Christopher Leone's latest update for Champions of the Third Planet

Feb 17, 2016

Hello Champions!

I thought I’d share some inspirational images I’ve been collecting as reference for CHAMPIONS OF THE THIRD PLANET.

I’m always collecting reference images for myself to use as a director. Sometimes I’m looking for something specific, sometimes I just stumble across an image I like and tuck it away.

For the opening image of the book, I loved the idea of the clash of a perfect black sphere sitting in a natural organic environment. Something about it feels wrong, a little off-putting. So I thought I’d share some of the pictures I’ve grabbed that tap into that idea -- none of them are an exact match but all of them ring that bell for me.

This artist is Simon Stalenhag and he’s brilliant, I just ordered his book. The size of this sphere seems about right and I love seeing it with the human scale.

Presumably this is just a wrecking ball but somehow, seeing it just sitting there in the woods jumped out at me as slightly spooky.



This is the inverse of what I was thinking -- a glowing Orb in a dark forest -- but it made me wonder if the Orb might light up or create an energy field when it took off...



...which made me think of an eclipse. The light behind the moon here makes the Orb looks blacker than space, which I thought was a cool idea.

I have a bunch more reference, especially for the next chapter I put up: it’s when the kids first land on the Dead Planet.

--Chris
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