Current progress on the Darksiders 2 weapon design challenge on the Polycount forums. Here are the competition’s requirements:

For this contest you will be creating a Mace, Axe, or Hammer that would fit in the world of Darksiders. One entry from each category will be chosen to be included in the release of Darksiders II! — That’s right! Not in a future DLC release or a digital download of any sorts – the winning entries will be shipped with the game when it launches!

Contest Rules

• Create a mace, axe or hammer that would fit in the world of Darksiders.
• Design must be original and cannot contain elements from copyrighted works, reference to other IP, or use of any image that you do not own.
• Design must fit within the themes of Darksiders (More info on themes below)
• All submissions are to be showcased in a single jpeg. The image must contain a render of the final weapon with and without wireframe, and must display your diff and norm texture flats. This jpeg should be of a reasonable resolution.
  • This is a real-time challenge. You may use any real-time renderer (UDK, Crysis, etc.) but you must not use any post-processing effects or advanced (read: “fancy”) rendering techniques. Vigil wants to see your artwork as naturally as possible.
• Top 3 weapons as chosen by Vigil in each category will be asked to submit their models for final assessment.
• Winning entries will be asked for all source materials used in the creation of the assets.
• One weapon from each category will be chosen to be included in the ship of Darksiders II
• One artist per weapon/entry only. An artist may submit an entry for each of the 3 categories.
• Submissions must be made to the submission thread no later than 11:00am CST on March 26, 2012

Weapon Specifications

• Poly Budget: 1500 triangles
• Texture Budget: 512×512 Diff, Norm, Spec (Emissive map optional)
• Weapon must match supplied proxy dimensions and scale.

Unfortunately, this does not carry through in the illustrations, but the center piece of the axe head is a pair of skeletal hands tearing the skull apart. Carrying on with painting tonight, hopefully starting modeling tomorrow.

The competition thread can be found here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96235