Sheherazade — Hybrid AI-Assisted Marketing Key Visual

Sheherazade — Hybrid AI-Assisted Marketing Key Visual

Sheherazade is a personal key visual exploration combining digital painting, matte painting, compositing, branding, and AI-assisted visual development workflows. The project was designed as a hybrid production pipeline exploring how AI-assisted tools can accelerate specific stages of image production while preserving artistic direction, compositing control, and manual environment assembly.

The character pipeline began with an original rough digital painting used to establish silhouette, pose, costume direction, composition, and mood. AI-assisted tools were then used specifically to:

- Refine and polish the character render,
- Generate render-like passes od the character,
- Explore lighting variations and material responses.

The final character integration, lighting adjustments, color harmonization, compositing, and paint-over refinements were manually directed and adjusted throughout the production process.

All environment assembly, matte painting, landscape reconstruction, atmospheric integration, composition adjustments, branding, and final marketing presentation were created manually through digital compositing and paint-over workflows.

The objective of the project was not to generate a final image entirely through AI, but rather to explore a directed hybrid workflow inspired by modern entertainment marketing pipelines, where multiple tools and techniques are combined to produce cinematic key visuals efficiently while maintaining strong artistic control.

PROCESS BREAKDOWN

01 ) Base Rough Digital Painting
A rough digital painting was created to establish the character silhouette, costume direction, composition, and overall mood of the image. This painting served as the visual foundation and artistic guide for all subsequent explorations.
02) AI-Assisted Character Polish & Exploration
AI-assisted workflows were used to refine the original rough painting, explore character rendering possibilities, generate lighting variations, and create render-like passes for material and lighting exploration while preserving the original artistic direction.
03) Manual Character Integration & Paint-Over
The selected AI-assisted results were manually composited, adjusted, repainted, and harmonized through paint-over workflows. Lighting, color balance, edge treatment, and atmospheric integration were refined manually to better integrate the character into the scene.
04) Matte Painting & Environment Assembly
The environment was manually assembled using matte painting, photobashing, compositing, and paint-over techniques. Landscape forms, spatial depth, atmospheric perspective, and environmental storytelling were adjusted by hand to support the final composition.
05) Atmospheric Harmonization & Final Image Polish
Additional compositing and paint-over passes were used to unify the full image through color harmonization, contrast balancing, atmospheric perspective, and cinematic lighting adjustments.
06) Branding & Marketing Presentation
The final stage focused on transforming the illustration into a complete entertainment-style key visual through branding integration, typography, layout adjustments, and final presentation polish inspired by game and publishing marketing artwork.