Metroid Dread

So I know I'm really late to the Metroid Dread hype train, but I am so excited for this game and I really wanted to do something for it. I based this scene off of the box art for the game but I added some other staple villains from the series in place of multiple EMMIs. I also did a bit of custom work on the Samus model from Smash Ultimate to make her look more like how she appears in Dread. Aside from the obvious texture edits, I did a few changes to her visor as well.

When it came to setting this whole scene up. I actually had to render it twice. The first render was the background in a much darker lighting to give it that ominous shadowy look with mostly just the highlights showing through. Then the second render of just Samus with the full lighting. It was tricky trying to get the lighting to look good for each of them without being too bright. I wanted to keep it dark to fit with the sense of "dread" that the original art has. Another tricky part of this was that I had to use the official render image of the EMMI since obviously no models for it are available yet. It was tough trying to position it right to look like it's actually in the scene but the darker background really helped with that.  As for Ridley and the Metroid, those are both models from Smash Ultimate as well.

In Photoshop, I added the red tint to the background and a vignette. I also added the red tint around the edges of Samus to help her blend in with the background more. I also had to adjust the bloom lighting on Samus a bit.