Hey all!
There's some incredible work here, awesome job to everyone participating so far! I'm entering as a nice little project to improve my skills as I'm pretty sure any chances of placing in the top pieces is rather out of my league, but here we go!
Pretty late with this - I started a rough idea last month but scrapped that and started a fresh idea today! I wrote up a somewhat lengthy backstory (sorry!) but...
TL;DR
VIKING SHIELDMAIDEN POSSESSED BY HEL, WITH A MIGHTY STEED POSSESSED BY SLEIPNIR (the eight-legged horse and Odin's trusty mount) - ATTACKED BY MINIONS OF CHAOS.
Make sense? No...? Okay, well the story below might make a bit more sense, but I'm no writer so bare with me! (This whole thing makes a lot more sense if you know anything about Norse mythology, which I am merrily butchering for my own ideas, muahahahaha!)
Backstory
My character is Yngvild, a Nordic shield-maiden that just so happens to be possessed by the Norse god Hel - no big deal. Few know how this came to be, but despite the many tales, only Yngvild knows the truth.
One evening many years ago, she was riding to visit a distant friend. She stopped briefly at a lake to let her horse, Njord, quench his thirst. Staring at her reflection in the lake for a few moments, her soul bare to see, a flash from below the water threw her back. This is the moment Hel chose to bestow herself upon Yngvild, hiding in the dark recesses of her mind.
Hel was on the run, having escaped from Valhalla upon Odin's eight-legged steed, Sleipnir. For Surtr, the god of chaos, having destroyed the other gods, had sent minions to destroy Hel, and so she decided to hide in the mortal plane, among humans, or rather IN humans. In possessing Yngvild she could avoid detection, and when Surtr's minions attack, she had one of the most fearsome shield-maidens as her vassal.
Njord, having barely noticed Yngvild's divine experience, barely flinched when Sleipnir, in much the same way as Hel, slipped into his mind. While both of them soon became aware of their predicament, neither were expecting the somewhat aggressive greeting of Surtr's minions...
Art so far! (aka the juicy bit!)
So I've done some (very) messy sketches and thumbnails to get this composition, and I have a huge folder of reference material and purdy inspiration art to get the character and idea stuff refined, but for now I'll leave you with my initial sketch for the main illustration!
I'd really appreciate any feedback or critique or ideas anyone may have, I'm trying to make this my best piece to date so any help will be of great value to me!
I've represented the 8 legs of Sleipnir as 4 extra 'ethereal' legs, might look a bit crazy without any backstory but we shall see!
