I had been thinking about ‘alienation’ and how this could inform my ‘alienated’ death character. I could research animalistic, organic, plantlife, sea creatures etc to inform the characters form.
And on this thought, I went to bed. In the early hours of the following morning I experienced a really vivid dream in which a carniverous plant was literally singing out ‘hallelujah”…
Taking this as a starting point, I felt that the tuberous like ‘throats’ were alien-like and that they also made sense practically as they spoke to organ pipes and the fairground as well as the singing of the operatic arias.. which to those unfamiliar with opera is the most alien aspect of the operatic experience. How do opera singers achieve such an amazing sound? It made me think about air flow and string vibration.
I then started to look for photographic references that could inform my concept designs. I was looking for something similar to that which I had seen in my dream. The image above is Purple Pitcher plant Sarracenia Pupurea flower.
In my research I discovered a really interesting symbiotic mutualistic relationship between the Pitcher Flower and the Bat.
I had been reading about how to design a boss character in games in FX Magazine, and in the article the artist makes reference to creating a weakness in the character that could be attacked. The artist decided that a floating gem that occasionally appeared around the boss, could represent that weakness.
I began to think that bats, flying around my alien death character could serve the same purpose.
On reading the bat-pitcher research paper I was reminded by the beacon technology research I had read last year and began to wonder if there had been any technological development in this sonic interaction. This led to reading about bio – sonar inspired technology and ecolocation
This led me to research whether there has been aby development in sonar/beacon hybridisation. This resulted in the discovery of this paper Bio Sonar Reflectors as guiding beacons for autonomous navigation.
(This led me to thinking about Yosef and his driverless car development !)
So, using this research and having dug deeper into the ‘alienated’ death concept; I can start to develop a back story for this character. This will inform the ‘costume’ and props. This will help to place the character in the Lunarium world.
I am also thinking about the room in which I want to place Alienated Death and how this could be initially a completely dark cave with many echoing bats. I also need to include aspects of the Don Giovanni narrative as this will be presented in the music track.