Behind the Scenes - Heimirblot (Patreon)

Here are some insight into how I work as an artist and what was done to accomplish the Heimirblot artwork.

Firstly, I had this idea of an annual blood letting sacrifice in Himeheim, this was much needed cause I was thirsty for some more dark and grim content. So I sketched up a pose and a scene on paper. Then moved on to 3D to manifest this idea. I had the intention of rendering multiple angles, but I wes ready to move on to something new, but hey, we can always revisit an old scene later.

1. The Runestones was inspired by the original runestones in scandinavia. They still has a secret hidden message engraved into them that non of you have cracked yet ;).
I started by forming the circular sacrifical altar and seperated the structural support stones and added a multires modifier to them to start engraving.
After I was finished, I moved on to shading and coloring, then I added a generic scandinavian stone texture heigh map, and linked that to the displacement node.

2. The Blood, To make the blood I had to read up on shading it properly.
Once discovered, I then took a plane, subdived it many times until it matched the altars level, and used a shrinkwrap mod to replicate the natural tension of blood.
In the first blood tests, I was contemplating the idea of having her face and body covered in blood, but lets save that scenario for some gory artwork later.

A bit of lore, It was common practice to give 1 liter of blood, it was to show devotion to the right path of their folk and a test of strength for the mind and body, this to also to support good health and prosperity for the future generations. There would be a feast afterwards with cheerful celebration that included dancing, games and mead until the sun came up. This happend in every village's enourmous gilde hall across Himeheim. Those who could not complete this ancient tradition due to illness or some other reason was simply not allowed to partake in the politics of Himeheim and most importantly... The afterparty.

3. The warpaint, I took inspiration from a great deal of sources, there was difficult to find any information about what the norse vikings used, only tattoos, so I had to be creative.