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 up that's okay.
Modifiers are optional rules for the challenge that allow you to push your skills even further!
Environment Challenge - Design Focus
Emperor Maru's playroom
Design a playroom worthy of the goodest boy!
You set the style (stylised/realistic), time period and space. Is it ancient Japan? Modern day Europe? A spaceship? What makes more sense and sounds the most fun to you? You choose!
Have fun imagining how a room's layout would be designed to suit a dog, where would he sleep, what kinds of objects and lighting would there be? How is it decorated? Ask yourself tons of questions and build a world logic that answers them.
-These images are NOT concepts or references, just some inspiration.
-Build some implied history and internal world logic before designing and then going for it.
-It's an interior space, a room in a palace/castle/manor/elegant place
-Set a time period, place (fictional or not) and style
-Build yourself a nice moodboard by throwing in inspiration, filtering and organising it.
-Do some rough layout work to see how the space and metrics work in 3D.
-Have fun!
Remember, it needs to feel like an emperor's place, with a fun twist!
Prop Challenge - Sculpting Focus
Archaeology
You carefully plant your pickaxe in the dirt, wiggle it around and... -"BY MARU!" It's an early artifact belonging to the greatest empire that has ever been, the DiNusty Empire.
Create a just-unearthed ancient relic, fossil or similar, that has to do with the Empire.
Is it a statue, some ancient art, maybe architecture? Include it in its surroundings, such as patch of dirt, earth strata, rock, etc.
Ask yourself questions regarding where in the world this discovery has happened and how old it is so it's easier to find reference and nail the type of geology and weathering the relic should have.
Explore how to leverage different techniques and sources of data to pull this off: Can you do part scan data, part sculpted? Are you going for a stylised look done with poly modeling? The choice is all yours!
Substance Challenge - Material Focus
Empire currency
Envision what the empire currency would be like and have a stab at making a material out of it.
Feel free to get inspired by different civilizations from different time periods, choose one, mix and match, and create your own! Anything from an ancient coin to a new shiny render of cryptocurrency, as long as it's fun.
Add some wear and damage if you like but it's not necessary, mint coins are fine too. Using different materials in the same coin, like euros, is a nice touch as well.
Substance Challenge - Material Focus
Map of the Empire
Chart the lands of the Empire and the people in it, in your own style. You could go for a real-world representation using the official map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1Gw9UbdZRJapT04CG4OvQ6H4B-aU&ll=27.462177288952276%2C-27.02784844062512&z=2
Or you could go for a more fantasy-like take, and come up with some locations that belong in the Empire lore! -Choose a style (doesn't have to be from the picture)
-Explore how to add the different locations of interest from the google map. (Hubs, user density, etc)
