Can you figure out what is happening here?

[Springheel]

This is wip illustration for the upcoming Roma Imperious sourcebook by HinterWelt. It's a somewhat difficult scene to illustrate, and I'm not sure that I've made it clear enough what's going on. I'd love to hear what you think is happening in this picture, to see how obvious (or not) it is.

http://www.mindplaces.com/tutorials/scroll4.jpg

[$ilence]

some solders resting after (or before) a battle?
or thats the largest hash pipe iv seen

[kraal]

some type of prying/ceremony

[Vimmzy]

they have decided to burn some secret scroll or something.. now they all look gloomy about it.. ?

[Groover McNab]

Is that supposed to be a bubble dome around em or something? or just a border to the pic?

[Springheel]

Well, here's the description from the art spec:

Description: As a group of Chinese sits by a campsite one of them throws a scroll into the
fire. The beginnings of a domed field of light should be forming around the campsite.
This is how scrolls are used. They must be burned to be activated. Once activated they
will last for a period of time. In this case the scroll will protect the camp from intruders
for the night.

I'm glad someone could tell it was a scroll...I thought people might just read it like a log. The dome was also hard to do...although that should be in the desc on the page somewhere...

[Ian Mack]

Adding stars to the bg above the dome would help to define the dome itself.

It seems that you need to create a sense of danger as well as magic. So the two guys sitting close to each other. Make the above one look offscreen apprehensively.

And if you have him sitting taller(or further back in the bg), it would make a pretty neat path for the eye to follow. At least, in my opinion. ^_^ Good rendering!