Behind the Scenes: Dungeons & Dragons Illustration (Patreon)

Two things inspired me this week to go and create new artwork. And both of them are quite big, though one flew a bit under the radar. I'm talking about the Dungeons & Dragons movie - Honor Among Thieves. And the best thing - the movie is actually good! If you're a D&D fan, you know how it went with the movies in the past. There were three, but other than Jeremy Irons in the villain role, let's just not talk about them at all :)

On the other side, D&D basically laid the foundations for the RPG PC games with titles like Eye of the Beholder (clever title that one) and of course - Baldur's Gate. Revered as a grand-father of modern CRPG titles, it's still one of the best RPG games of all times.

Last month, the Baldur's Gate 3 released. After more than two decades, you can see why it stirred up so much hype. And made by none other than Larian studio, guys behind the Divinity series - a resuscitation of the genre for the modern era.

Visit the full Pinboard here

As it happened, I watched the movie and played BG3 during the same week, since I didn't manage to catch the movie in cinemas. And on the same day, I managed to encounter Mimic in both :) It's a legendary D&D monster, that looks like an ordinary treasure chest, until it doesn't. It was placed cleverly into one of the movie action scenes and in BG3, you encounter them as well (if you're greedy and explore every area for treasure).

So the decision for the next render couldn't be more clear. I went and searched for some reference from the game and some DND fan art too. Mostly to get in the mood and surround myself with all the different environments and dungeons.

The idea was quite simple. I wanted the classic isometric room layout with the Mimic as a main focal point of the scene.

I sketched the room layout in a very rough way to find a good placement for the monster and deliver the D&D vibe. To make sure it just doesn't show just like any other room, I made sure to include some iron bars and some bare stone.

Most of the elements were picked up from the Pinterest reference board, like the library furniture and hanging brazier. I had and alcove with some magic symbols sketched in too, but during the lighting phase in Blender, it became apparent that the light wouldn't bring the best out of the room layout and it would benefit from some more soft light emission.

But I make decisions like that all the time during production. Important thing is, I have my layout sketched, so I can follow the scaffolding and focus my mind on little details and big picture like lighting, without creative overload.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.