"Only the most maniacal will conquer!"
For my theme I'm playing off of a fantasy that everyone holds deep down in their hearts: The desire to conquer the world with our own personal robot army. In "Robot Army" you are a mad scientist scheming and building your army of androids to enslave humanity. Robots, armies, and mad scientists are all elements of my theme that would fit well into a more serious and gritty sci-fi motif, but I want to take a more lighthearted approach. Maybe it's the fact that I was born in the 90's but for me things like mad scientists, robots, and conquering the earth bring up images of Saturday morning cartoons like Dexter's Lab and Invader Zim. The main characters in both of these shows had lofty ambitions and schemes of a scientific nature, that in real life could have seemed very serious. However, what really worked about both cartoons was the way in which the serious situations the characters found themselves in was juxtaposed with things like the cartooniness of the art style and the characters' wacky personalities.
A great example of this motif can be seen in both Dexter's Lab's opening and closing songs.
Both songs reflect the idea I mentioned above. The songs, like Dexter in the cartoon, take themselves too seriously. They're both very dramatic musical pieces,and this same drama makes them over the top and silly.
The mad-genius science theme of Dexter's lab is also reflected in the art style.
The art is very angular, clean, and calculated.
This clean art style is also reflected in other cartoons with science and robots as the theme. Here are some examples from Invader Zim and My Life as a Teenage Robot.
Invader Zim:
My Life as a Teenage Robot:
At first I thought about going with a monochromatic color palette for my game, but I don't think that reflected the theme I mentioned earlier so I ended up with this analogic palette. I feel like these are colors you could find both in a chemistry lab and a cartoon, so they seemed to be a good fit.
No comments:
Post a Comment