From Whom The Bell Lies Within: Historical Visuals
Hello and good evening to those who stumbled upon this post and others who chose to follow this blog for reasons unknown. Today on this particular post, I wanted to dive alittle deeper into a more personal view of the Zodiac Universe's historical timeline and it's power over the visuals of Earth. You may ask, what nonsense am I on about? I'll explain as we go.
Starting with the beginning of proper sentient life being roughly around the Stone Age. Do be warned, there are not humans in this universe but instead anthropomorphic animals that came to be due to a strange phenomenon that caused the these animals to evolved significantly different. Being able to function with bipedal in mind yet very much act, move and survive exactly as their real world counterparts. What that means is the artstyle for this era has a very detailed yet artistic design closer to a science textbook or work akin to Peter Zallinger and Rod Ruth's illustrations. As seen below:
This art direction, however, does not stay like this as many centuries down to the middle ages, the artstyle changes to resemble illustrations and artwork from the era. Bright colors and whimsically odd shapes and designs as seen below here:
The next change in artstyle happens during the 1700s where the artstyle now resembles that of illustrations from storybooks and articles during the 18th and 19th century. As seen below here:
Now the fascinating part about these artstyle changes is that the character designs are meant to show that as the eras transition, the character designs slowly look less realistic and look more akin to a cartoon or animated show that we're accustomed to. This is visible during the 20th century as anthropomorphic characters gradually start having more fantasy bipedalism. A good example being digitigrade legs slowly fade away as generations go to have legs similar to humans. Of course, their actual feet still being accurate to the animal they are in the real world.
This shows that as history goes by, these anthropomorphic characters are evolving significantly past their more real world and lifelike attributes and becoming more softer to the eyes and fictional the closer to modern day. Now you may or may not wonder if this means the artstyles clash. Weeeellll, depending on the scenarios and locations, the artstyles can clash and interact to show differences between the characters' designs, time periods, cultures and philosophy. An example of this being a red deer from good ole' 1864 Lambeth coming face to face with red fox spirit allegedly from the 13th century. The deer drawn in a primitive yet professional sketch style such as from a newspaper. Old fashioned with little to no color and basic black lines. As for the spirit, drawn with slight exaggerated shapes, curves and body features to indicate the far more whimsical outdated exaggeration of medieval art. Of course, being a spirit adds more enchantment and weirdness such as a nightlight style of glow and a faint reflective shine.
To conclude this bizarre topic for tonight, the Zodiac Universe relies on visuals to portray the themes, the locations, set pieces, characters and emotions. Making events such as interactions, fights, setting the mood and bloodshed all the more compelling and effective. Perhaps one day, I should learn how to draw to attempt at how these artstyles interact and very. But for now, that's all I can share. Farewell travelers!
