Visual Development for the world of SISENEG
The world of SISENEG is a fictional post-apocalypse world where where things lose gravity and ascend from Earth. What remains for the characters to reside in is not not a dystopian wasteland nor a punk society, but a playground of melancholy, nostalgia, and warmth.
Location
Character
Set
Location Design
My goal for the project is to craft compelling visuals that evoke deep emotions in the audience throughout the experience. I aim to create illustration-like and immersive environments that complement the apocalyptic world where two children live, embodying both innocence and cruelty. Through the themes of loss and melancholy, I hope the audience can discover a sense of hope and comfort.
The Underground Laboratory
A highly industrialized and futuristic-looking space left by top scientists who once aimed at saving the world from losing its belongings. Though they didn't achieve that goal, they have successfully invented the quantum computer to calculate and predict the next thing to become extinct, a powerful anchor chains system to hold things on earth, and an android capable of using them.
The Barn and Grassland
A worn but cozy living area for the girl and the android. Located at an open grassland on the outskirts of a city ruin, It used to be a coverup for underground research. Now it has been decorated into a home. Unlike ordinary children who own a toy box in their home, the girl has something different. Her 'collections' are hanging in mid-air, chained to the ground around the barn. Those are the things that are supposed to have lost gravity and flown to the sky. However, she does not want to LOSE those things carrying important memories -- toys received on special days, souvenirs, even remains of life. Although the girl was born in the apocalypse, she doesn't understand what it is to be dead. She keeps everything she treasures on the end of the chains anyway. That's why there are dry flowers, skeletons of her pets, a dead tree she used to swing with her parents, and the bodies of scientists, including her parents.
Tree
Although the android is intelligent enough to react to real-time emotions, she doesn't feel about memory. When the android finds out that the girl’s inevitable fate of death, she remembers the first time she met the girl in the lab, the family picnic under the tree, and the day all grown-ups left the Earth, but the girl asked the android to chain them to the ground. The android realized that she wouldn't know what being alive feels without the girl.
In the Air
Seeing the girl departing from the ground, the android hesitates. She wanted to mimic what the girl did to her treasures -- chain them onto the ground so she could never forget her. However, the image of the girl's lifeless body flashes through her mind. She realizes that she will be nothing but an object without the girl living by her side and translating the meaning of life to her. Finally, she unchained all the girl's belongings, including the tree. The android climbs on the tree and leaves the earth with everything. She floats to the girl in mid-air, going up and up.
Character Design
Cyborg as a Metaphor
In Donna Haraway’s Cyborg’s Manifesto, She uses a cyborg, a fictional being made of artificial, organic, and even humane substance, as a metaphor to deny rigid dualism that encourages exclusiveness and domination.
“The cyborg is not a figment of the imagination, it is a living, breathing, and messy reality that disrupts traditional, simplistic dualities of mind/body, human/machine, and nature/culture.”
The Girl - Organism
The Android - Machine
Set Design
SISENEG’s world is full of loss. Lost memories, lost history, lost loved ones. How does one tell something is from the past and lost in time? By the look of its rusty surface, a yellow film filter, or an outdated design?
In the world of SISENEG, it’s the state of floating.
AI generated images of 'interiors of a cozy old barn' by midjourney
