[Dolmen 2.0]

[COMPETITION]

Hey Guys

I've been patrolling some script writer websites and came across something interest posted by dave crane. I tried it and
found it to be tons of fun so I thought the writters here on the forums might enjoy giving it a try as a new comp?
just to give you a new toy to play around with syles and scenography etc.

Its basicly a challenge for writers that focuses on the images they envision.

Quote

The script below has all captions in place, but no picture descriptions. The story that it describes is generic enough to fit any number of situations - historical figures, superheros, aliens, mutated weird shoebox-people - the only limit is your imagination. Just add some panel descriptions and repost the script to this thread, and let's see what we come up with.
-Dave Crane

I take it a new panel for each caption is ideal but feel free
to describe how panels can merge together, so long as the
captions gets merged in too.

Here are the captions as Provided by Crane:

Quote

Panel 1
CAPTION:My early years are lost in the mist forever.
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 2
CAPTION:All I can recall is a vast, comforting presence that surrounded me.
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 3
CAPTION:As I grew, I became aware of these guardians as other from me, and I rebelled.
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 4
CAPTION:In hindsight, I can see that they intended only the best for me...
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 5
CAPTION:...but it is necessary to separate in order to grow.
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 6
CAPTION:My exploits are now the stuff of legend among my kind, but at the time, I was just surviving, learning as I went along.
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 7
CAPTION:It's lonely at the top. But although I look down upon you all
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 8
CAPTION:I remember my own humble origins, and remind myself every day
[Insert description of panel here]

Panel 9
CAPTION:You're my people. We're all in this together.
[Insert description of panel here]

(captions taken from Millarworld.com )

Just to add a bit of interest, the rules of this challenge allow you to change the text in any one panel to whatever you like. That's not mandatory, if you want to include all 9 captions as is, its all good.

Have fun!


EXTRA RULEZ: anyone can give this a try. please keep it vivid and in line with the captions so it makes sense, try not to ramble and try stick to one post only. Remember this is writting that emphasizes drama in your scenes much like a graphic Novel or a well written
movie script.

BENEFITS: Id like two judges (writter and/or artist) to help me select the best idea at the end of next week.
The final selection will be worked up for the winner into page turner format by me and any interested member
of the Malazan artist group.

any genre is welcome as is any fan based written work.

-Dolmen

This post has been edited by Dolmen: 22 March 2011 - 07:20 AM

[Tapper]

I think I'll contribute!

[Dolmen 2.0]

Tapper, on 18 March 2011 - 11:59 AM, said:

I think I'll contribute!

awesome! looking forward to whatever you come up with!

[Tapper]

Dolmen, on 22 March 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

Tapper, on 18 March 2011 - 11:59 AM, said:

I think I'll contribute!

awesome! looking forward to whatever you come up with!

This is actually effing difficult!

Are the panels for a comic/art or for film?

[Grimjust Bearegular]

This sounds cool...I might give it a go:)

[Dolmen 2.0]

Tapper, on 22 March 2011 - 11:10 AM, said:

Dolmen, on 22 March 2011 - 07:19 AM, said:

Tapper, on 18 March 2011 - 11:59 AM, said:

I think I'll contribute!

awesome! looking forward to whatever you come up with!

This is actually effing difficult!

Are the panels for a comic/art or for film?

The way I understand it, both apply. I personally imagined
it as a graphic novel when I participated over at millarworld
but I think the rules of screenplay demand more descriptive
quality and consequently provide better results.

Should you go the screenplay route you must describe
a totality shot and not a roaming scene.

[Dolmen 2.0]

Grimface Insultbear, on 23 March 2011 - 08:15 AM, said:

This sounds cool...I might give it a go:)

Thats brilliant! tell a friend lol!

[Studlock]

I don't know if I did this right but here we go...


Panel 1
CAPTION:My early years are lost in the mist forever.
A young boy sits within a shell like structure searching for a way out but there is none. He pushes but there is no resistance. There is nothing but horrible whiteness within this shapeless prison. No color, no warmth only bland indifference. The youth cries knowing not what is to become of him. Yet there is something outside, and he pushes if only to get closer.

Panel 2
CAPTION:All I can recall is a vast, comforting presence that surrounded me.
Nine figures draped in the skin of humans sit around the egg chanting their holy language. The room they sat in was circular and only a single lamp lights it, casting long shadows. Holding hands they raise as their song hit the highest notes. Black wings unfold and stretch yet they cannot fly. Not until he is born unto this world. So they all but take flight, the seductive freedom calling to them. Their bodies tremble in want. Their inhuman eyes, the color of the sky itself, yearn to be among the wind, their coy lover. Their beak like mouths covered in veils of blue continues their haunting song in hope the boy shall give them back their freedom.

Panel 3
CAPTION:As I grew, I became aware of these guardians as other from me, and I rebelled.
The Boy stand among the corpses of the nine figures blood painted onto his scar like tattoos. The blood burnt into his body telling a tale of a tyrant, a vision of the future. The Boy is not like his guardians. He does not have wings, nor does he have feathers or fur. His black hair grew to the knees, his skin a pale white, just like his prison of so long. Upon his face was a mix of furry and confusion. These were the one that watched him struggle within his personal hell. The presence. Tear leaked from his sky blue eyes.

Panel 4
CAPTION:In hindsight, I can see that they intended only the best for me...
They tale etched onto his body told of his raise from nothing to be a great tyrant. Many people shall bow to him. The Twelve Tribes of the Gun, the Raptors of the Sky, the Empire of Founding and the People Under the Mountain. The two Masters of life. Strength and Death would bow to him. But in his lust for freedom he would fall to darker side of it. Nothing would be out his reach, women, men, wealth, and power. And such a power it was, so much that it would corrupt the earth itself and in the end only he would survive. Alone in his freedom. The Nine Skinhunters had kept him safe from his destiny and for this he killed them. It humbled him to know such power.

Panel 5
CAPTION:...but it is necessary to separate in order to grow.
He stumbled down the mountain top and walked the lands, winning an empire. The two Master stood to either side. The mechanical armies of Gun reloaded their weapons again and again. The black Raptors flew in the sky cawing diving down lasing out with their obsidian daggers into the enemy. The men and women of Founding rod their arrogant horse into the lines of pike men screaming their defiance. The stone warrior-monks of Under the Mountain rage magical battles with the Mages of Fate. He stood on his raised platform tempting the enemy to attack. None did. Nine black feathers were tied into his nearly bald head.

Panel 6
CAPTION:My exploits are now the stuff of legend among my kind, but at the time, I was just surviving, learning as I went along.
He wore his clockwork Gun amour, atop his Founding horse. On his hip was a sword made of the finest obsidian sword of the Raptors and on his back waited a two-handed flint sword blessed by the Mountain itself. He was young when he gained his prizes from legends. Oh how his blood tattoos swirls changing their tale as he went along this path struggling against the agents of Fate. He had meant other people in his youth, his tale had speared far. So far in fact should he fall before the White Wall of Fate others would take up his torch. His tattoos told him such. The Fangs of the Weeping Plain. Demons of Chance. The Ghost Legion. Perhaps the Gods themselves

Panel 7
CAPTION:It's lonely at the top. But although I look down upon you all
He looked down on his armies, waging a war against the White Wall, against the very thing that held the Laws of Reality together. All for their Emperor they risked the destruction of everything. This loyalty had humbled him on a seconded time in his life. It also cut him off from them. Alone once again, except for the two tottering giants of Death and Strength that stood behind him.

Panel 8
CAPTION:I remember my own humble origins, and remind myself every day
He rode his horse down the ramp from his raised platform. He touched each of the nine feathers that adorned his head, saying a single pray for each. He remembered the helpless of the bland shell. The blood of the Skinhunters painting his skin. He remembered the long road here. And finally it was time to make amends of that day. He would enter the fray.

Panel 9
CAPTION:You're my people. We're all in this together.
His people scream as he raised both his swords and rushed the lines of lanky, soulless faith-men. He screamed with all his fury. The Tribes of Gun renewed their attack tenfold. The Founders pushed their horse as they never had. Raptors swooped down as if their own bodies were weapons. The People refolded there magery and brought tremors to the faith-men. Each had their own destiny yet they fought against his. The Boy, Flesh Machine the Truth, Skinhunter the X, Foundation the Great, the Stone of God. All these names wept as he and his people pushed onward against something that could not be beat into submission nor convinced to lie down their weapons.

[Tapper]

Not fully satisfied, but here we go.

CAPTION:My early years are lost in the mist forever.
[A dark room lit by four crude iron braziers with glowing coals in it, placed around and shedding light on a polished mahogany table, on which a naked baby boy lies. On one end of the table, a shaven headed woman in a woolen tunic stands, arms folded. On the other end, a man sits, dressed in rich purple robes with an orange flame motive. His face is largely obscured by a fake silk beard, patterned to show luxurious golden curls. A purple and cloth of gold cylindrical hat with golden flames embroidered on it sits on his head. He is scribbling a family tree on a scroll.]

Panel 2
CAPTION:All I can recall is a vast, comforting presence that surrounded me.
[A bald little boy, barely more than a toddler, stands with right arm out outstretched, a wooden sword in his tiny little hand. Next to him (seen on the back) kneels a man in purple robes, conical hat visible. More of these men stand in a corner, watching and whispering behind luxurious beards. The boy’s stance is a copy of a huge bas-relief on the wall. ]

Panel 3
CAPTION:As I grew, I became aware of these guardians as other from me, and I rebelled.
[ A bald young man, stripped to the waist, body lean and muscled, sword in hand and held low, smashes his way through a group of men in purple robes with cylindrical hats (and yes, fake silk beards again!). More shaven heads are visible behind them, the impression is they are running through a corridor leading from a courtyard – columns and ziggurats are visible behind the roofs and colonnades marking the boundaries of the courtyard]

Panel 4
CAPTION:In hindsight, I can see that they intended only the best for me...
[The young man again now wearing a faded black tunic, black hair closely cropped to his skull, surrounded by other adolescents and children of various ages, but all with no or very short hair, shown as he scribbles names on a crude clay tablet, using a twig as a stylus. The background is one of a steppe, the ground is littered with stones and pebbles and sparse groups of twigs.]

Panel 5
CAPTION:...but it is necessary to separate in order to grow.
[The boy has grown into a man, still wearing black, now complimented by a bear skin draped over his shoulders in lieu of a cloak. The bear’s head (lower jaw excluded) flops over the man’s left shoulder, teeth still in it. The one visible eye of its head is left open, a red gem glows there. The boy-turned-man walks over a steppe, away from a battlefield where horses are strewn left and right and towards a group of horsemen – all men heavily moustached, often wounded, the women all wielding bows, one very young man in a glittering armour of iron scales at their front. Corpses of half naked men and women of both sexes, clearly barbarian in origin, litter the field around them. Behind the man in black, a feral mob of boys, girls and young men and women brandishing an astonishing variety of weaponry, armor and clothing skulk. The one thing they have in common is an element of red in their clothing – sometimes a tunic, some a belt, some a ribbon or scarf.]

Panel 6
CAPTION:My exploits are now the stuff of legend among my kind, but at the time, I was just surviving, learning as I went along.
[The man in the bear skin cloak mounted, one hand filled with flame, the young man in scale armour a step behind, dressed in dazzling azure beneath his armor, arm outstretched, lancers charging past them in the middle distance, all dressed in azure, mounted bowmen in their midst. On foot, men and women in scarlet tunics flank the two riders, some heavily armored, some bearing only a buckler and a sword, one young man with luxurious golden hair close to the stirrup of the man in the bear skin. They fight knots of shaven headed men and sometimes women, armed with halberds, no armour, dressed in tunics, face scarves and leggings of varying shades of grey, and regiments of bearded spearmen in green cloth tunics, baggy trousers and white head scarves, their only armament except for the spears being woven wicker basket shields.]

Panel 7
CAPTION:It's lonely at the top. But although I look down upon you all
[Massive sandstone stylized statues of a standing man in a bearskin cloak flank a road. The statues have a common theme: generally, the cloaked figure wields a flaming mace or holds it like a scepter. One foot is always placed on a skull or on the severed head of a luxoriously bearded man. Sometimes, the lower parts of the statue depict a mound of skulls or a pile of corpses, sometimes they are modeled on a square formation of warriors, sometimes mounted, often not.
On the road, dwarfed by the statues, regiments of soldiers march, mostly spear wielders in brightly polished iron scale armour, but knots of azure clad horsemen between them, and here and there a red, grey or green tunic or black plate armour, these last ones wielding heavy maces.]

Panel 8
CAPTION:I remember my own humble origins, and remind myself every day
[An impoverished market. A juggler throws balls in the air, a few emanciated children stand watching him, a rotten melon lies on the bottom of a small pyramid of the fruits on a rough wooden platform in the foreground. A couple of soldiers in dusty padded cotton tunics walk in the centre of the picture, rust on their spears, simple wicker shields in hand. Behind them a slave trader tries to sell an old man, and behind the melon, a middle aged whore negotiates business with a guy with sores on his face in front of a narrow alley]. The market is lined by a rough, overgrown wall of man height. Behind the wall, the legs of a statue loom.

Panel 9
CAPTION:You're my people. We're all in this together.
[A bas relief of a stylized continental map is shown. Silk arrow shaped banners are pinned to it in places, denoting troop movements. On three sides, the lines point outward, on one, a great number of green banners point towards the centre of the map. Beneath this side, armed and armoured men in a variety of brightly coloured tunics gather in separate knots, pointing at the wall, and a ladder is standing to one side, a woman in paint-splattered white robes on the top rung, painting a red line to delineate a mountain shape. A stone worker, chisel and hammer in hand, waits at the foot of the ladder.
Guardsmen in golden scale armour stand near one knot of commanders, two silver armoured ones are visible next one of the other groups, and obsidian plated soldiers in rigid formation line the wall directly underneath the map, their helmets lit from beneath the rim in a bright red light.]

[Fist Gamet]

Panel 1
CAPTION:My early years are lost in the mist forever.
I was destined never to discover where I came from. I think I knew I was different from my brothers and sisters even before I achieved a clarity with thought and voice. The power of self-denial, of ignoring the obvious, was, I now see, a matter of survival. In those wet, bleak caves of my youth, my brothers and sisters huddled around the flames, wide-eyed and murky, drawing warmth from a cold I did not feel. Their flesh was soft and pink, and easily cut. Their limbs were long and thin, whilst mine were short, clawed and covered in red scales.


Panel 2
CAPTION:All I can recall is a vast, comforting presence that surrounded me.
Yet my brothers and sisters held a measure of love for me behind their taught expressions. Narrowed eyes, a growing distance borne of fear and...yes, awe, as I grew. I came to believe that they had sheltered me when I was so very young and vulnerable. They taught me all they could of their people - our people - and the terrible world beyond the caves. The day I flexed my wings, the glorious, glorious feeling of a burgeoning of fire within my breast, my brothers and sisters fled. The caves, as I recall, even now with my heart yearning for them, became colder still. Then, only then, did I experience the loneliness that would fill the rest of my days.

Panel 3
CAPTION:As I grew, I became aware of these guardians as other from me, and I rebelled.
My brothers and sisters tried to soothe me then, to assuage my growing unease. I had to know the world outside. The need grew stronger every day, like a vast well, slowly filling. They spoke in new ways of me when they thought I could not hear them, their words filled with fear and failure. They retreated to the narrow, darker tunnels where I could no longer go for I had grown too large. My wings itched, my teeth itched and my claws dug gouges in the rock. The day they spoke of killing me broke my heart, never to be remade. That day, I broke through the gate and fled.

Panel 4
CAPTION:In hindsight, I can see that they intended only the best for me...
It is perhaps only now, many years after my brothers and sisters have all passed from this bleak world, that I realise they did what they had to out of love. I think that in the beginning they knew the terrible power I would one day have, and the terrible things I might one day do. Regrets...I have so many. I allow myself to believe that things might have been different, if only they had told me the truth back in the days when we huddled, small and wondrous around the fire.

Panel 5
CAPTION:...but it is necessary to separate in order to grow.
Whoever set them this impossible task must have known I would one day fly free and soar across the stormy, smouldering skies. Every day, as I am forced to seek further and further afield, the ash-fields below me, stretching to eternity, fill me with sorrow. Alas, my heart is a bottomless pit, destined to ever fill with pain and loss and loneliness. Alas, my brothers and sisters never truly understood my kind.

Panel 6
CAPTION:My exploits are now the stuff of legend among my kind, but at the time, I was just surviving, learning as I went along.
There are none left like me. None. The survivors in the world beyond, like my brothers and sisters - yet so unlike them - pursued me endlessly. They brought a war to me I did not seek. No-one had prepared me for this life, this world of ash and fragile misery. Small, scattered settlements thrown around ancient stone ruins dotted the lands below. In the skies, the winds blew ever cold.

Panel 7
CAPTION:It's lonely at the top. But although I look down upon you all
I found other caves, many of them, though they were all of them empty. I began to accept the isolation and the peace that found me in the higher places of the world. Mountains, far from the survivors, where I could rest and slumber and mourn, became my home.

Panel 8
CAPTION:I remember my own humble origins, and remind myself every day
Though the kin of my brothers and sisters hunt me still, I can no longer bring myself to kill them. When they come - as they always do - I flee. Though those who brought war to me hate me, I cannot forget the love of my brothers and sisters who sheltered me and tried, however misguided, to keep me from harm.

Panel 9
CAPTION:You're my people. We're all in this together.
The survivors will never know me. They will never understand that in my heart, they are all of them my brothers and sisters. I do not understand it myself, not truly. This world, and all that is left in it, belongs to us. They are all that is left, down there, in the warm, dry, ash-blackened places of the world. And they are so few. Up here, I exist, alone, empty and hungry. I will not kill them, not any more, but I cannot be with them either. I do not know what will become of me. There is no one to tell me, how long dragons live.

This post has been edited by Fist Gamet: 25 March 2011 - 11:02 PM

[Dolmen 2.0]

ok so its been quiet in here so I have talked to a few people
and we are happy to elect a winner if this is all the entries available.
we think that on the whole the most to have Fist Gamets work rendered.
We felt the idea was vivid and simple, easy to interpret and render.

congratulations Gamet. If you'd like to PM me with more details of
your scenes ie colouring, dragon type, people, tech location etc feel
free to do so. you can select which panels you'd like rendered,
the less panels you select the better the quality.

I must request your permission to post the resulting
panels on Malazanempire.com and my own
deviantart page. the full prints will be
yours to print and publish as you wish