"Scenario:A science fiction or fantasy world. This world may be
futuristic or may have a feel of an ancient culture.
In this society the population is divided into the rich and
the poor.
The city is built on a platform and is supported on some
kind of series of pillars. The rich live on top of the platform and the poor
live below.
Among the poor exist the gangs and there are lots of these
all radically different from one another.
In the upper city there is a monastery where the religious
rulers of the city live. The monastery is not built on the platform but hovers
above it.
The Hero:Joeb is a young monk from the monetary. He belongs to a part
of the order highly-trained in martial arts.
His mission is to go into the dangerous under city and meet
with a mysterious individual who has a box for him to collect and take back to
the monastery."
I started out in my sketchbook with a few ideas for how I wanted my city to play out, next I built a (too complicated) model in sketchup
After messing around with the camera, I got a few good angles and plenty of ideas, so I blocked in the basic forms and added some stone cliff texture
(Sunset variation? I was experimenting with how dark I wanted it beneath the platform; the sky and lighting on the furthest pillar were happy accidents.)
As of today, this study is finished, I think that next time my workflow will be (hopefully) faster
But since I'd gotten across the feel from the undercity that I was hoping for, I moved on to some of the designs of the gangs. First off, the shadowy group "The Dusk";
I had a pretty strong image of them in my head, robed- with capes, hoods and concealment. Kind of like a ninja gang but without the implicit honor.
These are the initial designs for the Religious group that live above the platform city in their floating shrine/monastery. I picked up the idea of the masks from japanese festival masks. The monks all wear them, I tried to make them seem somewhat unnerving/uncanny. Since I want the lead monks to be either spirits/demons/whatever but not human, just humanoid. For the main character, I'm thinking he'll be a young acolyte at the shrine, wearing a mask too, but only because it's traditional.
And now a brief update on the Blue Beetle Brief from the first week- its been put on the back burner while I get into the swing of things with all this time management.
