ART WAR 4 | 2D | War of the Elements | The Amethyst Consul | philip.m.hutchinson

I was inspired by the brief to come out of my comfort zone and try my hand at a larger, more chaotic piece, which offered the opportunity to try and merge a large battle scene with that of a more standard character concept and render.

Current stage

As stated prior I wanted to bring the war into ArtWar and portray two fantasy armies clashing in battle, supported by a masters of the elements that could turn the tide of battle. For my narrative to hold some logic the extent of these powers must be constrained, for if these elemental champions could wipe out an army with a flick of their wrist, there would only be duels between elementalists and no place in war for the common folk. My answer to this I settled on was a champion that could animate elementals of their faction. Not only did this reinforce my initial idea of massed troops, but could also help distinguish the champion in a crowd.

The question of attacking or defending could be leaned in to heavily from either side of a siege or city fight. I liked the potential of expanding on the champions culture through their peoples architecture, so decided on depicting the champion defending in a city or town. Whilst there was temptation to subvert expectation, I decided to take the safer rout and depict those of the earth faction defending and suggest they were being attacked by a fire faction. To further make the champion stand out I decided to make them a human fighting orcs, so there was an instantly perceived good guy vs bad guys and fantasy dynamics.

The more creative characters designs were the earth elementals, and as I had the initial idea form them from large geodes and incorporate geometric metal crystals in to the joints, I decided to concept these first.

I felt the design came together well with a strong organic shape with good variation between big and small body sections. The geodes gave a sense of more magical yet fragile insides, and gave a good variance in colour and texture. I wanted to have a face without eyes to suggest that these are not independent beings, but are bound to and depend on the one who summoned them.

I was happy with the way I incorporate the faction emblem into the golems with gold inlayed on a shield-arm , and wanted to incorporate similar geometric gold trim in to the building in the final piece to tie them together. This golem reminded me somewhat of roman soldier whose most iconic equipment are their shields so I decided to experiment with a Greco-Roman theme. Fantasy Romans are a fairly novel concept, so I decided to explore this further with the champion design.

For the champion I wanted to portray a stern and authoritative figure past their prime, but not a stereotypical aged wizard nor a frontline warrior, but more of a leader. I was happy with the toga and some of the smaller hexagon iconography, but wanted to slim down the one on the chest to less of a WWE belt. I was debating making the hammer haft out of organic looking crystal but ultimately removed it to reinforce the supportive role concept.
In hindsight I would have spent more time on this stage, as while the design is fairly bold, it lacks good shape language and a good balance between intricate and plain surfaces.

For the belligerents I toyed with the idea of a tribal group of orcs that followed a flame shaman who all had tribal fire tattoos and wore lots of slightly burnt hides, bones, feathers and other tribal iconography. However I ultimately decided giving too much personality to the attacking faction may confuse the viewer to which side I was supporting, so settled with drab fantasy orcs.

These are some the less messy thumbnails. I experimented with having two elementalists facing off in a larger conflict, but I felt this was not following the initial brief closely enough, and would be unclear which was the desired champion. I decided on the top right one as I liked the triangular composition that focused on the champion, however during the painting process would ultimately change the perspective of the background.