this story has evolved and I'm sure it will continue to evolve over time but this where I'm happy with it now.
It is set in a black and which city which mimics the 1930's in its look except for the fact that its populated entirely by robots. The only colour in the cityscape comes from the chest plates of robots that have fallen in love and now bear a glowing heart in the centre of their torso.
In the story the tone/mood starts out very sombre but gradually lightens up as the story begins to pick up pace. It then darkens once more until the end where a more light-hearted tone takes over as we get a happy ending
The main characters in the story are M.A.R.K, a lonely taxi driver whom no one ever acknowledges and has done everything but give up, and S.A.L.L.Y who is an office worker in a parts supply company who has not yet found love in her life but yet is still a happy, up beat person.
here is a summary of the story:
M.A.R.K is a taxi driver bot and after a long period of time he has began to hate his job and now trudges around with no real purpose. Continuing on his normal route one day he comes across a female robot, S.A.L.L.Y. Instantly he is taken aback by her surprise interest in him and they begin to talk and bond the whole trip (which conveniently hits a lot of traffic along the way) and evidently there is something between them. however they reach the end of the journey, S.A.L.L.Y gets out and M.A.R.K is left alone for a few minutes when all of a sudden his chest plate begins to flash a little red heart. At first he is confused but he then realises what it means. instantly he springs out of the taxi and begins to run after her. bumping and pushing his way through the streets he finally spots her across the road and runs out without looking and is hit by a car. A few days later he is awoken in the repair centre to footsteps leaving his room, he looks over and can see some flowers which have just been rustled. thinking it was S.A.L.L.Y he leaps up and out of the room only to discover it was just a doctor. A few weeks later M.A.R.K returns to his job once again with his heart still flashing but not as quick anymore. A few minutes into his shift he approaches the place where he first met S.A.L.L.Y and he can see a small red dot far off in the distance. Not thinking much of it he gets closer to the dot. As it nears he can make out more of the figure and as he gets there he can see that the red heart belongs to S.A.L.L.Y who has been waiting in this spot for two weeks waiting for him to come by again. She gets into the cab and they drive off, chatting away like they had never been apart.
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because of the look I want for this piece I have initially looked at the 'Noir' genre. I chose this to look at because I know that the style mainly focus' on black and white imagery and so it was a good starting point. So far I have have looked at noir artists that focus on painting, comic art, animation and some other areas picking up a lot of references along the way. I have compiled what I deem to be the best references to what I want in to an initial mood board which contains a look at style, colour, some robotics and character design:
- In this I have many examples of noir comic books including 'She died in terrabonne', Alois Nebel and Desolation Jones. These all have different styles within the noir genre but combined I can see then looking like what I want my story to look like.
- I also have references Noir films such as pulp fiction and the shadow. What I like about these films if that they are almost entirely black and white except for a few accents of colour such as the shadows tie. this ties in to my idea of one accent of colour amongst a black and white city.
- For character designs I looked at actual robots that have been created to date such as 'Myon' and 'Eccerobot' so that my characters (in the bottom right) could almost be evolutions of these robots. I also didn't just want to pluck the look of the robot out of nowhere.
- I have also included colour schemes in this which support the idea of a range of black, whites and greys in the city with the one stand out colour, red.
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I have also created a poster for my short story which contains the setting and initial incarnations of my characters. I took a lot of references for this from many areas including painting and comic book art. All references can be seen in the previous post by clicking the link:
HERE
I chose a combination of all of these references to create my poster as I feel it is not from just one of these that I will base my style but a mix of these would actually create what I can envision my piece looking like.
There is a lot of references to comics and comic book artists and I chose to look at noir posters to get a sense of what typography to use. I like the combination of two typefaces, one more noir looking and the other more futuristic, I think they help symbolise how I want this piece to be, a noir (30's) look with a futuristic story.
here is the completed poster:
