Carnwennan

Project Brief

My brief was to create a dagger for a televised story of a young Arthur. The story would be set within a fantasy version of 6th century Britain, where the young prince would find a dagger, Carnwennan that grants magical powers and its user cloaked in shadow.

I designed the prop, using a variety of techniques including 3D modeling, mold making, casting, metal working, and sculpting.

My
Story

In this tale Arthur is a 14-year-old boy who is just starting his journey. He discovers the Dagger Carnwennan in a ruin that he is exploring. The world is one filled with magic and gods, set loosely in the 6th Century. However, this 6th Century is far more fantastical (See Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon). The Dagger Carnwennan was formed by an as yet unnamed god of shadows and chance. The dagger is imbued with the magic of the god that created it, formed from the shadows themselves and allowing the user to both be cloaked within them as well as travel through them. When the blade presents itself, it is suitably sized for a child. As Arthur grows, so too will the dagger.

This reflects itself in both the way that the dagger physically grows, as well as the magical abilities. At the time of its finding the dagger has been lost for over 100 years. As Arthur grows and forms a bond with the magic of it, the dagger heals and begins to reflect that growth and healing in appearance.

First Design Concepts

I chose to use AI in this project to assist me in realizing a conceptual idea. To do this I fed a variety of prompts into an image generator, in order to come up with a design that reflected what I saw in my head.

Final Design Image

"Blade made of shadows with purple accents and Celestial themes."

The images seen both here and before were generated using various prompts by AI. I started with a prompt, saw what it put out and edited the prompt given to guide it more towards what I wanted. For example, I originally used the words "star themes" but changed it to "celestial themes" to better guide the AI.

This image was generated using both an edited prompt and a previously generated image.