Watchers of the Ember Horizon 2020

Watchers of the Ember Horizon is a stylized key-art illustration featuring two main characters from my personal world building project. The piece captures a dramatic moment against a glowing, ember-lit horizon, emphasizing the contrast, presence, and personality of the two heroes. Created as a promotional-style artwork, it combines sci-fi, fantasy, and stylized realism into a single cinematic composition.

My Role

Responsible for all aspects of the project, from modeling and rigging to animation, rendering, and post-production.

Responsibilities:

Concept & Character Development: Designed the visual identity, costuming, shapes, and personalities of both characters.
Modeling & Sculpting: Created the two main characters along with all props, the creature, and environmental elements featured in the scene.
Retopology & UVs: Built clean, efficient topology and organized UVs for accurate shading, deformation, and material detail.
Stylized Texturing & Lookdev: Developed all materials—including skin, armor, fabrics, metallic surfaces, and creature scales—to achieve a polished stylized aesthetic.
Lighting & Rendering: Designed dramatic lighting to enhance silhouette readability and mood, and rendered the final image using Marmoset Toolbag 3.
Environment & Set Dressing: Modeled and textured the rocky base and supporting scene elements to ground the characters in a cohesive world.
Graphic Design Elements: Created the poster-style layout, text, silhouettes, and branding elements incorporated into the composition.
Compositing & Final Polish: Composited the rendered passes, added color grading, glow accents, atmosphere, and final stylistic enhancements for a high-impact key-art result.