#fantasyenvironments

The Temple of Memories was the first world I designed for Shambhala: The Ascension Protocol, and it remains the most personal.

I imagined it as an ancient structure, half temple, half laboratory, hidden in the roots of sacred mountains. The world outside had forgotten this place. But inside, memories still hummed in broken machines, cracked glyphs, and glowing fragments of old technology.

The temple is where the children are hidden. Where the Old Man carries the last embers of a dying dream. It had to feel both sacred and broken, a place where past and future crash into each other.

Visually, I drew inspiration from crumbling temples in India, the hidden ruins seen in movies like Sahasam, and the vast, lonely laboratories of Kalki 2898 AD. The lighting had to be mournful soft beams cutting through dust, relics barely illuminated, and echoes trapped in stone.

In this world, players don’t just find artifacts. They find questions about what was lost and what must be remembered.

Every world in Shambhala: The Ascension Protocol needed its own emotional heartbeat. Mood and color were my secret weapons to guide the players’ emotions silently.

The Temple of Memories uses muted earth tones, with shafts of dusty light inspired by Sahasam and ancient Indian ruins. It evokes sorrow and hope entwined. The Seven Thantras change drastically: fiery reds for the desert, icy blues for frozen wastelands, and soft ethereal whites for mist realms, capturing fear, struggle, doubt, and endurance. Shambhala City explodes into radiant golds, soft whites, and vibrant blues, evoking triumph, peace, and transcendence.

Movies like Dune, Kalki 2898 AD, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Uncharted were major influences on this language of light and darkness. I studied how those worlds used saturation, shadow, and silence to speak emotionally without a single word.

In Shambhala, light is memory. Color is emotion. Every scene doesn't just tell players where they are; it tells them how to feel about where they are.

I AM SO EXCITED this book arrived!!! Dr. Seuss is one of my favorites, and a primary inspiration for fantasy environments. See this spread from Happy Birthday to You (1959), for example:

I have long felt Dr. Seuss was an artist proper (whatever that means), and always scour his book for fantasy environment ideas. When I happened upon the pretentious Chuck Jones Gallery in Santa Fe this summer on my arts road trip I was ELATED to discover so much never-seen-by me Dr. Seuss art!! The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss was on the shelf, and I knew I had to get a copy. SO! Mine copy has arrived. 

I like this piece, Landscape, for its fantasy environment aspects:

I especially like that pool of water with a ship in it in the upper right. As in the image above from Happy Birthday, it’s a “water in container”-type feature, which I am very attracted to and I don’t know why. I also like the railroad track running through, which, like the pool, creates dimension in the land. The railroad reminds me of Carolwood Pacific Railroad, the miniature railroad Walt Disney created in his backyard. 

But... what’s up with that naked lady lying under the railroad? I noticed a definite disturbing pattern in this secret art of Seuss: just straight-up sexism. All the female figures are either sexual objects (naked boobie bodies)—

Wtf?

—or sad because they are old, or dead.

Gosh, Do I Really Look as Old as All That! (1961)

There’s also a sense that females are risky or dangerous to be with, as shown in the untitled piece above with the mousetrap hammer apparatus, and in A Man Who Has Made an Unwise Purchase (1967):

I can’t say that birdlike animal (which is pretty, and I like it, and I like the atmosphere) is definitely female, but it could be seen as feminine. 

All this female objectification got me kinda bummed out about Seuss’s secret art, but there was also a lot of color and texture that I enjoyed. 

That last one is titled Lonely, and it’s quite lonesome.