Character 1: Gaia
My first idea was inspired by an informational video about Cystic Fibrosis, and I began thinking about how illnesses that involve the lungs filling with fluid – despite draining the fluid, this only alleviates a symptom and does not treat the cause. It’s also something that must be done frequently to give the ill individual consistent relief. This line of wondering led me to an idea:
A woman with fluid slowly filling her lungs uses an apparatus to drain it through her airways to water a plant which she coddles and cares for.
The initial theme for this character was the fear of leaving nothing behind after dying, though my additional thoughts on the theme are the dilemma of having a progressive disease and wondering if your suffering has a point and disliking that there may be no purpose to what you’re going through, and finally, the wish to have a child and be a mother but being unable to.
This woman’s new drive, despite being a frail and ill character, is to care for these plants. She’s decided to give her disease a purpose and fulfil her maternal longing by caring for them as surrogate offspring. In my personal opinion, I think that’s a sad and possibly bittersweet and beautiful premise for a character and their story.
My initial rough ideas regarding this woman’s function in a game setting would be as a protagonist, and the game would be an understated experience set in a possibly post-apocalyptic environment but a quiet one; her main goal to be nurturing her plant (or plants maybe she’d have several) so that they’d survive and thrive, and hopefully outlive her.
Character 2: The Religious Archetype
After a dream about managing different aliases online bringing disaster to one’s personal life, I decided to sketch a dis-jointed face; two halves that do not belong together. While sketching it, I roughed out radial lines, since they seemed to compete the shape. This gave me an idea for a 2nd character.
After thinking about what this character’s purpose could be, I arrived at ‘religious archetype’. What if an Artificial Intelligence was built to become a religious figure or prophet, and was fed data and images of people engaging in religious worship within buildings like cathedrals, but misinterpreted these events are people worshipping the buildings themselves? With religious worship usually consisting of praying, hymns et cetera directed at a god or greater force that has no visual representation present, an A.I. could potentially assume that the most immediate tangible object – i.e. the structures the worship takes place in – were the objects of worship.
After this misinterpretation coming to fruition, the A.I. automaton would construct itself in the image of what it’s misunderstood people worshipping – after the form of religious buildings like cathedrals. From what I’ve seen of recent A.I. generated images, they’re often fragmented and produce imperfect generation. Designing this religious archetype with fragmented, dis-jointed elements and shape language would communicate its imperfect interpretation of religion.
Character 3: Burdened Soothsayer
After seeing a friend of mine accidentally spill glowing ashes on his palm, I had an idea for my third character. A small and unassuming ancient lady feels like the right tie-off for this 3-character showcase.
An elderly Soothsayer who reads ashes by sprinkling them onto her hands and interprets them like tea leaves.
A delicate old female soothsayer who’s wearing robes of vaguely Nordic/Northern European origin with blackened frail eyes/eye sockets. The Soothsayers burn things of significance to the person they’re trying to soothsay and read the embers as if they were tea leaves by sprinkling them onto their hand, so they have mottled, rough scarring patterns on their palms and wrists.
Themes: The weariness of knowing more than is normal for a human being, the burden of other people’s truths e.g. “He betrayed her child”. The pain of translating other people’s suffering.
No comments:
Post a Comment