Off-White: Thaw and Frost

Contest Entry 'Off-white'

Thaw and Frost. Muspel and Nifl. Their names are derived from Muspelheim and Niflheim-the lands of fire and ice respectively in Norse mythology.

Two guardian spirits, brothers, watch over the cycle of water in our world. Where Nifl walks the water condenses, turns solid and becomes ice and snow. Muspel follows closely after, his path melting the ice to turn back into water, evaporating it, causing steam and clouds to drift skyward in his wake.

The presence of both tigers ensures the eternal presence of liquid water in our world, our most valuable source of life. In order to sustain this delicate yet important balance they share a mutual reliance on the other.

Despite this however they are highly competitive and fiercely territorial. Certain parts of our world are predominately the terrority of Nifl, while others are governed by the presence of Muspel. Fights over dominance are reflected in the state of our world's climate, ever shifting and as unpredictable as the spirits' tempers.

In the end, neither truly wins, nor loses. And as the world cycles through night and day their battle continues to rage beneath the surface of our water.



Entry for the contest. Off-white is a beautiful (web)comic by and , check it out here: [link]


No points for originality since I picked tigers, but I did this mostly to keep myself stimulated to keep painting. More often than not I start a painting, then halfway through I lose interest and start something else. At least doing things such as contests I am forced to actually work on them. So unfortunately it seems I need deadlines in order to finish things. Also tigers are awesome, so yeah. It was better than my 'crab-spirtis-guarding-the-flow-of-eb-and-tide' idea anyway.

Not as polished as my other stuff as I was unable to put as much time into it as I do with my other works, but at least it was a lot of fun. I hate how dark, smokey and difficult to see much of my work is. I had to keep the effects muted as it appeared very chaotic at first, but now I'm not sure the suggestion of frost and thaw is strong enough . I assure you though it looked AWESOME in my head! So apologies.
I might work on it some more later, because I feel like it deserves a bit more attention (it's just that the deadline is a few hours away). Also, anatomy is hard :C You have no idea how many times I had to repaint these two and how many tigers from various angles I had to look at. /end obligatory rant


~Vyrilien

Time taken: 20-ish hours
Tools used: Corel Painter Essentials 3, Photoshop CS2, Wacom Intuos 2, this amazing tutorial: [link]

P.S.: Is it sad I'm happier about the description thing than the actual painting? I think it might be.

EDIT: I won? *flails uncontrollably* Thank you everyone for all the feedback I've gotten. It's so amazing to see all the positive reactions to my entry! It made my day :'D