Well To Hell – Short Film
Co-Lead Lighting Artist, Lead VFX, Lead Compositing, Lead Rendering Technician, Concept Artist, Modeler, Surfacing Artist
Well To Hell – Full Film
(Unreal Engine 5, Maya 2024, Adobe Substance 3D Painter, Procreate, Adobe After Effects 2025, Nuke 15.4, Flipaclip, Krita, Photoshop 2025, 64 seconds, August 2025-Decemeber 2025)
Well to Hell is a stylized animated short film where the viewer explores a Mexican graveyard before being confronted with the monster that lurks in it’s depths.
This film was created by a team of eight. For this project, I was Co-Lead Lighting Artist, Lead VFX Artist, Lead Compositing Artist, and Lead Rendering Technician. I also worked on concept art, modeling assets and surfacing. This film was made in 2025.
Team: Steve Leal, Liz Marrs, Drew Boullion, Elijah Mendoza, Elijah Whitlock, Emily Gonzalez, Erin Hall
Lighting and Compositing
(Unreal Engine 5, Nuke 15.4, 36 seconds, August 2025-December 2025)
Unreal Engine’s Lumen was used to create the two distinct lighting environments of the film. The film had to go from being dreamy and peaceful to unsettling and off-putting, while still following the film’s style. The lighting has a color change from warm tones to cold tones in the second half. Throughout this film, I worked with another lighting artist, Emily Gonzalez, to create the Master Lighting set-up for the project. I then completed Shot Lighting independently.
Compositing consisted of color grading and adding on secondary camera effects such as depth of field, motion blur, bloom to the firefly VFX, and a haloed glow effect around the Hero Candle Flame. All of these effects were achieved in Nuke 15.4.
2D Visual Effects
(Unreal Engine 5, 36 seconds, August 2025-December 2025)
Unreal Engine’s Niagara was used to achieve the fireflies, fog, and flame VFX in this film. Both the fireflies and fog have custom designed sprites made in Procreate for the explicit intent to be utilized for this film. Both of these VFX systems have Niagara systems and custom materials to work efficiently in the film.
The background flames were created using Unreal Engine Flipbook materials and a Niagara single looping particle system. The flame flickering is a hand-drawn frame by frame animation I created in Procreate at 24 frames per second. I then transferred the animation to Unreal to act as a base for the Niagara system. After this system was finalized, I created blueprints for every candle asset that featured a background flame simulation. This was done to make set dressing more efficient for the layout artists.
Modeling and Surfacing – Gravestones
(Adobe Substance 3D Painter, August 2025-December 2025)
I modeled and surfaced one Hero Gravestone and two Creepy Hero Gravestones for this film. The team made the decision to hand-paint all the hero assets to fit the film’s style.
Concept Art – Gravestones
(Procreate, Varying Sizes, August 2025)
I created a variety of gravestone concept art in the early stages of the film’s development to nail down a look and style for the graveyard. All of the Hero Gravestone designs were handed off to the modeling team to be stylized to fit the film. The background gravestone designs were used for 2D assets and additional models as needed.
Hero Gravestone Concept Art, Procreate, 12″ X 9″
Hero Creepy Gravestone Concept Art, Procreate, 12″ x 9″
Mid Ground Gravestones, Procreate, 12″ x 9″
Background Gravestones, Procreate, 12″ x 9″