About S&C

Putting all of this together is (of course) harder than I thought.  Of course, I'm also a perfectionist and slightly OCD . . . so, really, you're lucky to be getting any updates.  

Every visual concept needs a back story, at least for me.  And while the main goal isn't really to completely hammer out all of the details of this particular story, I do want to start with a solid framework for all of the visual stuff that is coming along (and it really is coming, I promise!).  

The story takes place in an alternate universe (obviously) where the world is divided into allied city-states (ACS).  For years these small states have had to band together to fight against an enemy that travels to their world through a rift in time and space.  The rift is, in appearance, a constant inpenetrable storm located across the northernmost states.  It is impossible to navigate and very few have entered the storm to find their way back alive - or sane.  

However, the people from the other side of the rift have been sending companies of soldiers through the rift waging a slow, but unrelenting attack on the different states who might stand in their way.  No one knows why they come through the rift, what they want or the cause behind their tireless war on the ACS.  Technologically, they are far more advanced than the ACS - who for the most part distrust mass production because of some vaguely remembered tragedy from the far past.  Fortunately, the rift does not allow the invaders to cross with some of their more dangerous technology or with the massive number of troops they are capable of sending. This handicap has been the only thing that has kept the ACS from being overthrown.  

Because of this state of nearly constant war, many if not all of the city-states require their citizens to spend a certain amount of time in the military.  

Now, it comes about that something else has started coming through the rift - a creature that no one in the ACS has ever seen or heard of before.  Once the governments become aware of it they assign a young captain to put together a team of researchers and soldiers to investigate the creature and where it is coming from and why.  

The captain and his team enlist an old family friend to investigate.  She and her team, who were working on a project in the south have been stalled for quite some time because of budget cuts and bureaucratic red tape.  They jump at the chance to look into something new in the meantime and travel with the captain's team up north to the area where the rift is and the creature has been sighted.  

The captain's orders go a little beyond research, though. Information the government leaders have been receiving suggests that the creature is hostile, completely destroying anything in it's path. The groups main purpose - which he has not shared with scientists - is to find a way to destroy the creature as well as finding a way to close or destroy the rift.


So that's the foundation that everything is going to be built on. I'll post some more of the story as I develop more of the art.