# The Making of Disco Elysium - Part Four: Art Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eUtrUW2QVU Recap page: https://rapidrecap.app/video/-eUtrUW2QVU Generated: 2026-02-03T16:51:06.275+00:00 --- ## Quick Overview The art of Disco Elysium is fundamentally a study in painting, utilizing techniques like composition, light and shadow, and edge hierarchy, all implemented through a custom pipeline leveraging Blender and Photoshop tiles combined with virtual texturing techniques to bring the still isometric image to life. **Key Points:** - Aleksander Rostov claims that Disco Elysium is obviously about painting, incorporating portraiture, landscape, and metaphysical portraiture, with dialog framings resembling comic-book compositions. - The art team was small, consisting of a couple of artists, one animator, a 3D guy, and contributors, with Rostov's painterly style serving as the visual fulcrum for the project. - Rostov developed his style through autodidactic practice, grinding anatomy, drawing from memory, and learning fundamental painting concepts, contrasting his internet-informed learning with older generations' limited resources. - The development team used Unity and Blender, setting up a pipeline where Blender color-blocked scenes, rendered maps (color, normal, height), which Rostov then painted over in Photoshop, achieving the painterly integration with 3D elements. - To manage the massive scale, described as 10 gigapixels of texture information for Martinaise exterior, the team used Amplify Texture 2 for virtual texturing to avoid loading screens, simulating id Software's megatextures approach. - Character portraits function as focused studies in subjectivity, using symbolism, shape (e.g., Kim's roundness vs. Jean's rectangle), and lighting to manipulate player emotion, aiming for a psychological depth akin to Velázquez's work. - The team deliberately used tricks like simulating fog of war as a vignette that 'snakes' through cracks in the painterly ground texture to combat the stillness of the isometric image and bring life to the environment. **Context:** This segment, Part Four of a documentary series on Disco Elysium, focuses exclusively on the artistic development of the game, featuring key interviews with artist Aleksander Rostov and programmer Siim Raidma. The discussion centers on Rostov's artistic philosophy, the technical pipeline used to merge 3D assets with a painterly 2D aesthetic, and the specific techniques employed to create the game's iconic isometric look and character portraits. ## Detailed Analysis The visual identity of Disco Elysium stems directly from Aleksander Rostov’s commitment to painting principles, viewing the game as a comprehensive study in composition, light, and shadow, despite common assumptions that it focuses on detective work or politics. The art creation relied on a small team utilizing Unity and Blender, where 3D blocking provided base geometry and maps (color, normal, height), which Rostov then hand-painted over using a Wacom Cintiq, drawing from the shoulder for superior control. A major technical hurdle was managing the immense texture data—up to 10 gigapixels for the exterior—which they overcame by implementing virtual texturing via the Amplify Texture 2 plugin, bypassing Unity's then-unavailable native solution. The isometric perspective allowed the design to treat the entire world as a single painting, guiding the viewer's eye through calculated composition. Character portraits were treated as psychological studies, where shapes, colors, and framing—like Kim's solid forms versus Jean's dark rectangles—were layered to manipulate player emotion, aiming for a raw signal delivery similar to viewing a Mark Rothko painting in person. Furthermore, the team developed complex shader effects, like directional shadow maps rendering three times of day and a unique fog-of-war implementation that snakes along texture cracks, specifically to inject liveliness into the inherently static isometric view. ### Artistic Philosophy - Rostov asserts the game is about painting, utilizing techniques like edge hierarchy and comic-bookish dialog framing - Artistic development involved developing taste, physical practice, and absorbing online art information - Art must be done outside of institutions, reacting against the mediocre state of art in the '90s and early 2000s. ### Technical Pipeline Implementation - The team chose Unity and Blender because Siim Raidma knew them, allowing him to script a custom pipeline - Blender outputted color, normal, and height maps; Rostov painted over the color map in Photoshop - They managed 10 gigapixels of texture information using virtual texturing via Amplify Texture 2 to avoid loading screens. ### Achieving Painterly Integration - The challenge was integrating bulbous 3D forms into the painterly sensibility, addressed partially through hand-painted normal maps and planar simplification - The isometric view is designed like a flat painting, allowing painterly knowledge to be plugged in directly. ### Dynamic Visual Effects - To combat the stillness of the isometric image, the team added subtle animation, like parallax on tree tops and dynamic shadowing on foreground houses based on camera position - A remnant of fog of war functions as a vignette, darkening the image by snaking through lighter parts of the texture first. ### Character Portraiture Strategy - Portraits aim for psychological depth, referencing Velázquez's ability to show character flaws, not just flattery - Symbolism is layered through shapes (e.g., Kim's roundness, Jean's rectangle) and color to manipulate player feeling - The twins' portrait uses a cheap production trick (flipping one image) that coincidentally reflects the protagonist's skewed perception. ### Protagonist Self-Image - Mr. Dubois’s portrait changes because Rostov, as an amateur autodidact, never learned to draw the same face twice, which is framed as reflecting the character's changing self-image - UI changes, like the net worth counter altering during specific interactions, are described as 'juicy, juicy art school shit.'