Year 3000 World Map

I'm thinking of placing my tale in the year 3,000. It's far enough away to open up the possibility for just about anything but not so far that the world would be some completely radical place (like 300,000 AD might be).

Also, if I'm a pessimist about the future (I'm not) I might place a big environmental, cultural, technological disaster in the next couple of hundred years which leaves centuries to "recover" and make the "horror" a distant memory. 800 years would practically be ancient history at our current pace of change.

My story would likely not even touch on the history between today and the year 3,000. What kid would want to read that? But I'm thinking about it as a way to create a complete world. Also, since what I'm doing is technically science fiction, it'd be nice to have done some research.

For example, here's a cool world relief map from 1972. It's a little wonky, but it generally shows the coasts how they are today.


Now in a 1000 years, lets say the sea level rises 10, 20, 100 feet! What might the world look like then? If the seas rose 500 feet (I don't know that that could ever actually happen given the amount of water and ice on earth), you'd basically be erasing the entire grass green portion. Horrifying now (especially for Florida), but in a 1000 years, that could make for one cool globe. Maybe include a crater lake the size of Australia in Russia to hint at some catastrophic meteor strike. The possibilities are endless!

Bulldozers of the Future

I've still got a lot to think through as far as how construction equipment might look in the future. My future is going to be pretty grounded in the past. Without having to state much history, I'm thinking that I'm going to have technology move two steps forward, three steps back, four steps forward, five steps back, etc, until I land at a place where technology is grounded in the past, present and future. I want things to be recognizable to kids without being too steampunk or flying car. Here's a bulldozer sketch.




A Robot Butler For a Princess

While I started in the robot mentality for my futuristic butler, I'm now leaning towards a simple ball with an antenna as the only sign that's it's mechanical. I'm thinking it will float and have no arms because if you have the power to make things float, yourself included, what do you need arms for? Here's some sketches:


Robot Butler

To give the princess a chance to demolish and build her family castle, I had the king and queen leave to take care of some royal business, leaving the princess in the care of her nanny, or the family butler, or some sort of royal assistant.

As the idea evolved into a more futuristic setting, I thought that a robot butler could be fun and in some ways made more sense. Just seemed like the princess could get away with a lot more if the nanny was a robot, and it better fit the exaggerated scope. I've not sketched out any ideas for my robot butler yet, but here's some reference:




Danger! Princess at Work.

A princess doing construction was appealing to me for a number of reasons:

  • There would be an opportunity for a strong, active princess.
  • Three would be an opportunity to show cool construction equipment.
  • There would be an opportunity to design/build an awesome castle.
  • There would be an opportunity to playfully put the princess in dangerous situations. She would never get hurt, of course, but only because it's a children's story. Disney's Phineas and Ferb are an inspiration for this children-in-danger-but-never-actually-get-hurt mentality, but then again, almost every cartoon since the dawn of cartoons follows this rule.

I did the following sketch soon after my early princess sketch. The idea was to place her in a scene and establish the construction theme. I'm including the sketch, a simple color comp and one for lighting. Again, I suspect I won't ultimately do anything digitally, but it is good for exploration and sketching.





An Early Princess Sketch

Initially the idea was to have a pretty conventional looking princess, maybe with some different colored hair or some sort of unique attribute. I did this sketch about a year ago, scanned it in, vectorized it and digitally colored it. Not sure yet what technique I'd like my final art to be, but at this point I'm probably thinking it won't be digital. I spend too much time on the computer as it is. I keep thinking it'd be cool to do a two color print to keep it old school, which would render the hair color a non-issue.

Anyway, here's the sketch:

Tom Grodek Illustration Early Princess Sketch

A New Illustration Project

I've had an idea for a children's picture book project for almost a year now. It's about time to start developing it! I'm hoping that blogging the process will help keep me focused and on task.

The initial idea was to combine the girly interests of my daughter and the boy-builder interests of my son into a story and illustrations they could both enjoy. The approach would be pandering: a princess remodels the family castle using big construction equipment.

I've been thinking recently about setting this story in the future while maintaining as much fairytale iconography as possible. I love the idea of creating a "universe" where this story and others can take place, like Oz or Narnia, but rather than be a fantasy realm, mine would be science fiction.

I think I can create something fun and fresh with this approach. I can't think of much existing science fiction in the picture book category. Also, as an amateur armchair futurist, I'm excited about creating a vision of the future, something optimistic and child friendly, but realistic and honest as well.