The imaginary culture I’ve been working with this semester, as originally proposed, revolved around the idea of a society addicted to technology. I’ve waivered back and forth over whether I wanted to stick with this concept, but at this point in the academic calendar, it feels weird to bail on it. We’re so close to the end, might as well see it through.
The assignment this time was to create a “tunnel book” depicting the main thoroughfare of our fictional society. My culture isn’t that far removed from contemporary society, aside from the fact that they’re gelatinous blob people, like humanoid Gummy Bears. As such, I figured their city streets wouldn’t look much different from our own. I wanted to depict some kind of significant event happening behind a populace too distracted by their devices to notice. I went through multiple iterations of what this “event” might be, from nuclear attack, or an impending asteroid strike, to a rampaging Godzilla. As is so often the case, my grand ideas were quickly mitigated by my skillset and my supplies, so none of those came anywhere close in execution to what they were in my mind. I took stock of what I still had available to me, and noticed that while I’ve burned through tons of construction paper this semester, I’ve barely touched the red colored sheets. And thus, Main Street was visited by the giant, disembodied head of the Devil himself.
In retrospect, I should have been more conscientious of the whole while constructing this thing. I planned it out pretty well in advance, but didn’t take the time to spot check the way the various panels were playing off of each other as I went along. Because of this, the various pages feel much more cramped than I was anticipating, which flattens the feeling of depth and obscures some of my background elements. I also wish, having now viewed my classmate’s versions of this project, that I’d been a bit more ambitious and elaborate with my designs. I stuck to very simple, rudimentary shapes as I knew I could comfortably cut them out of paper. If I ever do this again, I’m going to pony up the $2 for a scalpel and try to ramp up the complexity.
(Click to advance images)