Project Description

INKTOBER 52 2023 Day #4: ANGEL.

Okay, first a little back story to explain this one. When I first started dating my wife, one of the many things we bonded over was a love of fantasy books and video games. She introduced me to one of the greatest fantasy role playing game franchises of all time: Diablo. Diablo II to be exact. We logged uncountable hours playing that game together, and have continued to go back and play it, along with the sequels, as well as some fan modified versions of the game. It’s kind of “our game” the way normal people might have “our song” or something.

Anyway, one of the key characters throughout the games is Tyrael, the archangel of justice. He plays a pivotal role in Diablo II and III, and his character design is just plain cool (the concept artists at Blizzard Entertainment are fantastic). When thinking about the prompt “angel”, I struggled at first. I didn’t want to do anything too religious, because that’s not who I am, and therefore neither is PMD. I thought about the whole angel on one shoulder, devil on the other, but that still didn’t feel right to me. I thought about another Bill Watterson tribute of snow angels-which would be a very specific homage to a specific strip-but it just wasn’t compelling enough to me.

Then I thought about Tyrael. In Diablo III, we get to see the whole pantheon of angels besides Tyrael, like Inarius, Malthael, Imperius and Auriel. They all have magnificent armor designs and cool weapons, and rather than bird wings, they all have these awesome, glowing energy tendrils. Each angel represents a different aspect, like justice, hope, valor, wisdom, and fate. I almost called this version of PMD Monkael, but Plungarius sounded better to my ear. It was also a toss up as to whether he was going to be the archangel of plungers or monkeys. Regardless, this one was a lot of fun to do, with a lot of little intricate design work for how small I was drawing. I contemplated pushing this one a lot further, trying to create some complex glows and lighting, but thought it would get too muddy because everything was already feeling too crowded. This is surprisingly the first time I’ve alluded to the world of Diablo, despite how prevalent it is been in my personal life. In my own small, weird way, this one makes me think of the wonderful early days with my wife.