Bonfire Lit

A recreation of the iconic bonfire, inspired from the Dark Souls series. The coiled sword at the center of the bonfire is the firelink greatsword, wielded by the Soul of Cinder in Dark Souls 3. This scene took me about 40 hours of work to make, i tried my best to recreate the ambiance of the game, thats why the lighting is very dark, like it would be in the abyss.
I came up with 2 versions:
One directly hand painted in ZBrush and rendered with a framer effect (which resulted in a nice 2D effect in my opinion). I added the "Bonfire Lit" text annoucement for the veterans.
The other one was made in Substance using the vcolor base from ZBrush and then Improved and textured with a more realistic look (closer to the ingame design).
The emmissive gradient on the coiled sword part is what gave me the most trouble since i had to recreate this sensation of extreme heat on the tip gradually decreasing allong the base of the coiled blade, but i am quite happy with the result.