Awesome stuff here, guys! Super cool and inspiring. I'm currently attempting to make a webcomic and I'll admit that I haven't focused too much on the environment/world, so I may use this group as an excuse to explore it more.
Appleseed, have you read Mare Internum? It's a webcomic that takes place in an early Mars colony. Really, really good, though I'll warn about some sensitive subjects like suicide and child molestation.
Gliger - Judging from your influence map our interests totally don't overlap so it would be hard to write something meaningful. All those mangas and artists are completely foreign to me maybe except for Katsuya Terada.
Are you planning to make something suited for animated tv show or comic book? Looks like it would be perfect for those types of mediums.
Regarding first character sketches. Really imaginative but simple designs. I wonder how are things going between humans and cyclops and the third unnamed race? Are they living together in piece or are they hostile. Some basic info would be good :).
EduardoGaray - X-com series is being one of my favourite classics. I wish there were more turn based games like it made nowdays. Have you tried Silent Storm games? It's WWII with some sci-fi elements but gameplay is fun. All terrain is destructible like in the X-com games. It has few things which are unbalanced but still woth a try.
Texhnolyze was amazing though it was probably the most depressing anime I've ever seen. I liked how there was drastic difference between Lux city and the surface while they still they both were very dystopian.
Gareth Dent - Good idea with the mind map. I'm planning to use that too in my worldbuilding process. The crucial next step would be giving hierarchy to what things you want to portray from that map. Too much ideas at once can make it difficult to start. Maybe some main story elements with the main character?
Punk-A-Cat - Nice designs. I think you could improve the contrast of those scans a little bit by playing with levels (assuming you use Photoshop or Gimp).
appleseed00 - That would be perfect for some RTS game. Is it going to be entirely about global militaristic side of IMC and The Terran Empire or there is some story of single individuals behind the scene?
Tristan Berndt - Yes. It's definitely good to keep things organic in the beginning beacause later some ideas might not work together.
If you design one location then it would be interesting to know how it sits in greater scheme of things. I mean how people from surroulding lands treat this place. Is it completely avoided or maybe some heroes have some reason to go there? How much is known about the dangers of the forest?
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Lately I tried sketching some random characters/creatures that could be anything really. The main goal was getting the feel for slightly postapocalyptic look I'm trying to achieve. Something that came unexpected from doodling was a really nasty looking dolphin with huge jaws. I might explore that direction later.
Gliger - Thanks. Your stuff looks great. I like the colors.
The shotgun is not entirely thought out. I'll have to focus on that part more. There is are already some existing guns that work underwater (like Russian APS underwater rifle) but I want to develop my own designs. It's low priority though so I left it for later. There will be definitely some more sketches of the dolphin :).
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Here's very rough sketch of one of the tunnel cities.
There are only few tunnel cities located within the dense structure of the Nest. They are heavily guarded places as it's rare to have a space filled with air. Even if living in such place is luxury in comparison to claustrophobic habitats constructed under water, the tunnel cities are not without problems. There is water leaking in many places on the tunnel wall so houses are very damp and filled with moulds. It's easy to catch some allergy or asthma from toxic substances. Also the lower you go the poorer are the houses and the less there is daylight.
Gonna spam with some comments.
Gliger, damn awesome design work! Really great. I like that animation too! Love seeing these posts.
Farvus, yeahhh rocking it man. I love how each piece adds just a tiny bit more to the story, but explodes the amount of potential places to go. Very very cool. One question that remains begging is that you talk about lots of settlements and rich vs poor etc. What is the currency or political system in this place, and how long have they been there? A good world building exercise builds interest in it, and I think yours is doing fabulously at this.
Amit Dutta - Thanks. No image finished for today but I can answer question on political system and currency.
The spaceship sent from Earth was a project funded and developed by few corporations. There were promises of starting democracy after finding new home but unusual circumstances on oceanarium planet led to forming a government that was corporate oligarchy. Beacause of completely alien and hostile environment people became dependend on the technology provided by the funders of the project. Corporate Hegemony (let's call it like this for now) owns all tunnel cities and those form a tight network throughout the whole Nest. The government consists of company's managerial elite and the citizens are basically the emploees. The higher the citizen is on the corporate ladder, the richer he is and the more priviliges he has. On the lowest level of the social classes there are people who either turned out to be the least useful or those that refused to work for the corporation. They might start a small businesses or trade goods but on very small scope. The currency is virtual. There are special cards with a chip that hold personal information together with the amount of money.
Corporate Hegemony doesn't reach everywhere though. The lower levels and lots of areas outside of the Nest are places of complete anarchy where you can find tribal societies. There is no organization, leadership or law. If the neighbouring tribe runs out of resources it just comes and steals from other tribe. No one will come and aid in restoring order. On anarchist areas the currency is belongings. You can trade with weapons, ammunition, equipment e.t.c.
What exactly are the corporations and how are they named is something for the next posts. Coming up with believable economy will be pretty difficult thing for me and I'll have to think about it for a while. The planet has drastically different resources available to Earth so not everything can be produced. That leads to outcomes that would be hard to predict. It's not going to be hard sci-fi though so I might treat this with very loosely.
I still haven't decided how long has humanity stayed on the oceanarium planet till now. The closer we are to the future the faster the time goes so 100 years feels like eternity. However people started stagnating or even regressing in a lot of areas of life so maybe 200-250 years would be safe bet. The memories of Earth should feel like it's some ancient times :).
Farvus: Man this image is rocking! So awesome great atmosphere and a crazy place. I really love how your ip is turning out. It screams cyberpunk dystopia, so its all good.
It sounded like it was going hard scifi however its easy to bring it back from such technical approach.
The backstory sounds great and the different anarchist tribes remind me of waterworld :D i dont know if you have seen it or not?
Also to answer your previous question: Yea im aiming for an RTS type thing, and there is plenty backstory i have been working on and kind of build ips in a non deterministic way, which means if you want to go either a story, graphic novel, film or game route you still have the option too :D
I would love to help out with your project sounds awesome.
anyways no updates on the IP yet busy with an anatomy study but i will get back to it soon.
appleseed00 - Thanks. If you check my influence map on the first page of the thread you will actually see Waterworld among many other inspiations.
I'm looking forward to see what you come up with :)
Here's new image. A lot of underwater areas in the Nest look like this.
Once you dive into lower levels of the Nest it can become claustrophobic maze. If you're running away from law it's a good place to hide. It's also often perfect environment for preparing an ambush and if you're not careful you can even get hit with a bullet from above or below. Sometimes if you get lost you can find way back by following the wildlife that's swimming around. In fact some tribes learned how to train special fish that could aid them in navigating tunnels or spotting enemy.
Gliger - Really loving those drawings. Right now what I'm looking forward to is seeing some environments. I'd like to know where these different races live, how the interact and so on :)
I've been trying to spend more time working on lore, I'll maybe try and do some kind of world "map" where I try and plot out the major characteristics of everything.
Anyway, this is another characteristic thing in the world. I want some of the clouds to be stained red. There will be some religious or cult order (not sure if it's secret of not) that believes that the clouds are stained red with blood of their deity. They believe that their "god" had somehow died and its blood was slowly bleeding out over the earth. They also drink the rain from these clouds while others avoid it as best they can (it hurts crops, weakens the body and so on).
Kinda grim but it lets me have weird clouds and be able to say that "it's raining blood" so I'm cool with that. I might scrap this idea if I feel it's too distracting but I'm keeping it in for now. I might also try a few variations on how they appear. I'm not sure if I want them to look menacing of natural.
Tristan Berndt - Hey. Cool idea with the clouds. I would look infernal if there was whole sky covered in them.
Here's new sketch.
After many decades of being away from home people feel big nostalgia to things that are in some way related to Earth. Belongings brought with the mission have great value and are treasured. Sometimes people create things that could remind them of the past times. Trees with paper leaves, little pictures, miniature houses. Also in order to make living in isolation more bearable there were all sorts of entertainments created based on the past. Tunnel city has TV channel with it's own little trivia shows, news and movies found on the spaceship archives. Some people make hand made sport equipment and use it to play in the tunnels. For example urban golf is very popular among some groups in the lower classes. Other polular sports include basketball, bike racing and of course swimming.
Gliger - That's a good rendering. Keep going. Looking forward to your enviros.
appleseed00 - Well. There are many games based on Mars. No need to get discouraged. You can have your own unique take on it :)
What happened everybody? It got quiet in here. You guys need to be more committed if you want to do some worldbuilding :D.
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I had a small commission to do and also I decided to read as much as possible of the rifter trilogy by Peter Watts to get more into the subject. I didn't make any new graphics but there was one file on my hard drive I haven't posted. I tried doing some underwater rifle designs so that I could later put together illustrations with characters, weapons and environment. Those were inspired a little bit by the look of the spear gun (very thin and light) but also I looked at real life underwater gun. Russians designed one in 1970 and it's called APS (Avtomat Podvodny Spetsialnyy). What I found cool was the fact that due to different water pressure at different depts the range of the rifle changes. You can read more about that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APS_underwater_rifle
Also I was searching for some idea on how underwater combat could look like for inspiration and I only found out Call of Duty: Ghosts gameplay. I didn't like the guy's commentary but the whole sneaking thing, moving close to the ground, knife attacks was really cool. With all the underwater machinery and platforms there would be place for such attacks like diving straight onto enemy with knife or shooting at someone while being hidden in the ceiling. Those where my ideas when I was still thinking of Oceanarium as a tactical turn-based game. There's less use for that in PnP RPG.
Also something I thought about today. In case it won't work out with making a core rulebook for the game (I could run out of steam which happens a lot) I could still compose a small artbook in electronic format. This could work as a pitch for a game that I could use in some future.
5. (Nomads) In the early days of colonizing the planet some groups of people were restless and they wanted the freedom of moving from place to place. They stole few submarines and later learned to build their own big ones which can function as their homes. Sometimes they attack small mining colonies supporting the Nest. Nomads rarely dive if they can stay in their transport. They take great pride in being able to do that.
6. (Grays/Golems) Some corporations within the Nest being faced with lack of labor force decided to grow their own humans using genetic engineering. In order to make them distinctive from humans they were given gray pigment for the skin. Also Grays/Golems are mentally conditioned and engineered to be submissive and the lack gills which prevents them from being able to escape. Once in a while it turns out that among few hundreds of them there are few "faulty" ones and they have the will to escape and live independent life.
Thread bump! I've been working on developing a story for a webcomic, and for right now, I'm working on the world building part. I want to keep it going, so I made an influence map for here.
I also developed a few gods a while back. I have a bunch more minor gods written out, but these are the main ones that I've drawn:
Let's start with the fact that I have at least 3 projects that I want to complete, all of them worlds,it's going way slower than I could imagine, but I don't want them to die :) All of them are for videogames, 1 about Chinese mythology (which I'm going to post here), 1 sci-fi based on a book, and 1 is the most personal and weirdest one, and I'm still not quite sure what message do I really want it to have, even though I wrote a scenario and completed several works related to it already, it's on pause because I want to train my skills with the other 2 and to rethink the scenario.
While all that seems crazy amount of work, it's only theoretically doable if separated into small chunks,
so I attached my Mythology project description below.
I decided to post here because this way I need to keep my wips structured, in order for a potential viewer to be able to understand what's going on, which imitates the way I'd submit my work to a mentor or employer, or just a friend who's curious :)
I fel kind of lost and was starting to lose hope I'd finish any more works, so I'll just be posting here small steps.
I already have some sketches, will put them together and post later.
I'm starting with the protagonist, and certaintly intend to do creatures/supernatural characters,environments and illustrations will come into focus later if this project survives!
