Chosen World

We eventually decided to use the idea of a city populated by people who dissipate when they come in contact with shadows.

The background storey for this world is people who are caught in cast shadows are transported to “The Dark Place”, a place that people are transported to for an indefinite amount of time. To get back from the darkness you have to walk off the edge of the “Dark Space”. Some people can walk off the edge quickly but for some people it can take months or years, some people never return. The city has two suns and no moon, making the days longer and the nights more intense.

A large amount of the city’s resources are put towards scientific research in trying to discover how some return from the light and others don’t, creating continuous forms of light and a system to distribute it throughout the city.

Another major part of the city’s attempt to keep the light in the city is the capture of wolves that live in the surrounding forest and the extraction of their light for the residents. This job is difficult and dangerous as the forest is full of shadows and the wolves are very vicious.

My major role in the group is the construction of the city. The initial idea is a sprawling city, made of glass, surrounded by a glass wall to protect from wolves. In the city there is a central spire, containing the government and a beacon for a future continuous light source. The whole city is separated into business and residential districts, extending out from the central spire.

World and Backstory Brainstorm

•Cakeworld
oCake decorations came to life and formed tribes/factions
oEg: ball bearings, figurines, flowers
•A universe where radio waves are visible
oAlso soundwaves
oSeen as colours
oLoud/clashing noises cause visibility problems
•If Disney characters where alive and living under the Disney Studios
oWould they age?
oAre their temperaments like how they are on screen?
•Space station
oYou have to defeat the king of the robotic boars to make you station functional and complete the mission
o100years into a 300year journey
•Everyone lived on the moon
oDue to global warming?
•Humans are stuck on massive space station because of a massive global disaster
oStuck with no home
•Global community
oInternational ID system as a chip in the hand
ID, trackable access finances etc
oSup-culture of people with no chips
•City where people change form/dissipate when they are left in the dark
oHave to rely on a constant light source
oNo electricity

Digital Alchemy

I began by looking at other digital artists and their take on what the future holds. I especially like the work of Patricia Piccinini and Chi Peng. Piccinini focuses on the melding of machinery/technology and nature/humans, while Chi Peng concentrates more on ancient culture and how modern life and technology changes it.






I started looking at photographs from our family trip to New Zealand for inspiration. I chose a large sweeping landscape to start with and put water over the sky, implying that the future earth will be under water. I liked the indicial idea but could not see how I could evolve it without seeming clichéd with spaceships or extra planets in the sky.


I then looked at the idea of placing machinery inside a tree. I used an original picture of a tree from New Zealand and placed cogs in its branches to suggest a mechanical element to its functioning. In order to make all the cogs fit together I erased every second cog in some places to make their function seen more plausible.


I also made the cog layers “screen” so it is possible to simultaneously see the cogs and tree, implying that the machinery is inside the tree. On top of that I also reduced the transparency of cogs that were further away from the viewer.

Packaging

For this assignment I began by going to Coles choosing a selection of confectionary wrappers to be redesigned such as Fry’s Turkish Delight, Wrigley’s PK chewing gum, Cadbury Whip etc. I decided to choose PK because its design was so simple, it would be easier to redesign without thinking about the actual packaging.

I began researching other existing chewing gum packages mainly to look at colour and the themes of the design. I do not understand why horses are part of the packaging in multiple chewing gum brands! I also went back to Coles to look at designs on boxes, rather than packets that sweets normally come in.

I began my design for the PK box with the template, as a 5 pack, which is available in Coles, will allow me to put all the necessary information on it that is not present on the individual wrappers. I began looking at stretching & repeating the logo, but this was not very successful. I then decided to look at using brightly coloured bubbles instead. I chose pale, bubble gum colours to accentuate the product but without making it too cheesy.

I then used the same colours to create the PK logo and added larger circles behind the original bubble pattern to add depth. I also began looking at the list of components that should be present in the packaging such as the repeated logo, net weight etc and crossing them off as I put them on.

The most time consuming part was retyping/redrawing all the nutritional information, barcode etc because scanning the information would not have produced results of the same quality. After a colour printing trial i decided to make the colours brighter, because they were too pale and weak when they were printed. I also had major problems with the image wrapping with the circles. This took a couple of days of tweaking to get right.