Now we're on to the second catch-up post. This time, I'll be showing the weapons that I am designing for my Honours Project. From here on out, I'm going to be diving into the real meat-and-bones of Arthurian legend to inform my designs... which may actually be a problem, as I've found that Arthurian canon has a tendency to be rather inconsistent; one source will claim one thing about a certain character or event, while the next will claim another. In any case, let's get on with the work so far...
Incidentally, I'm not including the mood boards for these in this post becuase they're absolutely bloody massive. I'll post those later on their own with the Wyvern mood board.
My first weapon is Arthur's legendary weapon, the sword Excalibur. Often mistakenly believed to be the sword the once and future king pulled from a stone to prove his worth as king (again, this varies from source to source, though the vast majority claim the two are different weapons entirely), Excalibur was actually given to Arthur by the Lady in the Lake after his original blade was lost or damaged beyond repair. It is well-known for being exceedingly sharp, and for the protection its scabbard endows upon the one who holds it (ironically, some myths tell of how Arthur lost the protective scabbard to his half-sister and archenemy Morgan le fay shortly after obtaining it).
From the start, I already had a vague idea of how I wanted to update the iconic blade. On the one hand I wanted it to be a devastating weapon of mass destruction, while at the same time I wanted Arthur to actually have some kind of weapon to wield in battle. In the end I compromised by having the legendary blade come in two parts; the first, Excalibur itself, a massive deathray-firing satellite weapon, and Caliburn (again, the name is either that of Arthur's first sword or an old name for Excalibur), an actual sword whose main function is to direct Excalibur's deadly power.
As usual, I began with some thumbnails. Unlike the vehicles, I did 2 sets, one for Excalibur and Caliburn each, and I also did fewer of them. This was done mainly for the sake of time.
From this I selected the third design from both sets of thumbnails. As the above image shows, I actually developed the main shape of the two components twice, once to fully determine what they looked like and again to tidy them up and fill in the details. I also incorporated traits from the first Excalibur thumbnail into my design of the third.
And here we have the various colour schemes, along with some sketches detailing how the two work together. This is about as far as I've got with Excalibur; I still need to finish the 3D model and the final design. I'll post those when they're done.
Meanwhile, I'll also been working on the other 4 weapons I've had to design. To speed things up, I've decided to work on them all at once. I had ultimately decided from the start that these weapons would generally be futuristic versions of typical medieval weapons. These included Swords, Heavy Weapons (I wasn't initially sure if this one was going to be a hammer, an axe or a mace) Lances and Bows/Crossbows.
These are the thumbnails for the four weapon types
Here are the thumbnails again, but this time I've circled the designs I want to develop further, as well as minor details I wanted to keep from the designs I didn't choose.
As with Excalibur, I only chose one or two designs from my thumbnails for the weapon types. The above image shows how I developed these designs. As for the two types that have more than one option, I chose the second sword and the first heavy weapon, the hammer.
Finally there are the development sketches, showing a general colour scheme for each weapon (except the Lance; haven't decided what colour that's going to be...) as well as all the functions the weapons have, e.g. how the sword morphs into a rifle, how the hammer can become more compact etc.
Sadly, as with Excalibur, this is as far as I've got with these as well. I modelled around half of them though, so I should have the final designs finished soon.
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