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Prompt-A-Thon: [Crossing the Tundra] JUL 17-31
Iruka
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
JULY 17-31
@ElJeffe
Prompt: The Girl and the Caterpillar
Setting: Atop a hill at sunset, overlooking a vast field of wildflowers.
Character: A young girl, lonely, but not quite aware of her loneliness enough to be saddened by it. She comes to the hill every day at sunset in order to sing, which is her one great pleasure.
Creature: A caterpillar, who nestles in the grass at the girl's feet. Unbeknownst to the girl, he comes here every day to hear her sing, for he loves her voice.
Prop: An oak tree, long since split by lightning and yet too stubborn to stop growing. Beneath this tree sit the girl and the caterpillar.
JULY 1-14
@Big Dookie
Prompt: Crossing the Tundra
Setting: A remote outpost in a mid-industrial society, located in the center of an expanse of frozen tundra. It has few residents who barely cling to survival. The tundra covers an area of about 100,000 square kilometers, and those who cross it never return. Some believe paradise awaits on the other side, while others believe it leads the world's end. Though bitterly cold, the tundra is actually considered a desert since there is almost no natural precipitation there. What little water they get comes in the form of snow drifts blown in from the northern winds.
Character: An explorer, commissioned by the royal council to cross the desert tundra and return with information about what actually lies on the other side. He is particularly well suited to handle the extreme climate, both genetically and in the equipment he brings with him.
Creature: A white arctic fox he befriends along the way, whose coat can shift colors as the need arises and who seems unnaturally intelligent.
Prop: A giant skeleton is discovered near the outpost's boundaries. No one knows where it came from, or how long it has been there."
@ElJeffe
Prompt: The Girl and the Caterpillar
Setting: Atop a hill at sunset, overlooking a vast field of wildflowers.
Character: A young girl, lonely, but not quite aware of her loneliness enough to be saddened by it. She comes to the hill every day at sunset in order to sing, which is her one great pleasure.
Creature: A caterpillar, who nestles in the grass at the girl's feet. Unbeknownst to the girl, he comes here every day to hear her sing, for he loves her voice.
Prop: An oak tree, long since split by lightning and yet too stubborn to stop growing. Beneath this tree sit the girl and the caterpillar.
JULY 1-14
@Big Dookie
Prompt: Crossing the Tundra
Setting: A remote outpost in a mid-industrial society, located in the center of an expanse of frozen tundra. It has few residents who barely cling to survival. The tundra covers an area of about 100,000 square kilometers, and those who cross it never return. Some believe paradise awaits on the other side, while others believe it leads the world's end. Though bitterly cold, the tundra is actually considered a desert since there is almost no natural precipitation there. What little water they get comes in the form of snow drifts blown in from the northern winds.
Character: An explorer, commissioned by the royal council to cross the desert tundra and return with information about what actually lies on the other side. He is particularly well suited to handle the extreme climate, both genetically and in the equipment he brings with him.
Creature: A white arctic fox he befriends along the way, whose coat can shift colors as the need arises and who seems unnaturally intelligent.
Prop: A giant skeleton is discovered near the outpost's boundaries. No one knows where it came from, or how long it has been there."
Iruka on
+5
Posts
The Prompts:
Prompt Bank!
Prompt Bank Spreadsheet
Over in the writers block, we have a the prompt bank. Anyone is allowed to add ideas to the bank and they will get added to the spreadsheet. Prompts will be chosen over in the bank thread by our glorious robot overlord via dice roll. Prompts will be chosen bi-weekly.
As you can see, prompts contain one whole setting. You can choose from environment, character, prop, or creature. You may develop one heavily, or do sketches for each.
Rules, Guidelines, and Tips:
-ART MUST BE MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS CHALLENGE
unlike the enrichment thread, you must be making art to the prompt, this is about stepping up to the plate of interpreting instruction. I wont go crazy if you have a thing you just started that 99.9% fits the prompt, but you cannot mush your random 2 year old art in here.
-FOCUS ON THE PROMPT
Some of the prompts will be more vague than others, but you should still be looking to stay true to what the prompt asks. For each category, I have some suggestions on how to approach it:
Environment:
If the prompt is really vague, try for some thumbnails of what different places could look like in the setting.
-Thumbnails
-Color Studies
Character
Try not to focus on making a full illustration. Forget the background and focus on the design and silhouette of your character.
-Character model Sheet (turn arounds, texture call out)
-Expression Sheet/poses
Creature
Again, focus on making the creature and not an illustration, Make iterations of it, and push yourself to come up with good reasons for design choices
-Turn arounds
-Poses/anatomical clarification
Prop
Prop sheets! Prop sheets! Iterate a lot here, don't settle for your first design. You can also make up some props since the prompt bank on calls for one. Stay close to the theme, and think hard about what you are adding and why.
THIS IS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT
For right now, this is not a competition. We don't have a ton of members, and because of that this is not about doing the shiniest illustration so that you win a poll and stand out on top of the pack. This is about working hard and developing the critical skills that are involved with doing actual concept work. If you make a really gorgeous finished work, that's great! But this is just as open to discussing sketches, pondering design choices, and critiquing the art as an effective interpretation of a prompt. I'd rather see a lot people spend a few hours on this, bi-weekly, than only get two crazy finished illustrations each month. Drop you inhibitions, allow yourself to post rough work, and lets really talk about your process of idea making.
RESPECT TO THE WRITERS
First of all, if any of you whine about a "bad" prompt, I will throttle you. Challenge yourself to make everything awesome, even if the source idea is out of your interest, or less detailed than you'd like.
Second of all, If any of you comic/story making types are thinking about running away with an idea and making it into something, all of the writers are credited for their prompts. Please contact them on the forum and make sure that the prompt is not something that they have taken from a personal work and they are cool with you continuing on.
ALRIGHT, Get started!
I was trying to make the explorer vaguely military-like, but I'm not sure if that came through. Also the sihouette isn't very strong.
I wanted to make the character and creature really contrast with each other in terms of personality and appearance, so where the character* is stoic and quiet and graceful, the creature is expressive, talkative and uncanny in terms of movement and looks.
*I know the prompt states outright that the character's a dude but I purposefully tried to made them look like their gender is indeterminate since that kind of adds on to the mystery element too
I wanted the skeleton to look only quasi-human, like the more simian early humans. But now that I think about it it looks too evolved and I should make it more simian but also more animalistic overall so it doesn't look like a point from human evolution but more like an anomaly (aside from also being 50 feet tall), if that makes sense
I included examples of dialogue since I don't know, I'd like to do a short comic based on the prompt since I like to have a means to an end for any designs/concepts I do
I tried to keep the idea of the tundra being a water-less desert and him being appointed by the royal council to go off into the unknown might mean he was a military man, perhaps retired.
I took "mid-industrial" and thought of 20,000 leagues under the sea. I tried to think of technology from that era, a sealed suit connected to a boiler to keep him warm, dragging a boat full of supplies as well as to cross channels
@ElJeffe
Prompt: The Girl and the Caterpillar
Setting: Atop a hill at sunset, overlooking a vast field of wildflowers.
Character: A young girl, lonely, but not quite aware of her loneliness enough to be saddened by it. She comes to the hill every day at sunset in order to sing, which is her one great pleasure.
Creature: A caterpillar, who nestles in the grass at the girl's feet. Unbeknownst to the girl, he comes here every day to hear her sing, for he loves her voice.
Prop: An oak tree, long since split by lightning and yet too stubborn to stop growing. Beneath this tree sit the girl and the caterpillar.
I really like having a set of guidelines to follow, it makes stepping outside my artistic comfort zone much more appealing.
hmmmmm