COLIZEUM FEST. KEY VISUAL, GRAPHIC & CG-VIDEO
COLIZEUM FEST is an esports festival combining a Counter-Strike Major broadcast, a gaming program, and offline activities. The COLIZEUM team invited us to create the visual identity of the festival.
For the project, we developed a visual system, key visual, the main CG film, original characters, stingers, and graphic content for screens. All elements were united by a single concept built around a cybergothic aesthetic and the image of a portal into the world of the big Counter-Strike.
Since the festival’s central event is the broadcast of Major 2026 in Cologne, the visual concept draws on the tournament’s aesthetics and key visual codes. We preserved the connection to Major’s recognizable imagery while reinterpreting it through our own artistic language, blending neo-gothic style, digital aesthetics, and contemporary Counter-Strike culture.
The centerpiece of the project was the CG film for the festival’s opening. We took on the full production cycle: developing the idea and script, building the storyboard, creating scenes and characters, animation, editing, music, and sound design. The story is built as a journey through the space of COLIZEUM FEST toward the portal to Cologne Major 2026.
Key Visual
Before starting work on the film, we developed a cohesive visual system. Since the central event was the Major 2026 broadcast in Cologne, the concept is grounded in the tournament’s aesthetics and key visual codes.
The portal became the central image. In Gothic architecture, the arch symbolizes a transition between spaces — we carried this idea into the contemporary context of the festival.
We developed a signature technique of deconstructing objects into point clouds using TouchDesigner, evoking associations with Counter-Strike and the festival. This technique creates the effect of a digital scan, turning Colizeum Fest into a portal from Moscow to Cologne — from the real world into the game world. The style adapted easily across formats, from digital media to physical merchandise.
Plot
The video’s plot is built on the idea of “anticipatory presence” — a state in which a person is already mentally present at the destination they’re moving toward. The hero travels toward the tournament through a cyber gothic world steeped in Counter-Strike history.
Space
A stylized cybergothic reality combines the scale of a futuristic city with the architecture of a Gothic cathedral. Glowing arches and massive structures rise skyward like skyscrapers, yet are assembled according to the laws of Gothic design.
Characters
The characters, originally created for the opening CG film, later became part of the festival through promotional materials and live cosplay. We brought both characters to life, going through the entire pipeline: from concept and modeling to rigging and motion capture using the Rokoko system.
The girl exists as part of the city’s visual language — appearing fragmentarily in projections, screens, and facades. She becomes a symbol of an unattainable image that leads the hero forward.
The main character’s design incorporates elements of contemporary neo-gothic style, bold accent details, and subtle references to knight’s armor. This makes the character visually expressive, fresh, and current, while maintaining a balance between realism and stylization.
Sound design
We created the music and all sound design from scratch, building it around the story and dramaturgy, and adjusting the audio tracks to match the edit as it evolved throughout the process.
Summary
Our task was to develop the event’s visual concept and create a CG film conveying the scale of the competition and the atmosphere of the community. Over the course of the work, the concept expanded into a full visual system for the event: brand identity, key visual, color system, stingers, and merchandise.
P.MOTION 2026
Art director: Denis Levchenko
Producer: Semion Levchenko, Kirill Galushko
Director: Dima Razdor
Key visual: Denis Levchenko, Liliya Idiliya, Anka Osintseva
CG: Dima Calculator, Anton Khomyak, Bogdan Raetskii, Semion Levchenko, Rosher, Fed, Ivan
Character design: Andrei Laliett
Sound design: Earbleedteam
PM: Nika Zhusueva