the lighting on this is incredible??? i adore your rendering style

Thanks! I don't remember what it was exactly, but I recall I was inspired by a certain impressionistic/almost-pointillism style for this, for no other reason than I wanted to. Though, I think the effect works for a fire-forward piece.

Other part of it is that I totally used the actual model of Firestarter in Blender to pose and approximate a lighting reference, probably! I think I still have that render, somewhere...