The Return of the Living Dead – Horror Key Art
THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD — Key Art / Horror Poster
This piece was created as a cinematic horror key image, focusing on atmosphere, material realism, and strong visual hierarchy. The goal was to evoke classic horror poster energy while maintaining modern lighting and rendering fidelity.
The character emerges from an industrial army contamination barrel, coated in viscous, toxic chemical slime. I used controlled specular breakup, subtle subsurface scattering, and color variation to keep the surface organic rather than plastic. Lighting was aimed to balance a toxic green fog with a warm, high-contrast backlight, creating silhouette separation and guiding the viewer’s eye from the face to the reaching hand.
Volumetric fog, rim lighting, and foreground framing were used to enhance depth and scale, while the final typography was designed to integrate with the composition rather than sit on top of it. The distressed, hand-painted title treatment reinforces the grindhouse horror tone and completes the poster-style presentation.
Maybe my favorite of me renders. I like the full tooth smile of TM here
I wanted to capture a bit of strained excitement in this scene
I wanted to give the feeling of part of the moment in this render
test render for poster trying out how far to push dark shadows, material tones, and the dark diffuse of the scene was a challenge
moving work to maya
moving work to maya
moving work to maya
moving work to maya
early diorama renders in zbrush
early diorama renders in zbrush
early diorama renders in zbrush