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Laboratory concept art & mood shot | Deathbound

Laboratory concept art made for Trialforge Studio. In 2023 I joined their incredible team to work as a prop and environment concept artist for Deathbound, a souls-like game released in October 2024. It is a pleasure to share those. ♥

The laboratory is the first area you’ll visit ingame, so it serves to set its grim mood and the dichotomy between modern abandoned buildings and medieval-like designs and equipment brought by the current civilization.

This is the area in which I was learning the ropes and learning about the studio’s concept art pipeline. A big thank you to the art director (Rafael Dantas), concept art (Yago Souza), and 3D environment team (Gabriel Abner, Bruna Grinkraut, Yuri Mota) for their guidance and support.

illustration showing a medieval knight wearing gold and white armor entering a modern, dark hospital reception.
‘Essence labs’ (former Akratya hospital!) reception – Mood shot

Laboratory Reception Tree concept art

Concept art of a tall tree with tall, webbed roots. It's upper trunk resembles a humanoid figure stretching out its arms as branches.
Based on a sumaúma (Ceiba pentandra).

Hospital Bed concept art

concept art showing a hospital bed with a wooden base and an old, ripped blue mattress. It is decorated with candles and sacred writings.
First hospital bed explorations.
4 3D side-views of a more modern-looking, violet hospital bed mattress, using typography and symbols from the game's lore and factions.
Bed breakdown (Blender) I made the mattress textures using our UI/UX designer’s (Luh Cardoso) typography and ingame brands logos.
Concept art showing variations for the mattress and bedding: Simple, plain dark blue, striped, violet, and bloodied light-teal.
Mattress and bedding variations

Laboratory experiment tank concepts

Six Isometric views of a laboratory tank
Large lab tanks. One of my first works for the studio.
concept art showing top and side views of an experiment tank. Its areas are divided by colors, for clarity.
Large experiment tank side views
Side and 3/4 views of a smaller experiment tank
Small tank breakdown
Two 3D sketches of a laboratory tank. To their right is a paintover showing decals, dirt marks and the tank's blue color.
3D sketches made in Blender, and a paintover showing details, dirt and colors.

Misc. Prop and vegetation studies

concept art of an iv stand decorated with candles, wires, feathers and vines.
Essencemancers use old-world IV stands as candle holders.
illustrations of leaf shapes and vine patterns
Small vine study
illustrations of monsteras and calathea plants.
Plants!! 🌿🍁🍂🍃
concept art of small glass vials with red and green substances, ceramic bowls that can be used as altars when placed upwards, and candles made with human body fat.
Small prop explorations – Candles, vials, altar bowls.
Drawings exploring how the experiment tanks work, and a visual connection between roots, tubes and veins.
Misc. explorations – Drawings exploring how the experiment tanks work, and a visual connection between roots, tubes and veins; which are very essencemancer-coded.

Laboratory elevator concept art

concept art showing the interior part of an elevator. Some of its metal panels and lights are broken.
Lab elevator concept. We had a base elevator that I could extract from our engine, and then I had the freedom to pick its materials, design and alter its panels as necessary.

Set Dressing concept art

3d render of a cluttered janitor room. There are shelves cramped with cleaning supplies and a small monitor propped atop a stack of crates.
Janitor room dressing breakdown. He’s a sports fan, this small easter egg foreshadows the next game area: Zehrimbal stadium

Essencemancer blackboard concept art

side views of tall wooden blackboards
Blackboards! We had a base blackboard and I made small adaptions to make them larger and more similar to the essencemancer faction visual identity.
the same tall wooden blackboards, with writings and candles
blackboard writings and decoration.

Game capture – reception tree

A screencap showing a dark hospital reception that has a large open hall and a tree at its center.
Gorgeous game capture shot by the lead environment artist, Gabriel Abner Farias. The balconies’ structures and the initial concepts for this area were made by Rafael Dantas, our art director.

Software: Blender, Unreal, Photoshop.

Team

This list far from covers all Deathbound contributors, it has only team members I’d contact often when creating those concepts. There are more team members listed in my Artstation Deathbound posts.

Rafael Dantas, our art director.

Natane Souza, a 3D props artist passionate about stylized art.

Bruna Grinkraut, a complete environment artist who was also responsible for set dressing.

Yuri Mota, our materials, tree and textures expert.

Bruno Belício, our VFX wizard.

Gabriel Abner, our 3D lead, who modeled the large architectural and natural items, such as the volcano and isles. He has mentored me a lot on how to prepare concepts for 3D pipelines.

Yago Souza, the concept artist responsible for the final boss arena. He is also specialized in hard-surface and lighting.

Lucas Santiago, our lead character concept artist.

Renato Medeiros and Guilherme Rocha, character artists.

Luisa Cardoso, who’d take care of anything relating to UIs, icons and the game’s visual identity as a whole.

João Paulo, one of our level designers.

Semper, our lead 3D animator and generalist.

Anna Gianelli 🪸, our producer.

Thiago Batista, Narrative Director, and Renato Baroni, our lead writer.

Deathbound – Links

Softwares: Blender, Unreal, Photoshop.

Steam: Deathbound

DLC: Deathbound: Accepted by Death on Steam

Development: Trialforge Studio

Publishing: Tate Multimedia

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