World Premise
This is the beginning of a project I've been on the fence of launching for some time now. This probably reads as a new years resolution post, but for some time I needed a large project to dump my efforts into to exercise my skills as an illustrator and dive headfirst into a new world. This is the story of the Rift Between Worlds, a place where everything exists at
the same time, and the months of the year are embodied as powerful figures that rule over all of it. I puts my mind in the realm of the zodiac, but I wanted them to feel larger and lonelier, so I wanted to put them into a world that was so vast that it overwhelmed you with loneliness and beauty, a parallel to death. This is a warning that reading these behind the senes diaries will spoil the overall plot.
When I was brainstorming themes to wrap this world that the months would exsit in, one of the more interesting creative branches I decided to pursue was wrappaed around the proof of belief. The proof "If someone believes in everything, then they believe in nothing" was interesting to me, so with the train of thought with the months, zodiac, belief or any sort of power in the universe, I replaced the subject of belive and switched it with things. The new statement became "If you are in a place where everything exsits then you must be in a place where nothing exsits at all." Meaning the utimate conclusion for the world I am portraying is an afterlife, or death, and that became my world premise.
Exploring the World Between Rifts
So now the world I wanted to portray had a naritive cause, and I needed to choose a visual stylization for the after life. I took the majority of my artistic direction from music artist and visuals and it served as a creative foundation and roadmap of what I wanted to create.
I have always been loved the visual artist for Porter Robinsons Worlds David Aguado. David Aguado has this ability to portray landscapes with an iconic but nameless look, as if you just peaked into a seperate dimention that is so distant from our own that it makes you wonder what exists just beyond the next frame. Names from songs like fresh static snow, and polygon dust made me wonde what type of worlds would those phenomena occur in. Concept albums like Mercurial World from Magdalena Bay ask questions surrounding the ends, beginings. Kind, etherial, disembodied voices leading you through dark places to the end of your journey. Madeons live shows portray armies and have hints towards secret rebellions against what seem to be a world wide cult. Madeon is someone that took his visuals to the next level by hiding secrets in them leading people on augmented reality journeys.
Introducing elements like these into a universe was something I wanted this world to embody with a mix of longing for existential dread. Gathering visual references was paramound, and my moodboard keeps expanding. Images I would have leaned on changed. Dynamic landscapes like Mount Targon from Lengends of Runeterra gave me a starting point but I ended up pushing further than that than I thought. The main takeaway from those landscape illustrations was that I needed my landscapes to feel like the rules of nature here were different here.
Figuring out what isn't is just as important as figuring out what is. Attempting landscapes that needed to portray what I needed was a challenge. I knew that most of what I developed would not make the final cut but it was important to explore, and developing reasons for these landscapes would add to the story of this World Between Rifts. Design descicions that really made me think was adding in designs that exsisted between nature and architecture. Did some one live there or was it a ritualistic structure. A hanging entity was something else that made me think twice. I knew if I needed to paint something living in the landscapes then it would need to look powerful but at the same time subservient to the entities that were the months of the year. It made me realize that if it was floating, then it had to be in line with the surrounding nature becuuse it was supposed feel like a product of and a protector of that region. Questions that still need to be answered exsist in the relm of civilizations and ruins. It took me a couple days to figure out how to paint landscapes like this more efficiently, but by the end of the week I was able to describe moods better and quicker. by the end of the first exploration I decided that I will refine one of these to make a website header.
January Explorations
January has been a great challenge to design. The world she exists in is a sad one. Her story is the battle with the end as she is the begining of everything. January is a creator and in front of her everything blooms and comes to life, but behind her things die. January does not see life when she creates, she only sees it's inevitable end. She is a soft faun inspired entity whose worshipers love and inquisitors envy and intend to strip her from her power.
her first designs were too reagal and flashy, and she needed to be portrayed as the life she brings and as the death that inevitably follows. For January to be a character that is always focused on her grim future I realized that I needed to step away from the flashier costume designs that I was initially thinking of and switched it out with a much more worn wardrobe that made it look like she was more depressed. So instead of silk, her material became worn cotton, scared leather, and old gold. It was fun to explore the type of character that was light on her feet but heavy in her heart.
The next step in the development phase is to finish a splash style illustration depicting January in her element. the remainder of the month will be dedicated to finishing this and the story with how January intends to gain an audience with the moon.
The moon
The moon is the character that makes this world between rifts go round, but the final visual has of this character has not been nailed to the ground yet. The character exists in mystery and has existed long enough to see many other entities come and go as beings that embody the months of the year.
additional sketches below
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