Philip Straub Studio
Passion. Creativity. Vision. Strategy.
Art Director | Creative Director | Author | Builder of Worlds, Brands & Teams
With a portfolio spanning AAA games, original IP, dozens of licensed products, and 30+ children’s books, Philip Straub’s work blends emotional depth with production clarity. From Shadow of Mordor, The Maze Runner, Magic the Gathering to the award winning Utherworlds, Philip creates immersive worlds and characters that resonate across genre, audience, and medium.
Philip Straub offers clients and partners a rare mix of Art Direction, Creative Direction, artistic vision, strategic thinking, and scalable storytelling — from concept to execution.
Project: Utherworlds Short Film
Utherworlds is a cinematic origin story that bridges art, emotion, and myth. It follows Lucas Sellers, an artist consumed by loss, who is drawn into a world shaped by the thoughts and emotions of all sentient beings — a realm where beauty and terror intertwine, and every feeling has form.
This short film reimagines the Utherworlds mythology introduced in the illustrated novel, revealing the moment Lucas first crosses into this living landscape of dream and memory. Built through months of visual and emotional experimentation, it blends traditional art direction, worldbuilding, and cutting-edge AI filmmaking into a single creative process.
Each frame began as a painting — expanded, animated, and reshaped through emerging technologies — evolving painterly composition into cinematic motion. The result is both familiar and strange: a meditation on grief, imagination, and the power of creation itself.
Utherworlds is not just a story about entering another world — it’s a reflection on how the worlds within us come alive...
Project: Emergence - Living Portrait
Emergence is part of the Living Portraits series — cinematic interpretations of transformation and the human condition by artist and world-builder Philip Straub.
Each piece begins as an original digital painting, then evolves through AI-assisted filmmaking into motion and emotion — exploring what it means to awaken, to face the storm, and to rise.
The lyrics were written years ago for an acoustic guitar song by Philip Straub, reimagined here as a visual meditation on self-evolution and inner rebirth.
Created entirely using Veo 3.1’s Extend tool, with every frame expanding from the original painting.
🎥 Watch more from the Living Portraits series:
https://www.youtube.com/@PhilipStraubCreative/playlists
Project: Velocity of Vision
Velocity of Vision is a kinetic visual study of sci-fi cityscapes — a short film that transforms painted environments into living, breathing worlds. Using high-speed cinematography techniques, the camera glides through neon-lit skylines, layered architectures, and vast technological vistas, capturing every luminous detail with hypnotic precision. The result is an immersive, atmospheric experience that invites the viewer to feel the pulse of speculative futures — not just as paintings, but as places alive with motion, mood, and possibility.
Project: Shadow of War CG Story Trailer
Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Story Trailer Art Direction
Philip provided art and creative direction for the Shadow of War story trailer in collaboration with the internal Monolith team and Blur Studios, helping shape the cinematic tone, visual style, and narrative impact of the piece. Philip’s role included guiding character design, mood, lighting, and environmental aesthetics to ensure consistency with the game’s art direction.