Artwork from Diablo II
From approximately 1998 through 2001 or so, I worked on Blizzard Entertainment's game Diablo II.
I was a character artist and animator and did a whole ton of stuff, some of which is down below.
All models were created and animated in 3D Studio Max without much concern for poly-count.
All images and charactes are copyrighted by Blizzard Entertainment.


The Sorceress
For Diablo II, I created two of the game's 5 player characters.
This task entailed concept design, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, and effects.
Each character had to be created with multiple sets of armor.
Here is the Sorceress in Light and Medium armor, modelled in 3DS Max.

The Sorceress

The Barbarian
Here's the other of the player characters, the Barbarian
As with above, the concept design, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, and effects were all mine.
Because this was a sprite-based game, we didn't care all that much about high poly-counts.
If you'd like to see a game-play movie of what this character looked like in the actual game,
you can download a PC-only zipped 30mb gameplay movie here.
Keep in mind that all animation for the game was modular and program driven:
So, for example, all of the jumping was done programmatically, not by me!

The Barbarian with wireframe

Here are his different armor sets: The Barbarian's different armors

He had a fairly detailed face, fully animatable for the character selection screen: The Barbarian expressions

Bat Demon
One of the minor monsters to fight in the game.
He shot lightning at you and burnt into cinders upon being slain.
Here is his concept and completed art,
plus you can see a rotation of him here. (1.3mb)

Bat Demon


Thorned Hulk
This is one of the first monsters that I did for the game.
Keep in mind that he's really very small on a 640x480 screen with no-first person mode,
So the bark texture looks exaggerated here, but it's what was needed
to make him look really good at our game's scale.

Thorned hulk


Duriel
Duriel, the Lord of Pain, was the Act II boss for Diablo II.
He was modelled in 3DS Max using patches.
He had a really "fun" walk cycle, a scuttling with the lower legs
whilst dragging the bulk of his weight with the upper claws.
Here's Duriel's "walk" cycle, which looks best if you can loop it. (650k)

Duriel


Diablo
And of course we have our title villian himself.
He was designed by others, but I was the one who modeled, textured, and animated him.
As was fitting, he had more animations than any other monster in the game,
and an incredibly elaborate death sequence, too.
He was modelled in 3DS Max using all sorts of different techniques.
You can also see his walk cycle here. (472k)

Diablo modelled

Diablo posed


And the image of Diablo from the cover of Game Developer magazene featureing Diablo II's post-mortem: Diablo Magazine Cover


Animation
Here are some miscellaneous animations from Diablo II.
It's by no means an extensive collection, as I did hundreds of animations for this title.
All characters were designed, modeled, textures, rigged, and animated by me (Except Diablo, whom I did not design.)
I also did all of the effects, too.


Barbarian spellcasting
The Barbarian player character

Sorceress spellcasting
The Sorceress player character

Duriel
Duriel, Lord of Pain, the Act II boss

Diablo spellcasting
Diablo, lord of Terror, the Act IV boss

A Fallen Shaman
A Fallen Shaman

The Thorned Hulk
The Thorned Hulk

A Claw Viper
A Claw Viper

Summoner
The Horadric Summoner, a mini-boss

Warriv
Warriv,a Non-Player Character
Drognan
Drognan, an NPC mage

Fara
Fara, an NPC armorer

Halbu
Halbu, an NPC knight

Korlic
Korlic, one of three Barbarian Ancient Warriors
From the Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction Expansion

Madawc
Madawc, the second Ancient

Talic
Talic, the final Ancient





Other things I did in Diablo II: The voices for all of the Fallen, the Zakarum Zealots, the Cows, a whole bunch of Non-Player Characters, some of the interface artwork, and many other characters who appear in the chat rooms.

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