General comments: I think that a project like this cool because it provides a theme that I know appeals to many people, and the general nature of the Steampunk genre seems to encourage individual creativity to the extreme. I had a story idea that is meant to merely provide a backdrop, and that at this point the real challenge is not the story itself, but the creation of a "piece of the world", the "neighborhood," and in that we would provide something that everyone could take for themselves and make more of, put their own little scenes and stories in. In essence, we would be making a world where many (in this case "we") live, so to speak, as a common environment, but where "we" would be able to make our own stories, just as every person on Earth has his or her own "story" in life.
I did throw some basic parameters as noted above, because it gives something with which to focus, and often people do like to build on each others' ideas. so that there would be a common thread on which we could all base things, and still allow for a lot of self-expression and development. Just as we all live on one "Earth", but still have a vast variety of individual contributions by the development of our own "world within", a city has common grounds, but involves many individuals who bring their own pieces to the city to make it what it is.
So, yes, as I have tried to say in my previous posts, individual contributions, ideas, thoughts, are what are most important. I put myself as the "leader of sorts," simply because it did start as my own personal brain-fart, but I do believe strongly that pooling ideas and all make such things much more fun, and in so doing it is much like building a world of individuality, within the confines of a common theme.
I think Raxx, $imon, and others comment and ideas are really great, and I wholeheartedly want to see them incorporated. In fact, I was quite hoping that such things would be exactly what would surface, as they fit perfectly with what is "being born" here.
$imon:Character Design: The humans are always better off "stylized," as, well, in my case, quite frankly I seldom get "purely realistic" down right. Besides, the stylization allows for a lot more personality development. The character I'm making is initially very low poly, and what you see in the image is a shows after a "subdivide faces" of 0.0 . And as yet, he hasn't really been "personalized." I do want to work a bit more on hands and feet exaggeration, of course. And then obviously, he's still needing wardrobe
City Design: I understand we have quite a variety of "cultural experience" in this project. I really don't have a good answer for the building style quandary. If there's any way to make things simply "old and generic", I would have to say try to stick with that. Buildings of brick and stone and wood.... I know that's no help, but maybe we can come to a consensus somehow? I put the sample pics up as they seemed to be somewhat generic in style, yet still showed a look of being born out of the past. One thing I do believe the storyline/history does allow, and is spelled out, is that the new birth of technology and travel bringing many parts of the world together, and in so doing, I think such a city would carry elements of various cultures... Just as a real city would.... Of course, being American, maybe I am limited to the American experience... where many ethnic groups form a city and provide their own influences in their parts of the community.
Raxx:The Meteor Element: Yeah, as you can see, I didn't name the rock... mainly because I didn't really want to pull up some fictitious name already in use. Anyone who comes up with an element name, could probably do better than Ariktheredium, right
? Since the "event" occurred prior to the proper development of elemental charts, the mineral would likely not even have to get a proper name that follows such things...
Characters:
The steampunk girl mechanic with her bike sounds awesome! I think that small, personal conveyance vehicles would be very popular in such a world. The dirigible I am making is intended for such things.
Corporate Development: That's a thought I had in my head, yes. Of course, part of the reason for the idea of the "Long Winter" was that such an event would tear apart most economic influences of the world, and with the clearing of the winter would, literally come a new birth, a new era, that would open up opportunities for new forms of both good and evil/bad things to rise.
Flexibility and Volunteers: I remember once being of the opinion that "you can't fire a volunteer," but then I worked for a private-non-profit agency where I found out you CAN fire volunteers
.. (bad joke, meant to laugh here).... Heck, I think it's great for flexibility... I hope that my outline and samplings provide a rough framework in which to design things and still allow a lot of room for creative license. As I've put in previous messages, I look forward to suggestions and all, and want more to see "cool results" than have someone worry to death over "not getting it right." From experience and knowing some of you well enough here in the forum, I know we (present company - self - excepted) are all intelligent, able to think and design and grasp ideas, likely quite good at adapting to concepts and still being able to express freely within the general outline of things.
I don't claim to be an expert on Steampunk. I know only what I've seen with imagery online, and a bit of other things, and get the impression that the genre allows for a huge area of individual interpretation. That's why I threw together the outline above, to lay a loose framework of explaining how the storyline I have in mind makes sense and gets to where it is.
All in all, I think this is really exciting. The ideas popping up so far are awesome!
