This semester I was working in a group with Kharis Beggs, Adam Bell, Liam Bailey, Joe McCartan and Jonathan Graham. After deliberating over which prompt to work from we decided to start generating ideas around an Ancient Temple. Some of our earliest ideas revolved around the occult and witch’s covens, but the theme that prevailed concerned Celtic myth. This was pretty much set in stone (pun intended) when Liam found images of the so-called ‘Druid’s Temple’ in the north of England, which turned out not to be an actual pre-historic temple but a 19th Century tourist attraction. Despite that we were keen on this interpretation of the theme and started thinking about what we could do to make this idea more interesting than a stone circle.
About this time I began compiling a Pinterest board for reference, which I have linked here:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/JoshG762/ancient-temple/
From start to finish this board showcases how our idea, and my vision, for our environment and eventual cinematic evolved and changed.
At this point we were thinking of a portal as the focal point of our stone circle and had several concepts on how we might implement this. One idea I was quite fond of was having the portal embedded in a big, mangled and hollow tree. Something along the lines of the Whomping Willow from ‘Harry Potter’, though I came across a photo of a red wood tree which inspired me quite a lot, and thought that sort of scale could make for great visual impact
I based the below concept on some work by wire sculptor Joy Gray; at GCSE I attended a workshop she held, and her work had a lasting impression on me.
Above: Work by Joy Gray.
Floating stones also featured in some of our ideas, too.
Now that we had a base concept to work from the main challenge was figuring out how to enclose this environment, as per the assignment brief. Initially to solve this problem we thought about having the ruins of a stone temple overgrown with ivy and life in a woodland clearing, with the moon shining down through the canopy upon the ruined walls and arches.
Before we had settled on this idea, however, Henry showed us a reference of a location on the Isle of Skye known as the Fairy Glen. Like the Druid’s Temple, this area also has a case of more recent human intervention for the sake of attracting tourists (see the stone spiral in the centre), but the area has these beautiful rolling hills (caused by an ancient landslip) which work to surround and close off the depression in the hills where the spiral lies. It’s a remarkable area and we were all very taken with it, so suddenly our idea developed into an open landscape as you can see below with the remains of our temple in the centre- being mindful of the fact we couldn’t have an open world concept.
As you can see in my concepts above, the idea of a vessel in the middle of the circle had carried over from the previous woodland scene, and the hole in the stone idea came directly from a Cornish monument- Men-an-Tol- which we were using as a sort of ancient portal. At this point my vision for this environment was something quaint and hidden. Not in-your-face magical, but something much subtler and implied set in the Scottish Highlands. In my second concept you can see that I was quite enthused about the prospect of using fog in Unreal Engine, which would really have helped with the issue of enclosure whilst providing a great sense of atmosphere. Perhaps a perpetual fog is what’s kept the area hidden to everything but the elements for so long.
Below are some screenshots from my block based on my concept art. One idea I enjoyed was a stream residing in an ancient river bed flowing behind or around the henge with a connecting bridge over it. I thought the bridge could represent the passing between two planes; the earthly and the sacred, once a devotee enters the circle.
Below is some further work I did drawing on top of my block out to further illustrate my vision for this environment.
Loughareema (Ballycastle, aka The Vanishing Lake) when the water’s low served as some visual inspiration. Perhaps the depression amidst the hills in my concept could have been the basin of an ancient lake.
Below are some of my own photographs of Loughareema from 2021.
To populate the area I had pictured having a few landmark trees around the area that we would model and sculpt, while any woodland in the background would be created with quixel assets as it would serve as a backdrop rather than a feature. Wych elms, Scots pine and juniper trees were of particular interest to me because of their interesting forms, as well as being native or at least found in the Highlands.
By way of art style, we came to a decision quite quickly once I had watched and soon after suggested ‘Brave’ (2012) as reference. I’m not sure I had seen it before, but in watching it I was awestruck by the design work and cinematography it showcased and figured it a great resource for our group. Soon after I watched Brave I ordered the art book of the film, which brings light on the amazing work and research of the team at Pixar behind the film. Below are slides from our week 3 presentation with shots from the film, as well as images taken from the art book.
Another great resource I happened upon in a second hand bookshop while researching for this project was a book called ‘Ancient Britain: Land of Mystery and Legend’ which compiles late 19th/early 20th Century photographs of neolithic and Celtic monuments throughout the British Isles from the Francis Firth collection, as well as any local folklore surrounding it- making it a great source of storytelling as well as visual inspiration.
These newly found sources led directly into the development of my first assets. As a group we decided that we would each do about 2 standing carved stones each, giving us a total of 12 to work with.
After I had a block- made from a platonic primitive- and a first pass of my first stone (based on my 9th silhouette) I took a screenshot to Procreate and started to work out a design, based partially on the above references. In my head this was a sort of star map. From my research I’m aware that Celtic culture revolved heavily around both nature and war, and I think this is an interesting way to have implied the former.
After my sculpt was complete, I retopologised and UV mapped the stone in preparation for texturing.
Texturing this stone was certainly a helpful learning experience. I used a bare concrete texture as a base with a dark brown fill layer set to multiply over it to create an earthier look. I also got great use out of a lichen texture which I coloured green and adjusted until it looked weathered enough to me. Throughout this process I bore in mind the fact that these stones would have been exposed to rapidly changing conditions for possibly thousands of years, and so made my textures as grungy and noisy as I could while still having it look natural.
While texturing I was using some reference photos I took near me as inspiration for my colours so I could mimic and have the textures look as though they fit in the environment. 
Having finished my first stone I found myself somewhat displeased with how faint the carvings had turned out to look, so with my second I decided to stylise the carvings and make them deeper and more graphic, taking more direct inspiration from Brave. I also used a Boolean modifier to create a hole in the top of this stone, taking a note from some of Liam’s work, as well a set of 18 rock brushes which really took my sculpt to a higher level.
https://brandonfunk.gumroad.com/l/18-rock-brushes
The texturing process for this was mostly the same as with the first, except this time I found that using a dirt texture with a cavity smart mask worked very well to bring out the carvings. I went back and did this to my first, but since the carvings weren’t so deep it wasn’t as effective. Looking back I wish I had taken the approach I did with the second on my first, but I’m glad to have learned from this process.
While I was developing these first two assets our idea was evolving. The execution of a sprawling environment as we had intended was difficult to visualise.
I had made this blueprint with four main hills planned, with one having a ‘lookout’ rock formation as in the Fairy Glen*. These would have been created separately and brought together in the final environment to save us having to work with the landscape tool in Unreal, but we didn’t go ahead with it as we were struggling to think about how we could coordinate the raised landscape with the base plane.
There was also worry that our open concept wouldn’t give us the opportunities for asset development that we needed, so we’d thought about un-ruining the walls into a sort of stone cairn (as seen in ‘Doctor Who’ S10 Ep10, which features an actual portal inside of it).
In the above sketches I was thinking about how built-up the walls should be, and below about the central vessel and it’s stand, which I had volunteered to develop.
The cauldron was quite fun to develop, although sculpting took me a long time. In future I would definitely try and streamline this sort of process. Retopology was also quite a tedious process, with which I was aided by Henry, Mike and Alec, though I think the final result is very accurate to my concept. Where my reference was made from silver, I used copper (with a rust texture coloured turquoise for oxidisation) as I personally think of it as earthier and more interesting than gold or silver.
The podium was more straightforward thankfully; after blocking in Maya I combined and sculpted in Blender, before texturing in Substance.
As I was building these assets our idea changed dramatically. We decided as a group that it would end up easier if we set our scene in a cave, with the plan being that we would all sculpt some walls and bring them together to make a base, which ended up working very well. I created three walls (the last two with variations with and without speleothem).
As these were quite high poly, we used Z remesher to make them more workable. From there, we found a nice-looking cave wall texture that we edited to suit us, as well as a moss texture which we painted on in Substance. I used the same textures on the podium that holds up my copper basin, as well as a separate stalactite that I sculpted.
I also modeled an oil lamp (using a heavily modified jade texture in substance) and sculpted a melted candle, though I never ended up using the latter.
Testing the focal point in Unreal under the right light went well, though Henry suggested I dull the metal down using a roughness parameter, which helped to lessen the contrast and bring out the details.
I had to create similar setups for a few things in my scene so the light didn’t wash them out, and in certain cases (like the carved stones that we textured individually) to have textures match more closely.
Once I’d seen our base environment my mind was flooded with ideas, which I translated into my storyboard:
And as I was putting together my board, I found an Enya track called ‘Deireadh an Tuath’ (which really inspired me, and which I intended to use in my cinematic) from her 1987 album befittingly titled ‘The Celts’. In my storyboard I had come up with a story I’d like to imply by showing progressively battle-related assets like Liam’s sword and deer skull, Adam’s armour and shield, and the skull backed by flames towards the end, before the light dims from the place as the song ends.
In my head the story is that the tribe that once worshiped here lost a battle against invaders, with survivors left scarce. The remaining tribes-people brought here what they could salvage from the battlefield to pray over. But now most all of the remaining clan is gone, and the temple, can’t be managed by so few, so here it lies; undiscovered and unattended to.
In the lit lanterns does there remain a glimmer of hope, that the sacred site is once again in use, or that only one devotee remains, and that’s all they can do for it?
