Hey I'm back! I did say I was going to draw some pinkies for this discussion, but I've changed my mind and I'm saving that for later. I want to talk about designing the bridge first. It's difficult to do something like design a Doom style bridge because it's not like we can get a single image of a bridge directly from the Doom series and directly fit it into this mockup. No, we actually have to draw something inspired instead. We have to scrounge around for multiple references to study as well as rely on our understanding of what bridges are and Doom's version of Hell, then finally, design something from our imagination. I am by no means a super great environmental artist yet, but we all have to practice right? All I know is that a bridge is a structure that living beings use to cross gaps and I know that Hell/Gothic culture typically features spikes, chains, gargoyles, other sculptures, pointy, arches, dark stonework/metal, and tortured bodies, etc. On top of that, the classic Doom games such as Doom 1 and 2 don't have the most detailed environments to be totally honest with you! But Doom 64 does environments a bit better and the more modern Doom games such as Doom Eternal or Doom: The Dark Ages does environments in much higher detail which can help serve as reference. Also the Diablo series and Quake series can help. With that said, I advise reference scrounging for any references that include something you can use to improve your bridge design, or at least get your imagination going.
Here are some references I thought we're useful. First up, We absolutely need the flooring to cross for it to be considered a bridge in the first place and I liked the stonework here as well as the grated hole through the bridge.
Next I knew I wanted something at each of the 4 corners of the bridge, like gargoyle or brazier pedestals or something like that. So I started looking at some Gothic pedestals. I've already seen plenty of Gothic pedestals which sometimes include floral carvings, sometimes other ornamentations included, or gargoyles on top of the pedestals, but here are 2 examples of such pedestals.
Then I was pretty sure I wanted an arch design over the bridge, but I wasn't sure if I just wanted one in the middle or one at both the front and back of the bridge. Now... I'm pretty sure these are AI images unfortunately. I was just looking up hellish arches and gateways and these popped up, but eh... they're alright I guess.
If you were to try to design your own hellish bridge, you could look up hellish chains, braziers, imprisoned skeletons, or staked corpses too. I was going to include some of these extra details but I couldn't figure out exactly how to fit them on my bridge so I didn't include them.
Anyway now onto the drawing part. So I started sketching around. Starting with some gargoyle pedestals and some steps.
The floor was looking too plain so I started scribbling some stone tiles in and I tried added some bony looking spikes on the side just to see how it would look.
I started trying out a quick gothic inspired arch.
I tried out some chains from the lava attached onto the sides of the bridge.
And then I realized "Wait, I should double check how big this bridge is compared to Doom Guy" so I brought him over for scale reference. The arch was too short previously so I made it taller. I also tried out some purple torches/braziers, but ended up scrapping them. Also notice on the bottom image with the braziers that I added a demon face on top of the arch! I ended up keeping the face.
Here I went with 2 arches instead of one and added bony spikes around both arches. It looked awesome! I wanted to have little gargoyles on the pedestals chained by the neck, but I ended up scrapping them. Maybe I'll add them back later though. I'm not entirely sure.
And then I figured "Hey! This looks like it could work. Let's do it." So for the most part this was the design I went with and I just spent a good a good 2 or 3 hours just cleaning up the shapes and colors. I also tried to make the arches look more sci-fi and bony and changed the helmet on the demon face to have a rune or sigil. Here's the final look of it (for now at least). I hope you like it!
I think next time, I'll actually draw in the pinkies that were originally planned so get hyped up for that!