Last Gun Under the moon 2022

Last Gun Under the Moon is a stylized, high-energy action illustration set in a moonlit desert, depicting a lone gunslinger making a final stand against a charging horde of night creatures. This piece blends western iconography with supernatural horror, using dramatic lighting, bold silhouettes, and dynamic posing to create a sense of speed and overwhelming danger. Every element—from the rider and his armored horse to the pack of feral, red-eyed monsters—was designed, modeled, rigged, and rendered by me.

My Role

Sole Creator: Responsible for the entire production of the image from concept to final presentation.

Responsibilities:

Concept & Visual Direction

Developed the idea of a supernatural western scene, merging dark fantasy and pulp-adventure aesthetics.
Designed a strong left-to-right motion flow to emphasize speed, pursuit, and imminent danger.
Framed the gunslinger as a lone beacon of light against a sea of shadow-creatures.

Character & Creature Design

Created the gunslinger’s full design including wardrobe, armor, hat silhouette, and weaponry.
Designed the armored horse with glowing facial accents to contrast against the darkness.
Developed the night creatures as agile, predatory humanoids with exaggerated anatomy and glowing red eyes.

Modeling & Sculpting

Sculpted high-poly models for the rider, horse, and all creatures.
Built optimized low-poly versions with clean topology for animation-ready posing.
Modeled environment elements such as desert rock formations, dust, and terrain.

Rigging & Posing

Rigged every character and creature, including quadruped rigs, humanoid rigs, and custom facial controls.
Created dynamic, aggressive poses for the leaping monsters to sell motion and impact.
Positioned the gunslinger and horse in a heroic, defiant stance illuminated by moonlight.

Texturing & Lookdev

Painted stylized textures with emphasis on roughness variation, subsurface scattering, and moonlit specular highlights.
Added glowing emissive elements for both the horse and the creatures to enhance visual contrast.

Lighting & Rendering

Built a dramatic night-time lighting setup with cool moonlight, sharp rim lights, and warm muzzle-flash highlights.
Used atmospheric depth, fog layers, and dust trails to strengthen silhouette readability and scene scale.

Cinematic Composition

Established strong foreground-midground-background depth using value separation and overlapping silhouettes.
Used repetition and staggered placement of creatures to create a sense of overwhelming numbers.
Employed dynamic motion lines and body angles to give the scene a freeze-frame action-shot feel.

Compositing & Final Polish

Color graded for a vibrant but eerie nighttime palette.
Added bloom, glow, dust particles, and motion-blur accents to heighten intensity.
Enhanced rim lighting to guide the viewer’s eye directly to the confrontation.

Software Used

3DS Max, Maya (Rigging and Posing), Corona Renderer, Substance Painter, TopoGun 2, After Effects, Photoshop