Empire Challenges | January 2021

Welcome to The Empire Monthly Challenge!

You are all welcome to stretch your artist legs. Get out of your comfort zone or artist block and unleash your full potential!

There are no winners or prizes, it's all about challenging yourself. The deadline is purely to indicate the start of the next challenge if you need more time to finish that's okay.

Sometimes it can be quite a challenge to capture something well from a distance. And that is exactly what this challenge is about. Capture the village, its surrounding grassy plains, the water, and the looming mountain range. From this shot the sky and its clouds are a major compositional element and what sky and lighting you choose to use can greatly impact the feeling of the image.

Capturing natural and organic shapes and materials well can be some of the hardest things a 3D artist can try. Here we tackle this head on with the aim of really focusing on the details of a few specific things. The log, how it is wet in some areas, how it is discolored on certain areas, how moss grows along it in certain places, how the mushrooms start to grow from it and how small twigs are sprouting up form below it. All these things require close attention to detail when showcased this close!

A tree so old it has grown onto and around itself. So old that no one remembers quite how this happened. It is even rumored to be one of the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse sagas. Recreate this old and flowing tree trunk with all its veins, cracks, and discoloring!

Some places around the world are abundantly rich in mineral diversity and volcanic soil tends to be just that! Sulfur, iron, and different elements gather up in "pockets" in the sand while small remnant volcanic rocks rest on top. Here we want you to recreate one such place with a vibrant variety of minerals in the black sands of Iceland!