still supporting the game and the community. Patch version 1.10 made some sweeping chnages to the game, making it once again exciting for the die hard fans that we're still playing. However, it took us a really long time to come out with the last patch... A fact that prompted Blizzard North to poke some fun at itself by depicting Hell frozen over on the patch's load screen. This was my humorous take on the scene, as requested by Blizzard. This here is only a detail, but you can follow the link to the Blizzard site to see full versions of it.
Halloween 2003 I was asked to come up with a scary Diablo-themed image as a downloadable desktop for the Blizzard website. We'd just released the 1.10 patch (see the above entry) and I guess the idea was to keep the site relatively live by providing its first desktop updates in a few years. Or heck, maybe they just figured that if I'm busy painting a picture, I'd stay out of peoples' hair! :-) Anyhow, I decided to work with a couple of characters that i hadn't illustrated before, the Amazon and the Paladin. Again, you're only seeing an excerpt here, but they're being swamped by 50 mummies being revived by the greater mummy Radament. They're all in there, just a whole boatload of mummies. Kinda creepy, and easily the most complicated, busy composition that I've ever attempted! See the full image at the Blizzard web site.
Worlds of Warcraft A new promotion involved playing Diablo II to win copies of Blizzard's newest game, Worlds of Warcraft. I was asked to come up with an image showing Diablo one one side and some of the recognizeable races from Warcraft on the other. This piece went through several modifications as I laid it out. Another version, deemed too silly, had a Dwarf grasping onto Diablo's shins and about to hack his kneecap, with Diablo looking like "Am I supposed to take this seriously?" Another version took place about three seconds after this shot, with the characters not merely facing off against each other but in full combat. A nice concept, but the composition just wasn't as strong. I really enjoyed this assignment because it was my first chance to illustrate the wonderful Warcraft character designs. Anyhow, even if you don't want to download the desktop, go to the Blizzard Desktop Page anyhow, if only to see the full piece. What you're seeing here to the right is merely a detail from the larger piece.
My last Blizzard desktop: I was asked to come up with something cool for the Diablo 1.11 patch, possibly something with Andariel... "Be sure to make her sexy but not TOO sexy, if you know what we mean..." I knew what they meant. Phil Shenk's original design for Andariel is basically topless, a fact that's easily overlooked when she's at screen resolution in the game but is harder to conceal in a giant desktop. Fortunately there were also some redesigns of a PG-13 version of the character done for the possibility of making an Action Figure, and I checked those out to get some ideas on... um... mammary concealment. Anyhow, you can see the full piece at the Blizzard website here. This desktop was released the same day as the Diablo 1.11 patch, and the same day that the entire staff of Blizzard North was let go. And two weeks after I fortuitously resigned from Blizzard Entertainment. So that about wraps it up for this page...! |
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