Behind the Scenes: Survival Base

This time, I wasn't struck by a sudden inspiration or popular reference. I had to really dig in to find a motivation to create something. As I explained few times, I keep a list of interesting ideas, that I fill in regularly. But it's still not easy to pick the next thing. Sometimes I would just stare at the list and can't see anything that excites me. 

At times like that, I still have to show up and make something to meet my content and posting schedules, so what I do is go really methodical. I have my ideas organized in few categories based on style and format. So, for example I might have a category for isometric interior scenes, or the perspective environments and buildings. 

And if I really can't decide, I just scroll through some of my recent posts and pick the category, that didn't get much love recently. 

So I opened the buildings and environments category and checked the entries. Modern architecture home. Next. Chicago gangster hideout. Nah. Container home (like in Ready Player One). Hm, wait. There might be something.

Visit the full Pinboard here

For some reason, that last entry sparked something. I didn't necessarily wanted to create exactly that, but lately I've been watching some survival gameplay videos and it somehow connected with this. What if I created an improvised post apocalyptic home mashed up from containers and sustainable energy tech?

And just like that, from seeing blank and feeling uninspired, by following a simple and proofed unemotional method, I landed on something that excited me. Discovered a drive hidden underneath all the time pressure and daily chores.

What I'm trying  to say is, that you don't need (and shouldn't) wait for inspiration. Setting goals and deadlines for yourself, and then showing up for work is often enough to get by, and even has a potential to spark your interest in an unexpected way.

I went to explore this idea and created a Pinterest board to gather all the resources. I mostly searched for survival ideas and one of the first things I discovered was an image of the nuclear bunker. Wouldn't it be cool to kinda build this container mashup on top of the old bunker?

I started roughly sketching some layout ideas. I place the bunker peeking out of a small hill and imagined the rest of the compound built on top. I also saw some water tanks in references, so I sketched in a really large one in the back to balance out the composition.

As for the containers, I laid them out on top of each other perpendicularly with a support pillar for the top one. To fill out th rest of the composition, I placed a cloth tent on the left and sketched in a parked truck.

I went played around with the scale and proportions a bit and then just moved on to fill the place with some details like electric poles and breaker boxes, comm devices and energy collectors for solar and wind. The rest was balanced by placing some foliage and filling in smaller details to create interest.

You can watch the process video on Youtube.