valve / lost cosmonauts
valve corporation
environment – 2.5 matte painting background
All the battlefield’s a stage, and Ringmaster is a gleeful director. Controlling fights with a showman’s flair, Ringmaster tames enemies with his fearsome whip and endless knives, ushers allies away from danger with his cunning escape act, and always draws a crowd to unwillingly witness the wonders of his mesmerizing wheel.
For Valve, we created a stylized vista environment at the peak of the theatrical moment of the cinematic. The landscape and still camera had to emphasize the animation rhythm and the action of the main character. We obviously had to fit into this stylized Dota2 universe and explored their style on a much wider scale. From an art direction stand point, our main interest was the balance between realism and stylization. This being a one off, we also had to be in line with the close up shots from the rest of the sequence for the audience to buy off on the context.
We mainly worked with a realistic lighting setup within Unreal Engine 5 and focused our stylization work on the shape of main assets such as trees and clouds.
