Character Design Workshop || Environment and Context (Week 3)

This week we were tasked with combining several story elements together to create a contextual landscape that reflected this. My selected elements were the Renaissance in Venice (1450-1600), Mine, and eerie/strange.

I was initially taken by the idea of a classic gondola traversing a flooded mine, since dramatic structures that are found in real life that are often flaunted as tourist spots much the same way as the floating city is, in combination with the grandeur of Venice however, it still felt too western or rudimentary to suit purpose. 

So to exaggerate this idea I had presented, it was suggested that I could include numerous romantic sculptures like grotesques to the interior of the mine, which state of operation had been decided as exhausted as to fit with the idea of a secret underground society. This decision exaggerated the context to the point of strangeness which was missing in first iterations.

I feel as if this exercise has helped me understand the importance of reading into a picture beyond the ties of composition or skill, it is applicable to the sense that attempts to locate a relationship to the viewer in the same vein as a compelling force.