THE Sculpting Challenge - 005 - Cemetery at the Edge of Nightmares (Nudity Warning)

[MonteCristo]

Cemetery at the Edge of Nightmares - 1752a.d.
As I emerged into a twilight landscape, the night mists were already abroad, rising swiftly as they were from the fringes of the cemetery and slipping across its graves like cobwebs. In the West, a murder of crows made wing towards the failing sun, until, within that wooded horizon their black forms were lost amidst an ancient battalion of pines that stood vast and unmoving, the shadows beneath their boughs ancient and impenetrable. I stepped out of the small archway and on to cobbles. Ahead of me, a countless array of statues marked an arrow-straight path to a vast but distant portal, beyond which the flames of a nightmare realm beckoned; my first glimpse of the place I had travelled so far to find.
Yet, there was no one to guard it. There were only these statues, a rank of curious visions frozen in stone. What were they, I asked myself, the fallen victims to a quest such as mine? The sleeping guardians of this realm? Or were they merely visions of the nightmares that awaited me: a silent warning that I should turn back now?
Within five paces I had reached the first. I looked up...

Right, that should get your imaginations going. Welcome to the fifth challenge of The Speed Sculpting competition. So few limitations except no imitations.

Taking inspiration from Alex Oliver's Thread we are going to work from the same basemesh and create our own dark masterpieces.

The idea is simple. Create a statue as you might see in the piece written above. It can basically be anything, but it must appear to be a statue. Therefore, it must appear free-standing. Even better, it must appear to have been sculpted. It could be a monster, a beautiful nymph, a demonic apparition, but in some way should be aimed to evoke a sense of great unease. Get your gothic reading-glasses on, go plug in some dark baroque, and construct a vision of nightmare. We feel this is a broad subject that you can really get your teeth into. What statue do you picture in your mind's eye? Is it something from Tolkein? Silent Hill? Harry Potter? Clive Barker? Edgar Allen Poe? Greek Myth? Norse? Hieronymous Bosch? Or the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? It doesn't matter what, just make it weird and wonderful. And please try to stick to the spirit of this competition. If not, expect the other participants to give you a hard time.

So. To mix things up for everyone. We are going to lose the time-constraint this once. We have two weeks, and anything goes. There's no 3D Prize here, so you are free to extract and add bits to this mesh. There is only one restriction, anything you add cannot be as large as the original mesh. They must be enhancements only (eyeballs, earrings, wings, etc.). That said, these sculptures don't have to be human or animal-based. You might sculpt a diorama: A castle under siege, a skeleton hanging from a tree. It could be anything. Let your imagination run riot, and let us sculpt an array of strange and, most importantly, macabre visions to behold.

Prizes
The winner can choose any 2 3DTotal products from our shop. Please note a few products here are not 3DTotal's but 12 month mag subscriptions are fine.


Time limit - None
Start Date: Tuesday June 24th
Deadline - Tuesday July 8th, 10:00 AM GMT +0 (For information about GMT click here)
Subject - Creepy Statue

The Rules:

1. The competition will last two weeks, which will be allocated to creating and submitting the entries, followed by several days of judging and voting the entries -- at which point the next competition will start.
2. The moderators will be supplying a base mesh for each competition (this week's provided by forum user (Alex Oliver aka Oliver1 -- Thanks buddy! ), from which everyone will start sculpting. This is so we all get an equal start and it keeps us on topic.
3. Once done post a screen-grab of your model.
4. No rendering, texturing, lighting or rigging, let's keep it all about the high-res sculpt. What we are looking for is the quality of the sculpts you can produce "under pressure", albeit greatly relaxed this time around. If your entry is not complete, you can still post as long as it's recognizable and on topic.
5. For your final entry, post a screen-grab from your software with your finished work in it. It's fine to present this stuff nicely, with nice labelling etc, but do not add any post-production to the images themselves. These images must be uploaded to our servers by using the "manage attachments" button on the forum reply page. Do not link to external images files. Larger than the maximum size or posts containing links to external images (other than for reference materials) will be removed and the poster disqualified.There is a good reason for this. We want our archives to survive. We do not want a load of broken imageshack links in the months to come.
6. You can have multiple entries, but you can have only one final entry for each competition.
7. Do not create your own WIP thread. Simply post all WIP screen-grabs in here, and your FINAL entry in the Final Entries Thread at the head of this forum.

These rules apply to everybody taking part, there will be NO exceptions!
We've attached the base mesh at the bottom of this post. Take it and go subdivide.


Ok, go.

[MonteCristo]

Ok, so I probably won't get a chance to post this in the morning, so rather than give this to you late, I'm gonna give it to you early.
That way those of you who are done with #4 can have something to get rolling on!

Enjoy!

[Korda]

wow this ones going to be hard. Looking forward to seeing how this one goes

-Korda

[Puckducker]

Fantastic theme! Been really looking forward to participating in these challenges, and have been waiting till I had the time available.

And now that I've got time for week05 I find that we're working on the same technique that Alex Oliver used for his recent sculpt, which was something I really wanted to try out after he posted that up.

Looking forward to the next 2 weeks very much.

[Intervain]

ooh sweet theme there MonteCristo! damn, must find some time!

[Avatar-3DT]

Awesome ideea Monte!

[grommie]

wow, an amazing challenge isn't it guys?
I love the theme, but at the same time I sure that I'll be so hard!
And, come on. Alex is such a great sculptor
lol
I'll be here again, of course.
And the team of 3dtotal is great.
I'm so happy that I've just discovered this challenges, and I'm telling everybody to come here, sculpt and learn with you guys.
Thanks for suporting us, and I hope this speed never stops.
See ya folks, I'm thinking in what I'll do,
Sorry about my english, but I'm sure that I can speak portuguese =D

[Wartooth]

Great theme I can't wait to see what people come up with,
I wanted to try this after seeing Alex's thread so I'm in

[Sathe]

Cool idea, even though its the broadest subject yet, i think its going to be the most difficult.

[mafida]

Great theme!Just opened basemesh in zbrush and dont know what next-never sculpted from so 'complicated' base

[Ordibble Plop]

Great challenging theme!

I'll probably spend the next 13 days thinking about what to do

[funkdelic]

Holy Shi....

love this one, gonna give that a lot of tries!

[ryvick]

ok so i am starting to get some concepts done.
i am gonna try to make it an inviting statue from the back and from the front have it really creepy.
here is a sketch if you guys can make it out.

[Mantis]

Great challenge, I hope I can find some time to make something.

But I got a question, what is a "free-standing" statue and what is not?

Thank you.

[gnome]

This sounds promising, looking forward to great entries.

Although I've never really sculpted anything before, maybe I'll even give it a shot, if I can spare some time. In case I do, I'm probably going for a gargoyle....