Glazed Bricks, Ancient Dragons, & Royal Eyeballs, Oh My!

I've been continuing to work on texturing. My attention turned to Nebuchadnezzar's bedroom. The Neo-Babylonian empire under his reign rebuilt Babylon, and became famous for their barrel vaults and glazed, blue bricks. They created mosaic-like reliefs (wall sculpture) in the bricks. The most famous example is the Ishtar Gate, which inspired my depiction of Nebuchadnezzar's bedroom.

The Ishtar Gate has several animals depicted on it. One is a lion, another is a ram (both important animals in Babylonian culture and mythology). The other is an unusual beast, a dragon. If you bring your thoughts back to Genesis and the Fall, then take a closer look at this particular animal, you may see that it's essentially a snake with legs. Now, add this to the fact that this dragon, known as a "mushushu" is the symbol of Marduk, the chief god in Babylonian religion and the patron god of Nebuchadnezzar--hence why I put it over his bed.

Nebuchadnezzar faithfully served this god, even naming his son and eventual successor "Amel-marduk" (man of Marduk). Again, playing with the same thing as I was with the wise man, even with the symbol of his god guarding his bed, he could not avoid the dream and vision from the LORD.

I believe that God used his own religion to draw Nebuchadnezzar to Himself. One of the cornerstones of Babylonian mythology is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a mighty kind like Nebuchadnezzar. At certain times, Gilgamesh had dreams/visions given to him from the gods. These visions usually meant something really bad was about to happen--like his partner's death. Without a doubt, Nebuchadnezzar knew this story and considered it the night he had the dream. In contrast with the myth, the reality was that the one true God had something wonderful for Nebuchadnezzar. Eventually, King Nebuchadnezzar turned from worshiping Marduk to worshiping the one true God.

It has been said many times that the "eyes are the gateway to the soul." If that's the case, then much of Nebuchadnezzar's character is defined by his eyes. So far, he's been kind of bland in that department, but not any more. I decided to give him brown eyes--an obvious choice given his ethnicity. However, I wasn't satisfied to leave them pure brown. The Greek word for "rainbow" is "iris." Appropriately named, that part of the eye--the window to the soul--must be the bright window dressings, so I decided to put a bit of a "rainbow" of color into the eye--mainly, blue and green. Following the progress along from left to right, top to bottom, I kept working on the eye until I was mostly satisfied with the color. Then I moved on to the bump map, which can be seen best in the image at center, bottom. The finished eye can be seen below.

Then, of course, I put them into Nebuchadnezzar's head (that just sounds fun). Here is the textured Nebuchadnezzar with his new set of eyes--all the better to see with. I think the irises might need to be darkened a bit, as his skin tone seems to match them a bit much.

Hopefully everything will get straightened out with my computer, and I'll be able to work on the rigging again. This would be the "oh my!" section of the post, since the summer is quickly drawing to a close. All in all, though, I'm amazed at all of what God's had in store for this summer. I couldn't have fit anything else in if I had tried; it's another blessing to add to the list.