Behind The Scenes: Isometric Dungeon (Patreon)

Apart of being a huge TV and movies fan, I also enjoy literature and board games. Especially sci-fi and fantasy books and roleplaying games. If you're not familiar with it, it's that type of game where bunch of nerds sit around a table and pretend they're fantasy heroes in a distant and often magical land.

The king of the genre is Dungeons & Dragons and even if you're not familiar, it's the thing that caused the sprawl of RPG digital games since 80's like Baldur's Gate and Elder Scrolls.

I always like to follow my interests with my work. Whatever I get excited with, I try to siphon that energy into my creations as well. And as I recently enjoyed some CRPG PC games, I thought I will enjoy some dungeon craft myself.

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Luckily, a lot of creative people have similar fantasy and games interests, so there is no shortage of a fanart all around the web and Pinterest. I was especially interested in dark and deep dungeons with unnatural lighting.

As I was browsing through the references I came across this hand drawn dungeon, something clicked and I knew I was here before. As it turned out, it's the same reference I used years ago when creating low poly dungeon.

I was thinking a bit about reworking the same composition, but in the end just took some inspiration from it to create something new.

The most important thing when I started the sketch, was to make sure I create some depth, which is a little bit challenging in a limited isometric diorama. I sketched in an area, that's going deep underground, while maintaining the limits of the diorama walls.

Other two key elements were some doorway and stairs. Stairs are important to support the depth feeling and even if you're looking at a small square space, your brain can perceive three different levels of surface.

Doorway is essential to have some focal point and story continuity, where after descending the steps, your next logical step would be through the door. And opening like this can be used to shine really strong colored light and make the lighting interesting and a bit unnatural.

You can watch the process video on Youtube