The First Sign is the first of five pre-rendered cinematics in Diablo 3. The first portion of the cinematic features a flashback to the Eternal Conflict, a momentous battle between angels and demons. Originally this scene was going to be realized in the usual 3D fashion like the rest of the cinematic, but the team ultimately shied away from this because of time constraints. As the project's director Nick Carpenter said, "...it was essentially like adding another entire cinematic relatively late in the schedule."
Eventually they settled on the notion of using 2D hand drawn elements to tell this part of the story. In addition to being well executed, it also serves as a good, artistic contrast to the second half of the cinematic. And because the storybook approach is not as costly to produce as the normal pre-rendered cinematics, it has enabled more opportunities for storytelling throughout the Diablo series. Blizzard has since released over a dozen short segments for Diablo 3 and its expansion Reaper of Souls using this look.
Sound design is easy to overlook, but the truth is that sound is integral to every cinematic experience. The sound team, including Paul Menichini, David Farmer and Michael Johnson, did a great job realizing both the mundane and the fantasy sound effects of the Diablo universe. Here is a version of the cinematic where the voice over and music tracks have been removed to illustrate the complexity of the sounds by themselves.
The Sounds of The First Sign
Audio commentary excerpt with Nicholas Carpenter (Project Director) and Chris Thunig (Project Art Director):
Cinematic Credits
Project Director:
Nicholas S. Carpenter
Project Art Director:
Chris Thunig
Project Producer:
Taka Yasuda
Cinematic Script:
Chris Metzen
Additional Direction:
Matt Samia
VFX Supervisors:Jeff Chamberlain, Jon Lanz
Director of Technology:
Mark A. Brown
Production Director:
Noel Wolfman
Lead Producer:
Scott Abeyta
Project Editors:
Brian Horn, Rebecca Lilienfeld
Department Supervisors:
John Burnett, Shimon Cohen, Scott Goffman, Steeg Haskell, Arthur Jeppe, Mike Kelleher, Jared Keller, Brian LaFrance, James McCoy, Fin Teo, Seth Thompson, Xin Wang
Project Leads:
Ricardo Biriba, Steven Chen, Graham Cunningham, Devon Fay, Jim Jiang, Sheng Jin, Jeramiah Johnson, Chung Kan, Ren Kikuchi, Bill La Barge, Mark Lai, Tuan Ngo, Jamie Pilgrim, Reo Prendergast, Dennis Price, Glenn Ramos, Kenson Yu, Simon Yuen
Cinematic Artists:
Salvador Arditti, Scott N. Army, Till Aschwanden, Jongha Baik, Becca Baldwin, Ben Barker, Jason Barlow, Stephane Belin, Barry Berman, Ted Boonthanakit, Craig Brown, Alvaro Buendia, Vitaly Bulgarov, Bill Campbell, Scott Campbell, Aaron Chan, Hosuk Chang, Daniel Chavez, Ray Chih, Tae Choi, Joanna Cleland-Jolly, Matt Cordner, James Crowson, Drew Dobernecker, Emanuel Druckmann, David Durand, Mustazar Essa,
Chris Evans,
Joe Frayne,
Casey Fulton,
Suntaro Furukawa,
Diego Garzon Sanchez,
Hunter Grant,
Eric Grimenstein,
Jeremy Gritton,
Chris Ha,
Mike Hardison,
Jason J. Hill,
Benjamin Min Huang,
Steve Hui,
Tyler Hunter,
Ray Hsu,
Joe Jackman,
Jessica Dru Johnson,
Bernie Kang,
Ronny Kim,
Yonghyun Kim,
Andy C. King,
Mike Koizumi,
Scott Lange,
Huang Le,
Ryan Leasher,
Hoya Lee,
John Lee,
Moonsung Lee,
Yeon-Ho Lee,
David Lesperance,
Shawn Liang,
Dyllan Lu,
David Luong,
Brandon Martynowicz,
Matthew Mead,
Andrew Melnychuk-Oseen,
Lucas Merino,
Sada Namiki,
Kurtis Paddock,
Corey Pelton,
Troy L. Perry,
Levente Peterffy,
Joe Peterson,
Laurent Pierlot,
Kirti Pillai,
Zachary Podratz,
Wei Qiao,
Dominic Qwek,
Jarrett Riva,
Casey Robinson,
Davy Sabbe,
Kazuhito Shimada,
Richard Slechta,
Fabio Stabel,
Peter Starostin,
Takuya Suzuki,
Geordie Swainbank,
Jon Teer,
Sofia Vale Cruz,
Brandan Vanderpool,
Mathias Verhasselt,
Matias Volkert,
Nelson Wang,
Christopher Y. Yang,
Jae Hyun Yoo,
Fabio Barretta Zungrone
Technology Team:
Brett Achorn,
Michael Beal,
Cameron Chrisman,
Rudy Cortes,
Patrick Dalton,
Jeff Hill,
Slavomir Kaslev,
David Keegan,
Piotrek Krawczyk,
Huong Nguyen,
Chris Rock,
Billy Shih,
Peter Shinners,
Michael Su,
Yun-Chen Sung,
Robert Thomas,
Theresa Wolf
Production Team:
Patricia L. Adams,
Angela Blake,
Tok Braun,
Joshua Burnett,
Leonard Chang,
Eric Davis,
Bejan Fozdar,
Janet Garcia,
Phillip Hillenbrand Jr.,
Kim Kotfis Horn,
Steve McIlwain,
Jennifer Owings,
Jason Michael Smith,
Brandy Stiles
Studio Engineers:
Johann Helgi Agnarsson,
Kenneth Lloyd Ayers III,
Douglas Beal,
Jim Bush,
Sean Laverty,
Ramon Rodriguez III,
Rob Tomson,
Leo Wang
Cinematic Project Directors:
Ben Dai,
Terran Gregory,
Marc Messenger
Cinematic Art Directors:
Jonathan Berube,
Fausto De Martini
Additional Artists:
Tony Alexander,
Anwar R Bey-Taylor,
David Biggs,
Jason Burton,
Andrew D. Carr,
Bryan Chojnowski,
Anthony Eftekhari,
Thomas Siababa Esmeralda,
Huong Grey,
Brian Huang,
Michael Horning,
Chay Johansson,
Ioannis Karathomas,
Jeffrey Kember,
Jae Hyung Kim,
Mike Kramer,
Oliver Lam,
Alan Lee,
Konrad Lightner,
Eric Yi Lin,
Ting Lo,
Joseph Magdalena,
Thomas Mahler,
Hezekiah McMurray,
Alex Murtaza,
Jeremy Nelligan,
Joseph Oh,
Alexadre Oliveira,
Jae Wook Park,
Gabriele Pasqualino,
Ali Seiffouri,
Gauravkumar Shah,
Taylor Smith,
Piotr Swigut,
Cedric Tomacruz,
Dustin Trimble,
Graven Tung,
Rainer Zoettl
Additional Production:
Rie Arai,
Laura B Dahowski,
Tomas Figueroa,
Lauren Gragg,
Bryan Langford,
Taylor Westfall
Additional Art:
Seagulls Fly
Additional Previsualization:
The Third Floor
Supervising Sound Designer:
Paul Menichini
Composers:
Neal Acree, Russell Brower, Glenn Stafford
Sound Design:
David Farmer, Michael Johnson
Foley Artist:
Gregg Barbanell
Foley Mixer:
Lucy Sustar
Cinematic Re-Recording Mixer:
Thomas C. Brewer
Cinematic Sound Editor:
Clinton Jones
Voice of Leah:
Jennifer Hale
Voice of Deckard Cain:
Michael Gough
Casting and Voice Director:
Andrea Toyias
Additional Voice Direction:
Andrea Romano
Sound Design & Editing:
Kyle Webb
Dialogue Supervisor:
David Guerrero (LA Studios)
Dialoge Editors:
John Adair, Ryan Coursey, David Guerrero, Rich Seitz
