A great evil arises! Wait, no, no just some concept art. By way of introduction- I am Todd Curtis and Matt brought me into this project to do concept artwork and whatever else I can manage. Now on to the interesting things.
I suppose I should start with the earliest and now abandoned concepts I developed. Matt quite rightfully reminded me I was about 200-300 years too advanced for what we had initially talked about, I am not entirely clear on how I forgot.
My focus for these initial images was to set distinct styles for the factions while relating them with architectural nuances. An example would be the domes shifting into peaked roofs, or the small slanted elements attached to the religious faction's buildings turning into the broad slanted sides and running roofs on the industrial buildings. Perhaps here would be a good moment to back up and explain that we have for the moment settled on two factions, the first is the industrial state and the second faction is motivated more by zealotry and reverence (I will come later more to what this reverence is directed towards).
Now then, after Matt's well deserved and effective verbal brick to the head (in actuality he was extremely kind in telling me I had completely forgotten the era we had discussed-Victorian to early industrial revolution) I moved to mock up a single building from each faction which would allow me to get more into detail and style rather than linking them in architectural elements. I started off with the industrial faction with the idea to sketch up a small factory for munitions. I knew I wanted the industrial faction to have a warmer color scheme, not grimy per say; but not entirely free of a form of tarnish brought on by the mass production and resource consumption. As a counter point to this I decided that while these factories would be pumping out smoke and pollution an interesting visual contrast would be to have the roofs be made of steel. This would provide a glint against the smoke and establish that this society both consumes resources readily and displays them proudly.
The religious faction evolved through our conversations to one which worships/sanctifies the ruins of an ancient civilization of a higher technological status than what currently exists in the world. Exactly how it operates or what it draws power from is not clearly known, but the devotees have developed ritualistic ways of operating some of the technology. More importantly for this post, the architecture of this faction features reclaimed ruins of the ancients. At times this inclusion is seamless, but just as often the ruins and buildings have to be attached together using steel and other industrial products. What I did not fully elaborate on in the following image, but will hopefully be more prominent as the designs progress is the tiling on these buildings, which I hope to render in an art nouveau style (I may be obsessed with Mucha, what of it?). You will also notice the color scheme is a direct opposing cool base to create a quick and obvious dichotomy.
More to come in the future, hopefully at regular intervals.
