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The Prince of the Nile 1 - WordDoc

Added 2017-06-01 04:46:28 +0000 UTC

The Museum

I've always been fascinated by ancient Egyptian culture, and one of my most memorable trips was a visit to that mysterious land of the pharaohs. After having marvelled at all that magnificent art and monumental architecture, it was just a matter of time before starting a series on that subject. The memory of that journey was a great inspiration, and creating the elaborate setting of temples and courtyards was an endless joy. However, technical issues and something of a writer’s block put an abrupt halt to the project and left it pending ever since. The first chapter of Prince of the Nile is available on my Blog.

NOTE: You can download a PDF version of this WorkDoc at the bottom of this post. This was made by Andrea, and you can find a complete version of his beautiful project on the Priapus Encyclopedia page.

As always, a project begins somewhere at the end of a random afternoon, when I´ve some spare time, by creating a scene based on some vague idea. It always starts with a simple single model, with a column, a decorated wall, a statue, or an interesting character or pose. But, while exploring the possibilities of these objects, the project always tends to get out of hand. Once started, the setting continues to expand, and the details become ever more elaborate. In the end, a whole new virtual world comes to life.

For this temple complex, I started with the model Egyptian Fantasy and a gateway called The King's Pass. The interior was based on the Temple of the Pharaoh’s and with a few additional props and characters, I completed the whole set in just a few days.

Bringing the ancient world back to life is one of the most fascinating possibilities of 3D. The most recent reconstructions of buildings, monuments and urban scenes (in history books, art or cinema) are really impressive and sometimes breathtakingly realistic and convincing.

My Egyptian model is, of course, just fantasy, based on some vague notion of how these buildings must have looked like and in retrospec,t the ground plan of the temple, with its huge courtyard and palace wings, seems to have more in common with the Louvre in Paris than anything in Thebes, Amarna or Memphis. And yet, when the prince rides to the temple, it still looks convincing, and it gives some impression of how monumental that world must have been.

So within a few days, the stage was set for a magnificent entrance for the young prince, and it’s here that the first chapter of the story begins. After entering the gate and crossing an extended courtyard, the prince reaches a massive temple complex that stretches out along the Nile, overlooking the burial site of the Pharaohs across the river. Entering the templ,e he is escorted by a priest through the inner courtyard that leads to a central hall.

A group of masked priests, probably representing the three main deities, undress the prince and lead him in procession to another part of the temple. On a litter, he's carried through many corridors and patios, into the inner sanctum, a lavish room with a monumental bed in the middle. It’s here that some initiation ritual starts, and the first chapter ends. Never to resume...

I did a few scenes for the second chapter (see below), but then it stopped. Not only because I didn’t have a clear idea of how to continue the series, but at that very moment, my hard drive crashed. I lost most of this and many other previous project files. And of course, I didn’t make any copies...

In the last few years, I’ve made several attempts to restart the project, but nothing came of it. I think it´s still one of the most beautiful series so far, and it would be a pity to leave it unfinished. But progress on recreating the scenes has been very slow. Other projects came in the way, and after a while, the models and techniques I used became a bit outdated. Not very eager to start all over again, I left the project pending once more.

However, in the last few months, little by little, I’ve been able to reassemble the main part of the scenes and characters of the story, so after completing the more recent project, the Prince of the Nile is ready to go. A good plot is still missing at the moment, although I have a few ideas that could work. As suggested, I could introduce a black Pharaoh or add a second procession using The Sacred Barge, to bring an offering to the river or get to the pyramids across the Nile.

An alternative could be an explorer, something like Indiana Jones, who makes the same journey to the temple as the prince did before, but now 2000 years later. The temple would now be a massive ruin, and the explorer finds the inner chamber with its treasure still waiting for him.

These are just some ideas, and please feel free to comment and send your suggestions! I’m sure there are many more interesting possibilities for a new chapter of the Prince of the Nile.

Related sections of this project:

Chapters