Book of Cain Artwork Demonstration

Thanks to Softshack for pointing us to a blog entry by artist James Gurney, in which he shows off one of his pencil drawings from the Book of Cain. Here’s the artist’s description of the piece.

A few months ago, Blizzard Entertainment, the game publisher that had developed World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, commissioned me to do some pencil drawings for their book called “Diablo III: Book of Cain.” The book has just been released.

I drew the floating city of Pandemonium, the center of creation in the Diablo universe. While I worked, I shot some video. My parakeet, Mr. Kooks, hung out on my shoulder and supervised.

Not only is the artwork of the city revealed in the post, but there’s a short video which shows the page in the actual Book of Cain, plus some video of the artist at work. It pains me that a human can create something like that with just a pencil, a tool with which I was scarcely able to fill in Scantron ovals, but there it is.

We’ve never seen Pandemonium City before, but it’s just lore, not really a spoiler, since this is merch, not the game plot. (OR ARE THEY THE SAME?!!!1!?) If you do want spoilers, of extraordinary magnitude, about the Book of Cain and Diablo III as a whole, check out this forum thread started by RisingRed — the info from the book and theories about the game’s story are flying thick and fast there.

Click through for the artist’s video.