The Challenge

Member : Nate

Image description
"In that vast shadow once of yore Fingolfin stood: his shield he bore with field of heaven's blue and star of crystal shining pale afar. In overmastering wrath and hate desperate he smote upon that gate, the [Elvish] king, there standing lone, while endless fortresses of stone engulfed the thin clear ringing keen of silver horn on baldric green. His hopeless challenge dauntless cried Fingolfin there: 'Come, open wide, dark king, your ghastly brazen doors! Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors! Come forth, 0 monstrous craven lord, and fight with mine own hand and sword, thou wielder of hosts of banded thralls, thou tyrant teaguered with strong walls, thou foe of Gods and elvish race! I wait thee here. Come! Show thy face!' Then Morgoth came..." J.R.R Tolkien, The Lays of Beleriand

Description of how this image was created
Well, here it is, my first "completed" project! When I saw that the subject was contrast, I imeediatly started thinking of contrasting lighting situations. While light would definitly bring a contrasted image, I wanted a contrasted subject. And what work of fiction has the greatest contrast of characters, of good and evil? Tolkien's Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, of course! Once I had identified my subject, the rest was set out. The gate is a simple mesh, as is the troll, guards, dragon, rocks, ground, and walls. Fingolfin was a MakeHuman mesh. For his armor, I extruded sections on his arm, and the extruded those. Then I startedworking on the particles. There are serveral hundred thousand particles floating around with an extrme alpha to create the misty, dusty, atmosphere. The entire sky is overlayed with about 5,000 thick particles. While the mountain in the front, going back to the right, is a hand created mesh, the one in the back, and the range to the left, were created with a absolutely incredible program called World Builder. Although it can't render, it is much better than Terragen for creating terrain. After I had everything else together, I started to work on the hair, taking full advantege of Blender's new strand redering. Ohh, that hair! The scene altogether took about a half hour to render. The hair took 10 hours! After finishing rendering, I realized that the flame on top of the beacons was not in the image. I quickly rendered the flame, and placed it on the image in Gimp. I hope that doesn't count as overuse. But there it is! Since this is my first image, I would appreciate some feedback. Thanks!

General statistics
No of ratings	:	14
Min. overall rating	:	11 (1 / 5 / 5)
Max. overall rating	:	46 (16 / 20 / 10)
Sum of rating	:	503 / 840
Date uploaded	:	2008-08-16 21:00:28

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	1 : 20 : 161 : 280
Concept	:	5 : 20 : 183 : 280
Technical	:	5 : 20 : 159 : 280
Overall	:	11 : 60 : 503 : 840

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   30-08-2008 I just can't see anything, even in the foreground. The character is 50% plain white, and I don't like to guess everything. There is too much of a contrast for both layers, and we cannot appreciate your picture enough. The artistic looks good though, but the topic has not been really exploited there, or at the expense of major calibration problems. But I can tell you: for a first shot, it's really good! (By the way, what you did for the flames was perfectly legitimate. People often work with multi-pass compositing, as long as all layers are 3D-rendered. What you cannot do is use a painter to patch the technical problems and artifacts.) 2.   28-08-2008 Really liked this image. 3.   27-08-2008 There is certainly contrast here. I like the theme and concept. Unfortunately, I think some of it gets lost in a lack of contrast in the textures. I like Fingolfin. However, he seems a bit too washed out. I understand you're trying to make him "shine" but I think it's a bit too much, or maybe just misapplied. His hair is spectacular, but while the back is well detailed, the side seems to just blur into one big blob. Of course, that could be an artifact of the JPG compression. His opponent looks pretty good as well, and with somewhat better contrast. However, he seems to blend into the background a bit too much, especially the helmet. I'd change the texture either on the wall or the helmet. Actually, I might make the opponent darker altogether, approaching black, with lighter highlights. As for the wall and the other creatures, again, there's not much contrast. I didn't even notice the figure in the background or the dragon. I don't have a problem adding the lights post (though I'd like to see them as part of the render), but I think they're too cheery. Probably a reddish color would be more appropriate. I do like the fog and the mist, and the mountains are pretty good. And the ground looks great; the contrast is just right there. For a first completed image, pretty good, I'd have to say. 4.   27-08-2008 Needs more dramatic lighting. Light the walls more. The dark character is lost in all the darkness. Can barely spot the dragon/whatever in the background. The three torches seem lonely being the only lights. 5.   18-08-2008 I am impressed by the starkness of contrast gained through the use of monochrome colour. As far as technical skills go this demostrates good skills particularly in the detail of the figures and the gate. A nice all round job 6.   18-08-2008 I certainly do like this image and, being a Tolkien fanatic myself, I certainly recognize the mood and atmosphere of the Lay of Beleriand. On the technical side I think the image is too dark (the contrast too strong... ;-)) and I think it would have been improved if the contrast had been a bit more balanced. 7.   17-08-2008 I'm a huge Tolkien fan, so this image appealed to me as a fantasy afficionado. And I am completely jealous of the hair, even if it did take forever to render. But it's so dark. It looks like you spent a lot of time on the image, but I can hardly make out the details, especially when compared with the bright figure in the foreground. It's a shame really, because I'm sure I'd like the scene a lot if I could see it. From what I can tell, the smoke and fog over the mountains turned out well. The bright figure in the left corner has the unfortunate side effect of drawing the eye, making the image feel unbalanced. I wish I could offer more feedback, but sorry, I just can't see it well enough.