[WIP] Sword in the Stone / Excalibur

shinobix

Hey all,
Getting a start on an environment piece that has been nagging me in the back of my brain for a while.
A while ago, I watched the movie Excalibur and it got me thinking about fantasy, swords, temples etc. Then I got hooked on Dragon Age for a while... And wanted to start making a fantasy piece even more so.

So here's what I've got so far. Its still VERY early in its stages, and I'm not working off of any ref for it. I'm just having some creative fun with the whole thing.

I'm thinking a hidden shrine / temple in a cavern, and the shrine houses the legendary Excalibur.

Seeing as how I'm not using any ref, and just having fun with it, I'll let you know the two things that I know about this project and how I would like to move forward. 1: I'm going to use photoreal textures and lighting, and 2: I'm totally open for you guys to crit, comment, and hell even do some paint overs of what you think would look cool

Anyhoo, enough blah blee blah from me. Here's a quick render of what I've got goin on so far



And yes, that's the character mesh from Unreal (Thanks Epic!!) and I do plan on finishing this off in UDK.

Steve Schulze

Looks like you're off to a solid start.

I'm not too up on my Gaelic and classical English mythologies, but I'm thinking if you didn't mind taking a few steps back, whether you might consider gping with a more ancient English looking building. What you have at this point is looking nice, but the influence seems to be primarily Greek.

If you feel inclined, I'd suggest taking a look at some celtic buildings and artifacts - Menhirs and Stonehenge and the like. Looking at some medieval architecture might also be worthwhile but I'd think you'd probably want to make it look like it'd been around since before Arthur's crew turned up.

There's also the Sidhe or faery element (not often I get to use my studios name in an actual sentence. Again, I'm not really sure how it all fits together, but the lady of the lake has something to do with the sword so you've got a link to a bunch of mythological stuff, notably elves and fairys and that kind of fey malarkey which could have some interesting possibilities when it came to architecture.

All that said though, what you've got is looking quite nice. If you're happy with the direction then that's all that really matters.

JO420

You know the sword in the stone and excalibur are not the same? excalibur Aurthur gets from the lady in the lake.

THE 5

Doesn't Athur put the sword into the stone afterwards?

Ark

Excalibur and the Sword in the Stone are two different swords. Excalibur was thrown back into the lake.

shinobix

Wow, okay so apparently there's a bunch that I didn't know about The sword in the stone / Excalibur!

Jackablade: Thanks for the advice and input. I'll definitely take that to heart. I was working with no reference (mainly because my computer wasn't online at the time I started this). I think you're right though, I should step back a bit and re-define the architecture a little bit so that it does have some of the English look to it. At the same time though, I'm not really wanting this to be grounded in historical accuracies as well. But yeah, I do agree with what you've noted, and thanks!

JO420: I had no idea that Excalibur and the sword in the stone were seperate!? So, Hollywood has misguided me???

THE 5: I thought he pulled the sword out, and became king?

Ark: Lake... Lady in the lake... You got me thinking of something now... I sense a re-design coming!!

Thanks for the input / feedback. Tonight I'll try some variations!

Cheers!

JasonLavoie

You make my loins feel very warm Andrew... very warm!

oobersli

Although there are some old tales where they are the same, the general theme has it that the original blade *sword in the stone* was damaged in battle and merlin was afraid that Arthur would be hurt so he found a blade that could protect him. The scabbard actually is what would prevent him from "bleeding" I think. But the blade was unbreakable. Its been a while since I've read up on the stuff so i could be off.

anyways, scene has some potential. do some more research on the sword. Maybe add some druidic elements to it or bang up those pillars some so they don't look so perty and perfect.

mkandersson

Looks great! Looking forward to see more. Keep up the good work!

shinobix

Haha, Mr JasonLavoie, I'm glad I make your loins all warm

oobersli: I really think that I'm going to have a nice romantic date with Wikipedia this evening. What you say though sounds a lot like the myth that I had in my brain.
As for damage and stuff, oh don't you worry about that! I fully plan on making this scene all worn down and aged. Last night I was watching some videos on old German WWII bunkers, and the amount of moss that was growing on them was very inspirational and gave me a lot of good ideas as to how I want to approach this.
I might scribble some ideas down later today and re-think a bunch of things.

How do you guys feel about that star pattern thingy on the floor? I'm not sure I'm buyin into it yet or not...

mkandersson: Thanks man, I can't wait to bring this stuff into zbrush and really have fun with it!!

shinobix

Hey All,
Got pretty busy the past few days at work. While in the midst of exporting stuff, I got to doodling a really quick sketch of what I'm thinking for the Stone/Sword piece.



Gonna start on it tonight.

Also I've been thinking about the feedback I've gotten so far, and its really made me re-think where I want to take this. So, I'll throw some greybox stuff up in a bit

Cheers!

ıomeen

Nice, but how are you supposed to pull that thing out of the stone?

shinobix

Haha, my buddy ts_falcon was asking me the same thing

Its just a bad perspective on my part, its going to be a wee tad further out from the stone than what the image looks like.