“Although its core was dying before being impregnated
by Zeus’ inebriated sperm, the planet Oo’tarus still contained one of the
largest varieties of elements in the universe. The number is in the thousands,
which, in comparison to Earth’s 115 elements, is incredible.
As Zeus’ millions of sperms bored their way through
the planet’s inner layers en route to its core, they mixed with the multiple elements
of Oo’tarus, each sperm melding with these different elements before they
reached the planetary womb, thus making each embryo a completely unique little
baby snowflake, their genetic makeup dictated by what element (or elements) the
celestial sperm combined with. This, I mean, is according to legend…”
I spent all day researching,
making and re-making a periodic chart of the elements of the dying planet of
Oo’tarus. I did this for 3 reasons:
Number 1:
This whole project is about challenging myself, as well as directing myself. I
want to give myself as much possible ammo and information and mythology as I
can in order to guide the art aspect of the world. Without context, there’s no
direction, and without direction, there’s total freedom, which, in some cases
is good, but because I’ve felt stagnant lately and repetitive with my art,
giving myself “total freedom” could just mean that there’s TOO many options and
therefore I would get overwhelmed and I might default to designing the same
stuff I’ve been creating that’s making me feel stuck.
Number 2: All
babies need formula. And in the case of Thunder Babies, I NEEDED a formula. A creation-formula.
Which leads me to Number 3: The documentary “American
Movie” is about Mark Borschardt, one of the most passionate filmmakers ever,
and his 6-year LONG quest to make a SHORT film. There are a million amazing
quotes in it, but one of them revolves around the crew erecting scarecrows onto
a set that they aren’t even shooting on. When asked why Mark is having them do
that, he assertively says “to keep the troops motivated”. That’s why I made
this. I need to stay motivated while I figured things out. I woke up, and was
stuck on trying to figure out how to explain what these “Thunder Babies” would look like. More importantly, I was stuck on
trying to create a solid direction while at the same time giving myself a blank-enough
canvas for me to explore different art techniques and an open-enough subject
matter for me to experiment with different visuals. I needed to make a
“controlled-but-unlimited-foundation” to build off of. Does that make sense? Or
am I an asshole? I guess either way it doesn’t matter at this point. So I came
up with a formula, and while I am dwelling on the visual aspects of the Thunder
Babies, I made a chart to go along with the formula just “to keep me
motivated.”
Here is the formula:
And here is a partial sampling
of the periodic table of elements found within the planet of Oo’tarus, from
which all of the Thunder Babies will be genetically forged from (in addition to
the unarguable power of god-sperm).
Now, on to making babies…
Missed the previous days? Catch up here:
