Worldbuilding Wednesday: Aquatic Architecture

One thing I haven't been able to do in quite a long time is simply sit around and toss ideas for characters, stories, what have you around. Back when I lived in Nova Scotia, I had a friend I'd do that with all the time, and it was totally a blast. So I thought why not bring that back, at least in blog form?

Basically, the idea is once a week I'll post some sort of "hook" to speculate about, and everyone who wants can jump in and kick in their $0.02 and see what develops. Hopefully I can keep this up as a regular fun-time thing, especially if the response is good.

So here goes. The topic I had in mind this week was assume a humanoid race living under the sea. Think mermaids, Aquaman, the Gillblins from WoW or whatever you like. Doesn't necessarily have to be Earth, although take what is typically found in Earth oceans as a base. Also assume some decent level of society where they'd want to build towns or cities, and build up a culture.

So, given all that, what would their buildings look like?

Honestly, i've never been a fan of stuff like The Little Mermaid or whatever (although it's a great movie) where everything is just shells and the like. I dunno, just making it all organic and looking like what's already on the sea floor seems a bit of a cop-out. Besides which, it also assumes (1) predators aren't an issue since most stuff is out in the open, (2) the builders are more into mimickry or re-use, rather than putting their own creativity into the mix, and (3) no particular need for privacy or other things that would make you want to have an "indoors" place to go.

So obviously, we'd want to talk building materials. Clearly there's no wood to be had, although depending on scale (the people might not be human-sized) there are undersea plants that could provide some materials. Loads of mud and silt down there, but something like adobe wouldn't really work since there'd be no way to bake it. Perhaps a novel approach to hardening clay to make, in essence, "pottery" buildings? It's a thought. My own approach would be more along the lines of masonry, which would suggest that any established culture would generate master stoneworkers. It's certainly present on the seafloor as much as anywhere else, and there are any number of things you could use as mortar from organic compounds to simply foregoing it and building based on detailed cuts.

As to the buildings themselves, obviously the concept of "street level" wouldn't mean much for a swimming culture. So while floors might exist, you'd expect residents and visitors to come and go at any level. So perhaps large openings, useable as both doors and windows. Perhaps domed structures would work as well, with entrances at the top rather than the bottom. Lots of possibilities there. Which of coure leads to the question of whether glass or other clear substance can be available, whether there's a desire to protect against ocean currents, is it in a region where heat/cold fluctuations are an issue, etc.

Great fun stuff to think about, don't you think?

Changed my mind

About Tumblr, that is. I'd heard it's a good place for posting images, so it sounded tailor-made for an art blog.

WRONG!

Yeah, I like the image uploading, but for the sort of thing I'm doing that's about it. As a social media tool, it's great. And it's fine for light blogging. Even better, it's fine for following a whole bunch of cool people in one place, reblogging their stuff with your own comments, etc. It's just not great for doing a dedicated sketch blog, like this one.

So for now, Blogger is where I blog.

In art-related news, I'm beginning to sense a trend. When I tell myself at the beginning of the summer I want to concentrate on developing certain skills, I will be totally off base. I told myself at the beginning of the summer that I wanted to concentrate on gestural animation and maybe go back to doing Vilppu studies.

What I'm actually concentrating on is anatomy (Bridgeman, Hampton) and cartooning. Go figure.

Here's some of the latter:

Wings of Barbecue

Well, the Xeno thing sort of died at the starting gate, but never mind. I've got enough on my plate at the moment without worrying about non-course related stuff.

Namely, composition. I've got an assignment in Drama class to do a drawing with characters exhibiting joy, sadness and anger as part of a single image that tells a story. So what to do? Well, it starts with clear storytelling, and that means composition first and foremost.

I'd been planning to study film and composition starting over the Xmas holidays, but this pushes my timescale up a bit. Whadda ya gonna do, eh?

Anyhow, I started tonight by doing thumbs based on scenes from the first 15 minutes of Wim Wenders' classic film, "Wings of Desire". Being a story about an angel who walks among humanity, there are a lot of lingering images of people in a variety of emotional states as the angel observes it all, which made it perfect for a bit of practice.

So here's the page I did earlier, before getting started on comps for the Drama assignment. They're a bit on the rough side to start, but toward the bottom two rows I was getting a better idea of where I was going with it.

Xeno 2

I'm sort of in the mood to redesign the Xeno characters a bit, but I'm not all that great at design. So I figure I'll just try drawing them every day, just post a doodle of one or another of them and post it here, see how it goes. I expect by next summer, they'll have evolved a bit without too much conscious prodding. There's something to be said for sheer volume and time.

Xeno

I'll just leave this here.

Love hurts when it punches your face

So yeah, I saw Scott Pilgrim vs The World today. And, honestly, so should you if you haven't seen it already. It's an absolutely fantastic movie, beginning to end, with great action, amazing dialogue, pitch-perfect humour, flawless timing, great music, and pop culture references that not only add the the movie if you know them, but doesn't detract from the movie if you don't. A+ on almost every aspect.

Almost, I said. So why did I say that? Well, let's take a look at the character interaction.

Scott interacts great with his band.

Scott interacts great with his gay roommate.

Scott interacts great with his sister and the foul-mouthed store clerk who seems to work everywhere in Toronto.

Scott interacts fantastic with his opponents, the Seven Evil Exes.

Scott interacts incredibly with Knives.

Everyone mentioned interacts well with each other too.

Hold on, something's missing here.

And that, folks, is the BIG GIANT FLAW in the whole damn movie. Scott interacts really crappy with Ramona, who's supposed to be this great love of his life. Really, it's like they're not a real couple at all, they're just people standing next to each other by chance, who kiss for some reason. I get Scott being fascinated, because she's a good character, hot, etc. I get Ramona being attracted (barely) because he's non-psychotic. But that's it. There's no chemistry, and we're never shown any real reason for them to be together in the first place.

Which is especially baffling, because he's great with Knives, and actually seems to be happy when they're together. Certainly there's chemistry there, which unfortunately highlights how little there seems to be between him and Ramona.

Is it enough to sink the movie? No. Not at all. It's still a fun, fast-paced, seriously geek-friendly movie that earns that A+ rating I gave it above, even if you do have to suspend your disbelief at the Scott/Ramona relationship.

Now, let's see Knives get her own movie, she was AWESOME!

Oh, and here' some sketches.

Sick in the head like Glenn Gould

More street stuff. I'm really liking the Bridgehead at Bank & Slater. Not for the atmosphere. The atmosphere there sucks, if you want that go to Bank & Gilmour, the Glebe, or the one on Dalhousie. They're all awesome. No, what I like this one for, a lot, is the sight lines. If you get a seat facing the windows near the door, you get a fantastic view of the crosswalks, and if it weren't for the construction there'd be the bus station too. Very nice for someone studying people moving the way I have been.

If I wanted to study people just sitting around, I'd only have to sit facing the other way, and there you go.

In any case, still trying to improve, still hard on myself when I don't. Nothing terribly new there.