The Blade in Blue Sapphire

[pratik1213]

Hi Tantriks,

Its been a long time… I am back with my version of Sword in stone.
I have thought of an unconventional theme with a different
story behind it. I observed that not many guys took the complete freedom
thinking of a different story and concept. However I have used that
liberty and came up with my concept with a story which goes as below
(with a few supporting images -all mouse painted).


Story:

Ages ago when man was more spiritual than intellectual, people of a
secret cult possessed a sword with mystical powers which was made t
o protect humanity from evil forces. They magically left it embedded
into a giant blue sapphire stone so that no man could misuse its powers.

http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/7729/cultcopykx3.jpg

The sword had a hole in its hilt which they termed it as ‘The Eye of
the Sword’ and prophesied that the sword would open its eye to a new door
when the human race was at stake.
http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/7631/swordcopyor2.jpg

As ages passed man became more intellectual and scientific and the
prophecy of the sword became a myth .The Sword ended up as a
monument in a cathedral where people came to admire its beauty in
awe and wondered how it was made to enter the gem stone.


But as fate would have it, one day a great evil struck the earth.
The skies went dark and sunlight never reached the earth for months. Diseases plagued humanity.
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/264/citycopyjg1.jpg
All efforts of the contemporary priests to exorcise the evil went in vain.
Then an old priest emerged, who was never seen before, with a scripture
of the Mystical sword. With his directions the scientists worked
On the sword to discover that the eye of the sword has strange energy
fields. They discovered that the Eye had the potential to generate a
worm hole.
http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/6385/portalcopype1.jpg


The scientists then engineer a portal out of it through which they travel
to the past and then bring the priests, who held powers great enough, to
the present and exorcise the evil.

This is the final Image for the Challenge:

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/6893/saiomomja0.png

A larger sized image: http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=saiomrv2.png

All images are mouse painted. I choose the scene for the finale image as
I thought that blend of ancient art and modern technology would
be interesting. That’s why I choose the background of a cathedral
(inspired from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel). The initial concept was sketched in pencil (The portal stuff) and and for the cathedral I quickly
did some water color on paper and scanned as it is very difficult to paint
the roof and architectural details with a mouse.
http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/9536/sketchqx8.jpg

http://img489.imageshack.us/img489/1673/cathedralgk8.jpg

Then I made a composite layer and started painting in Photoshop.
(http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?image=arrangedeg1.jpg)
All the portal machinery was shaded with pencil and I used gaussian blur and smudge tool carefully to smooth out the texture the pencil shading generates to give a smooth gradient. Phew ….it was tedious.

The design of the portal was inspired for Jet engines references.
[IMG]http://img372.imageshack.us/img372/8504/rocketengines5722br9.th.jpg (http://img372.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rocketengines5722br9.jpg)

BTW …I think I got very techy with terms in the story and just to make a
few terms clear for guys who are not that familiar with the scientific sh*t …..
*A WORMHOLE is a very minute hole (found in atoms) which crazy guys(scientists) think can
become an opening to an other place in another time(parallel universe
they call it).
*Portal is a gate (not a web site BTW) or a thing which can transfer something from one place to another.

I have a lot of other ideas too….but very time consuming and diff it is to
paint this way. I think with a lil bit of lateral thinking we can make totally
diff concepts. But I wonder why not many have done so.

Hey Do any of u guys have trouble in posting replies or threads?....then do contact the
admin and get the prob fixed soon...coz it took a lot of time for account to get fixed. I
wud have posted early but it got fixed today. Thanx Gokul.

Hope u guys like it. Comments and suggestions .......are mandatory !!! :-D

- Pratik

PS : Thanx to my colleaques for encouraging me & Shyam Sriram for lending his art materials and scanning my sketches

[Designer_ranjeet]

nice work dude.

[sONIC]

Wow man those images are beautiful and really do the story justice. Also nice compositions and camera angle and lighting. Great going. But do u really think this story is unconventional or rather the image? I mean the sword and the stone remain the sword and the stone and present no higher meaning and in the end it comes out as a decorated sword in a decorated stone.Even the time portal concept has been over exhausted by many writers and filmakers(not in india ofcourse).Timeline(novel)and the recent movie Deja vu to name a few. But anyway the story has been represented nicely.

[anne]

OHHH Mann ...thts a lotta thinking and study in here!! GR8 Drawings and story...but somewhr i feel your focus is shifted more on the cathedral and the bg ...and i cant take my eyes off them to find the sword and the sphere...
In the whole final image a very tiny portion for the important objects of this topic...?
But in all the story rocks and gr8 effort !! :)

[pratik1213]

@ Sonic.
Thanx dude for the reply. What i meant by unconventional is that ....i didnt aim towards any prince charming coming to pull the sword out or any thing similar. I think mine is a lil bit diff as it has this scientific flavour to it rather than the usual idea. But the sword and stone remain the same....as u cant change em coz they are the essential part of this theme. I guess i cant change that or else the concept gets irrelevant and wont fit into this challenge.

@anne.
Glad u liked my post. I totally agree with u....the background is catching a lot of attention....i posted one with a bit dark bckgnd....but then changed the contrast and brightness when one of my frnd suggested to do so. But i think ill edit my post with original one

[sONIC]

yeah ofcourse i got ur point. but i am just saying that the sword has been conventionally represented in ur final image. If u seen the conventional pictures of sword in the stone in the post telling the rules and regulations u will notice that everything has the sword and stone in common except the background. The emphasis here was to represent the Sword and the Stone in a different way and not the back ground or the story.

[rayn]

nice effect, good work. i thinks sword is not given most important in the image as per ur concept. rather then sword the background looks gr8. any way looks good.

[luv2animate]

kick ass work n research!!!u can write a book i think!!!
clap:clap:clap:

[pratik1213]

@ Sonic : Hmmmmm......I dont quite think so.

@Glad u liked my concept. And bout that book thing...lol...I cud never even dream of writing. My literary skills are very bad.

[pratik1213]

Hey Tantriks,
My frnd in my office was kind enough to lend me his tablet for a day.....and I had been working on another concept . I didnt like it quite so i didnt post it....But since i have a tablet now...i thought id quickly do a rough finish and post it.....just for the sake of it.


I didnt dig in a good story for this but.....may say that may be a few explorers found a sword on a cliff and later discovered it was receiving radio wave signals of some kind.....So they build a dish around it and the sword shows a celestial map of extraterrestrial life forms existing in other galaxies.

http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/2280/concept2jd1.png

This is the part all done in mouse....later i worked on it with a tablet.
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/1109/mousewipva3.jpg

However i dont wish to enter this one for the competition.

Thanks Vinayak and Pawar for lending your tablet.

Pratik

[sriram]

Great concept dude,good luck :)

[gauravmathur]

wow!! excellent..