This is pretty awesome material, and leaves a lot of room for later animation-rigging. Also it would have pretty much the proportions I'd need. (the whole work would serve as a texture inside a hollow sphere for camera panning. Things that would be too far on the upper or lower side would be distorted by the current method.)
i hope to rernder it tomorrow at a larger size, but we'll see what happens in the after editing. also it should be tilted a bit more per your sketch. i'll just rtender it +2x and then tilt and crop it.