Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno was one of those games that I was really excited about (video game based on a 14th century classic about hell? - Yes please!) - and includes some of my favourite pieces of concept art ever, but unfortunately the actual game was very poor.

However, like I said - in terms of design - especially character and world design - this game is one of my all time favourites.

This is an art style that I really love - the fleshy/human/bone/morphed/deformed creatures - like monsters from nightmares. The concept artists for this game really had amazingly disturbed minds - but wow - it certainly paid off!

In this image you can see some more explorations of "Charon." I think it's really interesting to note the difference that a coloured background makes to an image - The fire in the boat's eyes/mouth shines all the brighter and it really helps to accentuate the painted explorations.

Again, I really love the character design here - so much of the hell these designers created has faces and bodies everywhere - like all the trillions of people who have died since the birth of the world are all there somewhere - even as part of walls, or in this case, as 'lamps.'

It is also interesting to see that one of the main differences between the three 'lamps' in this image is simply an exploration of colour. It is really good to see this in duplicates of the same figures side by side. Also clever since the artist would not have had to redraw each character but simply change the colours by adjusting levels in photoshop or making small changes to the painting.

The protagonist Dante is an example of absolutely amazing character design. He is so incredibly detailed - and each part of him has been thoroughly considered. My favourite part of him is the red 'cross' on his chest - which are some of his memories, some of the events in his life that have made him who he is - that he has actually sewn onto himself to carry around - to literally bear as a cross.

This is an example of a really messed up character in the game - like I said before, everything is fleshy and has human components. This really brings to life the concept of hell. It is also interesting to consider that these characters were perhaps humans who had been in hell long enough to become this - or had sinned so much in their lives on Earth that they had become a visual representation of their sins.

I think this particular character was in the 'gluttony' level.

I really love this image - how it's both a drawing/sketch and more detailed painted character designs on a textured background creating a beautiful composition. This is a very interesting way to do character design - like the design itself is really an individual artwork in its own right.

These are some environment/world designs - it is incredible to see how many pieces of bodies and faces and organs are in every square inch of this game.

The environments all seem to have a very specific colour scheme - a quite obvious one (who thinks of hell and doesn't think of red and black?) but it works really well. All the environments look like they belong to the same world.

It's good to see that the designers really thought about stuff like this in detail - they considered the player, the audience and the beliefs that we all generally have in Western culture concerning hell. I think this makes everything seem that much more realistic.

Some research has also been done about the Crusades - about the time that the book was set. This is important to really bring the book to life. I think that the game really created a beautiful visual world where the events in this book could have actually taken place. It's just too bad that the gameplay was terrible.