As I mentioned in the last paragraph, I already knew where I was going to be going with this project. At least vaguely. Rather than strictly using the Earth Artifact as a disk to show what we are at the moment, I theorised the disk would contain some sort of camera link, so they could see firsthand what the earth is like, and if we're still there. I really wasn't sure where to take it from there though. I liked the idea of leaving it ambiguous, but I needed to show that our influence is there and to show it's definetely earth, as I might not have time to make an opening clip to describe the scenario. I had quite a lot of ideas, but the more I thought about them the more I realised they'd make for an uninteresting animation. Not enough can happen with a fixed camera. At that point I reconsidered the project idea. I wondered if I should do something a bit more conventional. And it was a really nice idea I'd had too at that point: a collage made up of all sorts of leaflets and wrappings and basically stuff that screams 'humanity'. But the more I tried the idea, the more I realised that doing anything sophisticated would probably take a bit too long and the animation would be clunky. And that was something I was trying to avoid in this one. In retrospect that too was probably not my best idea, as the animation ended up taking a SUBSTANTIAL amount of work to even get off the ground, let alone to the stage I'd initially envisioned. But more on that later, like...in the project itself. Now it's time to talk ARTISTS. Rather than do what I did with the previous unit, I'm just going to post all the art at once, Then talk about it at the bottom of the heap. So yeah, lots of pictures incoming!
These were all looked through in an attempt to find ideas for the general feel and atmosphere of the world at that point in time. By the time I'd got to research I'd decided that there wasn't going to be any other people besides my vary hazy concept of what or who the protagonist was. So I did what I normally do in these situations, and look around deviantart for ideas. At first I was thinking along the lines of a really pretty world, just without any people. Possibly traces of our existence but no people. But thinking about it I began to wonder if it was a little too bland and empty. The picture is by Roberto Nieto and is based around Howl's Moving Castle, one of my favourite films ever made, After that I naturally looked to the other extreme and thought about doing something with a much darker vibe. I found this photo on one of my favourite artist's pages (Adoptabot from Deviantart). Seriously check that guy out, his sculpture-making is really good. I really like the general vibe that picture gave off and I liked the idea of doing something a little sinister and wierd. I decided to delve deeper into that kind of territory and found Floral Walk by Corvocollorosso. Once I found this one I knew the tone I was after. Everything about this picture was what I'd been looking for. I love the feeling of something that's pretty dark and full of sadness, but the protaganist has no idea what it is. It's just their home. I think that's really beautiful. At this point it really set in motion what I was after and how to achieve it. I then began to consider quite what perspective to approach it from. I was really fond of doing something from the eyes of something smaller than us, seeing things in a distorted view. I might revisit that concept later as the way I presented the final piece negated that somewhat. Again, this one came from another artist I knew prior. An artist by the name of Monkeys-In-My-Head. This doesn't capture the feeling I was hoping for but gave me the idea of doing something on a smaller scale so it's worth mentioning. At this point I began thinking about the environment, as this would spell out what kind of character would live there. Despite the skull theme being used so well in Floral Walk, I felt it pushed things over a bit too obviously, so I started looking into other ideas. Before long I'd settled on the idea of a dumping ground of sorts, where human refuse has been blown or moved to at some point after their departure. Despite being a bit on the cheery side, The Shop by Victor Koroedov sort of sums up the idea. By now I was set on the idea of having a huge cluster of human junk surrounded by a dead landscape. The next picture comes from DrunkyMcFry. I found this when I was looking into background ideas (mostly for the distance and the world outside the junkheap). For starters I'm a huge fan of pixel art, and not only is the picture beautiful, but I loved the colour palette. The final picture here was what cemented my background ideas, and a lot about the art style in general. SMASH-ii from deviantart drew it. It also doesn't hurt that it's from a videogame I love; Okami.
By this point I'd decided the protagonist would be a robot, as this would fit the brief and context best, along with the location for the backgrounds. I din't use any artists as references for the robot design process, but before I began I made a folder of inspiration so I'll repeat those below.
Somewhere along the line I'd decided I would need a villain for the piece too, some sort of monster. Some of the stranger, more animalistic creatures on the list went towards that.
So yeah, that concludes Unit Two's inspiration section. Thanks for reading once again.
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