Welcome
to challenge number 212. Remember to cast your vote in the last weekly
while it's still open. Please feel free to offer suggestions for future
challenges themes (see link below) before the spammers fill it up.
Brief:
Paint
an atmospheric environmental scene depicting the fabled sword in the
stone for a feature film based on the story of King Arthur.
Deadline:
Midnight (GMT) on Wednesday 26th January
(this is Wednesday night, Thursday morning for those that need
clarification). There is a 5 minute grace period allowing people to get
their posts and links sorted. A moderator will then post a list of valid
entries after checking links and voting will begin until the following
midnight. Crits are welcomed during the voting process.
Post all comments, crits, bad puns, and all
WIPs (required for entry) in this thread. All finished entries should be posted in the finals thread:
A
minimum of 2 WIPs are required in addition to your final entry. Links
to these should be posted along with your final entry in the finals
thread. A link is provided below to details of how to do this. You may
be disqualified if you do not post WIP links correctly.
All
artwork must be the work of the entrant, and completed within the time
frame of the challenge. You may only enter 1 entry per challenge, and
may only cast 1 set of votes during voting.
Please keep
entries and WIPs below 500k and a maximum of 1000 pixels across. Larger
files causes problems for all users, especially those on slower
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Moderators monitor the voting in these
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I love the scene in Boorman's Excalibur when Arthur frees the sword from the stone so casually, almost incidentally, and his father looks mortified for a moment and tells him, "You must put it back!" :D
Looks like another awesome weekly, what do you guys think a,b or c?
Nice sketches so far Guang.
A. I think you might run into the same problem I'm having with this one. Trying to get the scale right but then somehow get a tiny little sword in there as well.
B. I like this one, you could really push the scale and atmosphere to give it a feeling of an epic journey up to the sword.
C. I like this one as well. Again you could really push the scale with the background without losing the sword. I think atmosphere and mood will be key to creating an interesting image here.
I'll give this a crack. This will be my first attemp in nearly 20 years, so please help by critiquing my work, I really want to nail this digital media hopefully within the next 2 years. Been practicing with Poser Master 90sec sletches this past week to get the feel for anatomy again, I am afraid I may still be stuck in the old-school 80s Marvel way.
Changed my concept, going to try this forest setting.
Thanks for that link, paper-dreams! I read that this morning over coffee and had some thoughts:
I was also just reading through the outline of how the Arthur legends evolved and how much they've changed... amazing stuff, but it's also compelling how we still have the legends alive, and nearly everyone knows at least something about them.
As for the art side, I know there were no suits of plate armour in the 5th century, for instance, but I was researching swords and I was surprised by what that turned up as well. The kind of swords people probably typically imagine for Excalibur (myself included) simply didn't exist at that time.
I end up with this dilemma one can get with these subjects: if I go "period correct", there's a good chance that many people won't even get what the hell it's supposed to be about. :D
However, there's two things that make it easier: first, there are no "hard facts" about Arthur to draw from, or any concrete proof that he even existed - which gives us all stacks of leeway. Secondly, this is for a movie poster, and I think one can safely assume that a movie will be taking many liberties for the purposes of storytelling (like Boorman's Excalibur does). Even 2004's supposedly "historical" King Arthur was pulling stuff out of thin air.
One last thought I had is that, since Excalibur is given by the Lady of the Lake, it's sort of technically outside history, being magical and all... so one can probably get away with a lot more and have more fun painting it.
I think this challenge is a case where romanticising the whole thing actually better serves the brief!
edit: It's not concept art for a movie poster, just concept art for a movie. My mistake, sorry!
Dave, I love both Excaluibur and King Arthur films they are in my DVD collection. I agree about how to interpret the legend, but am hoping to go with a more realistic approach. Outside of a glowing sword I always felt Arthur was humble and peasantish before he attained Excalibur. Also most plate armor was cermonial and extremely rare, chain, banded, padded-studded leather were most common during those times. I think Braveheart got majority of it right when it came to armor portayal in film. Another good film I saw recently, Arn-Knight Templar has some good interpretations or mideival period armor.
Nope. It was meant to be an environmental concept painting for the location of the sword in the stone. Either I wrote the brief badly, or people didn't read it.
Guang:
