Doom artist shares terrifying creature design models

Greg Punchatz, an artist for the Doom series, has recently been uploading photos of his modeling work for the game to his personal Facebook account. The images include those of actual sculptures based on creatures in the classic first-person shooter franchise — and they are, in a word, disturbing.

Doom's cast of characters aren't the most attractive, which makes sense, considering they're largely demons. Punchatz revisited the monsters of Doom 64 specifically in several of his more recent uploads. The Nintendo 64 spinoff, developed by Midway Games and supervised by series creator id Software, featured creatures like the mech-wearing Cyberdemon and a slew of other fleshy, scary monsters. It was also the first game in the series to utilize CGI creatures, according to the artist, as opposed to stop-motion like the first two Doom releases.

Punchatz worked not just in the game industry — he was hired on by id Software to model characters for other Doom games, too — but in Hollywood. He designed similarly unnerving characters for films like A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 and RoboCop.

Doom, however, was a family affair for the artist; his father, Don Ivan Punchatz, designed the original Doom's cover art.

You can see the whole series of photos, which Punchatz has been uploading publicly since last week, on the artist's Facebook page.

It's the latest Facebook post steeped in Doom nostalgia — last week, series creator John Romero shared a free download of his first new Doom level in 21 years on his own Facebook profile.

The newest Doom title will launch later this year on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.