Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546606
we photographed and manipulated digitally until we had several concept illustrations to help present the idea with clarity. This became the foundation for a large stage build of the circular landing platform and entry bay. Raising the set three meters gave the illusion of being hundreds of meters above the giant cave floor and river below. The final set occupied two adjoining soundstages to get the correct scale and to be able to include Teela's full-scale spaceship as part of the set. From Subternia, the design process naturally moved into another enormous undertaking, designing the vehicles. We needed to take designs that had originated as toys, and which were fun but often deliberately simplistic and wonderfully impractical and turn them into complex machines that could exist within the world we were creating. The Roton was perhaps the best example. In its original form, it was essentially a flying wooden barrel with an angry face, a pilot sitting inside it and a giant circular buzz saw spinning around the outside. It was an unforgettable design, but making it feel like a credible weapon of war was another matter entirely. Travis created very detailed animatics which he shared with me to give a clear indication of the action and what the craft needed to do. The craft needed to frame the actors rather than hide them. I began thinking about the Roton almost as an open motorcycle frame. The breakthrough came when I started looking at the circular buzz saws not simply as decorative elements, but as functional weapons. By attaching the blade discs to a gyroscopic mechanism at the rear of the motorcycle frame, I could create blades that could rotate and mobilize around the pilot, turning what had originally been a rather strange visual gimmick into something that could become genuinely dangerous and interesting to look at. It was a process of subtraction as much as addition: finding the A. ARRIVAL AT SUBTERNIA LANDING PLATFORM BY BART TCHORZEWSKI. DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION SHOWING THE ENORMOUS SCALE OF THE STALACTITE. B. ROTON VEHICLE ILLUSTRATION BY JAKUB VYOUKAL. C. FRIGHT FIGHTER VEHICLE ILLUSTRATION BY JAKUB VYOUKAL. D. TEELA'S SHIP ILLUSTRATION BY JAKUB VYOUKAL. E. SKY SLED ILLUSTRATION BY JAKUB VYOUKAL. F. VAULT CHAMBER AND SWORD ALTAR BY GUY H. DYAS. EARLY PENCIL SKETCH FOR DISCUSSION WITH TRAVIS KNIGHT. G. VAULT CHAMBER LIGHTING TEST. SET PHOTO. A D E B C