300 Spartans by DevJohnson on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

The Spartans led by Leonidas, presumably at Thermopylae

A cover for a miniature set that I did for my friend, his company is releasing Spartans set. We agreed that it would be good to keep the movie style, while I tried to put some historical research into it... I've used more accurate hoplite helmets and shields, and found out that Spartans indeed used uniform lambda symbol on their shields. Also I did some anatomy exercise painting bare-chested Gerard Butler

However, despite the fact that initial concepts looked good, I believe this has some serious composition issues that I just find no way to fix. It would benefit from putting some counterbalance the the heavy phalanx on the left, but I have no idea.

As always, any comments are wholeheartedly welcome!