Project 2: Pencil World
In the second week of the world building project, Conann switched up the groups. As a result, Dearbhla and I stayed together whilst Matthew and Juan joined our new team. We also rotated the team projects. We were now responsible for Alicia, Emma, Matthias, Natasha and Paul's previous world. They were originally going for a world set in deep space. Matthias gave us a brief overview of what their group was trying to achieve with this world and the overall appearance of it. It basically looked like a massive rock/asteroid floating through space which was impaled by a large crystal. Their species that inhabited the world was avian with the appearance of birds. I actually considered it to be rather similar to Dearbhla and I's previous world in many aspects. The shape of the rock itself was quite alike to our floating islands and it had a sort of layering/hierarchy to it also. After the first presentation, Conann advised us to stray away from such a rigid hierarchy as it would limit our creativity and freedom to go crazy. He instead pushed us towards a more wacky approach which would force us to bring in more original ideas. Therefore, this week's task was to develop upon the new world we were assigned to even further.
Dearbhla, Juan, Matthew and I wanted to bring a fresh new take and perspective on the existing world. However, we didn't want to completely change it beyond recognition. We decided to meet up as a team and make a list of pros and cons. The general feedback from Conann to the class was that we were all playing it too safe and that he found the world's to be too "of this world". "If you can create any world you want to why would you create one so similar to Earth" was a valuable (yet paraphrased) piece of feedback that we had received. We began to write down random words that came into our head to get creative. As we were coming up with ideas as to how we could make this new world a little more wild, Juan suggested the idea of a pencil stuck into the middle of the world, rather than a crystal. At first we were skeptical at such a bizarre concept, but we soon felt that this was a perfectly reasonable development from what Conann had suggested. We tried to be logical and place this idea in some sort of context. So, we decided on a backstory...
--- A space shuttle drifts through space on a mission to discovery. One lone astronaut sits in waiting to reach his destination. He writes to keep his mind occupied. Growing forever frustrated with writers' block, he reaches the end of his tether. Once the lead breaks off of his pencil, he has had enough. He angrily fires the pencil out of the airlock. As it floats through space, it crashes into an asteroid and the bacteria from the shuttle begins to grow on it. Over years they evolve into life as they begin a new world. ---
Although we ran into some problems in terms of scale (how big is the pencil? How big is the asteroid? Microscopic organisms?), we all liked the idea of this backstory. We then moved onto the topic of creatures. We altered the previous group's idea for a race of bird-people and modified them into bats instead. The reasoning behind this being that we wanted to change their idea only slightly. We added in another species of rock beings made of lead (in keeping with the pencil theme) in order to create a conflict in the world. In hindsight, I would have left out one of these species as I believe we put too much focus on them as a team. We split up the world into different components that each member of the team could work on. I volunteered to design and research the bat species while Dearbhla would focus on the rock people. Matthew was assigned to focus on the landscape and architecture and Juan finalised the backstory.
I then began to design some initial sketches of the creatures. I watched several YouTube videos of bats both in flight and resting. They proved very interesting to draw and I enjoyed their movement. I tried to examine their features closely through different references, such as their eyes, ears and snout. By doing so, I was then able to use these features and apply them to a humanoid figure.
Dearbhla, Juan, Matthew and I wanted to bring a fresh new take and perspective on the existing world. However, we didn't want to completely change it beyond recognition. We decided to meet up as a team and make a list of pros and cons. The general feedback from Conann to the class was that we were all playing it too safe and that he found the world's to be too "of this world". "If you can create any world you want to why would you create one so similar to Earth" was a valuable (yet paraphrased) piece of feedback that we had received. We began to write down random words that came into our head to get creative. As we were coming up with ideas as to how we could make this new world a little more wild, Juan suggested the idea of a pencil stuck into the middle of the world, rather than a crystal. At first we were skeptical at such a bizarre concept, but we soon felt that this was a perfectly reasonable development from what Conann had suggested. We tried to be logical and place this idea in some sort of context. So, we decided on a backstory...
--- A space shuttle drifts through space on a mission to discovery. One lone astronaut sits in waiting to reach his destination. He writes to keep his mind occupied. Growing forever frustrated with writers' block, he reaches the end of his tether. Once the lead breaks off of his pencil, he has had enough. He angrily fires the pencil out of the airlock. As it floats through space, it crashes into an asteroid and the bacteria from the shuttle begins to grow on it. Over years they evolve into life as they begin a new world. ---
Although we ran into some problems in terms of scale (how big is the pencil? How big is the asteroid? Microscopic organisms?), we all liked the idea of this backstory. We then moved onto the topic of creatures. We altered the previous group's idea for a race of bird-people and modified them into bats instead. The reasoning behind this being that we wanted to change their idea only slightly. We added in another species of rock beings made of lead (in keeping with the pencil theme) in order to create a conflict in the world. In hindsight, I would have left out one of these species as I believe we put too much focus on them as a team. We split up the world into different components that each member of the team could work on. I volunteered to design and research the bat species while Dearbhla would focus on the rock people. Matthew was assigned to focus on the landscape and architecture and Juan finalised the backstory.
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| The beginnings of our wall with initial ideas. |
I then began to design some initial sketches of the creatures. I watched several YouTube videos of bats both in flight and resting. They proved very interesting to draw and I enjoyed their movement. I tried to examine their features closely through different references, such as their eyes, ears and snout. By doing so, I was then able to use these features and apply them to a humanoid figure.
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