— PROJECT NAME
Exodus: From Slaves to Glory – Conceptual Illustration
— ROLE
Conceptual Illustrator
Cover Designer
— DATE
Illustrator
Photoshop
The project required a single piece of key art for the sermon series Exodus: From Slaves to Glory. The core challenge was to encapsulate the entire epic tale in one unified scene, showing both the Israelites' painful past and their destined future. I needed to create a visual that was sophisticated and moody, befitting the grand, epic scope of a novel or film.
The solution was to create a dark, structural illustration that uses visual metaphor and compositional contrast to tell the story:
• The Background: The imposing, stark pyramids represent the Israelites' slavery and oppression.
• The Foreground: The soft, glowing burning bush represents the glory and hope awaiting them in the promised land, guided by God’s presence.
This contrast was designed to evoke the cover art of great novels, underscoring the narrative’s epic scale.
The base illustration was constructed entirely in Adobe Illustrator to ensure clean, scalable vector lines and precise perspective. This structural layer was then brought into Adobe Photoshop where subtle textures, gradients, and atmospheric glow were added to achieve the final moody, tactile quality. This blending of clean vector work and organic texture creates the desired sophisticated, novel-like aesthetic. The dark, limited color palette (deep blacks, grays, and a focus on the single, warm glow) was chosen to establish a strong sense of mood and isolation. The typography using Thermal VF was set to complement the historical theme, designed to feel classic yet contemporary, ensuring the title is the commanding element in the composition.
The conceptual illustration provided a highly effective, non-cliché visual anchor for the sermon series. The sophisticated cover art successfully elevated the series' perceived value, helping to immediately set the tone for the complex, epic narrative being explored.