Suramar City Visual Development
Visual Development for Suramar City. An ancient radiant city, jewel of the Night Elf empire and current seat of power for the Nightborne civilization. We wanted the city to feel grand, like the Night Elf equivalent of ancient Rome. A lot of work was put into visual development of the city, from early conceptual ideas to look development of design motifs and textures, to layout concepts of districts and other specific areas. I am eternally grateful to have been part of this process. Many talented people were involved in making Suramar, what you see here is my piece of the contribution. May the stars guide you.
Concept for Suramar City at night with glistening architectural details and the glows of their magic.
Started with simple sketches and slowly developed into a detail drawing of the city.
Added value to separate shapes.
Early ideation layout of the city.
Raw sketches. This is where I began the brainstorming of ideas.
Early exploration of architecture. The goal was to capture a magical feel. I incorporated many design motifs from these images into later structures. These are refined versions of raw sketches.
More exploration sketches. Would the Night Elves have based their designs on the look of arcane magic frozen in a moment in time? That was my inspiration for the designs. More than just random shapes.