Target shots
The key art rendered by the real game client, the concept sheets its models were built from, how close the engine has come, and where each shot sits in the climb, from the deep to a proposed shot of heaven.
Art in progressA target shot is a painting the real client has to reproduce: same camera, same horde, same budget. Each one fixes a register of the art direction in the engine, and every later shot is judged against it. Each has its own page with the full spec.
Where the shots sit in the climb
The shots were specified while the journey still went down, and they keep that story's places. Their registers still hold for the climb (see the visual identity).
Proposal
| Shot | Register | Where in the climb |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ember in the Flood | The deep: ember-noir | A flooded hall under the Drowned Coast: the last of the dark, where the climb comes up out of the deep into the drowned world |
| 2. Dusk in the Vale | The world between: Romantic landscape | The Vale, the last warm place, where the ascent sets out |
| 3. The Keeper of the Gate | Heaven: white ink | The court before heaven's gate, the climb's last fight |
The endgame's register, the world's colours with heaven's white on what a faction holds, has no shot yet; a faction-held region would be the fourth.
Shot 1: Ember in the Flood
The game's own key art, rendered by the game. A party of four fallen holds a pool of warm light in a flooded hall of the Sunken Reach, on the Drowned Coast, while a drowned horde presses in from the dark. It is the deep-register reference: about 80% of the frame in the two darkest values, the party's ember light the one warm pool, and one cold shaft from a break in the ceiling. Spec approved by Alex on 24 October 2026; models built with scripted Blender.
Art in progressArt in progress
Art in progress
Art in progressVersion 2 is close to the key art's darkness but still a little bright, and costs a few percent
of frame rate, still far above any frame budget. What would close the gap most: the fallen are
still small and soft next to the painted heroes, and nothing is animated yet. The spec, the
measurements and the gaps are on its page, and the frame-rate cost
in docs/performance.md.
Concept sheets
Painted model sheets for shot 1, generated with design/tools/imagegen.py from the key art and
the art direction. Each is a production reference for a low-poly model seen from the game's high
three-quarter camera, at 40 to 70 pixels tall in a horde, so the silhouette matters more than any
detail. The prompts are in design/target-shots/concept/1/prompts/.
Art in progress
Art in progress
Art in progress
Art in progress
Art in progress
Art in progressNext: Dusk in the Vale
Proposal
Shot 2 would fix the daylit register: a golden afternoon in the Vale of Velmarch, with sea fog creeping up the low fields. Its spec is proposed on its own page.
Then: heaven
Proposal
Shot 3 would fix heaven: four fallen on the white court before heaven's gate, the keeper of the gate and his white dead closing in, the embers the only colour. Its spec and its painting, from the game's own camera, are proposed on its own page.
Art in progress