CHILDREN OF SKULL
SENATUS | 1st Shard
CHILDREN OF SKULL is a personal world-building project, which tells an alternate tale of Earth's creation and the reason behind it, while focusing on a diverse cast of characters, their personality traits, and the conflicts arising due to their belonging to a new and superior breed of human beings.
SENATUS | 1st Shard is the first in a series of thirteen artbooks detailing the cosmic setting and the thirteen hidden supercontinents (shards) which have been extracted off of the Earth's surface upon its creation.
Temporal, Spatial & Narrative Context.
In the CHILDREN OF SKULL universe The Edge Of Black (The Universe) sends out The Messenger (The Universe's Power of Will) to the Orb (Sun), between the second and third Neighbours (Venus and Mars) to seal The Child (The Core of The Earth) in thirteen shards (supercontinents) which are extracted from the surface of The Womb (Earth) during the ninth Era (Mesozoic Era) of the fourth Eon (Phanerozoic Eon) geologic period.
This moment has been named The Great Divide.
The human skeleton can be conveniently parted in fourteen sections. In CHILDREN OF SKULL the skeletal torso of The Child (Earth's Core) remained inside The Womb (Earth), while the other thirteen sections were sealed in thirteen different shards (supercontinents), each named after the latin translation of Benjamin Franklin's thirteen virtues: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity, and humility.
Each shard (supercontinent) is governed and kept alive by an Elder (a thirteenth of The Messenger, The Universe's Power of Will). The human inhabitants of each shard are not aware of the existence of the rest of the shards nor of The Womb's (Earth) and are always watched and protected by Friends (skull-masked guardians). The dwellers of the shards live modest lives using unique abilities to engage in basic activities such as farming and fishing.
Design & Symbolism
The artbook features grayscale illustrations accompanied by key visual elements which are rendered with a muted golden tone. In this world everything is levelled. All questions have clear and definitive answers. There is no room for interpretation. All is justified and all has a purpose. While all these are presented with the help of grayscale values, the muted golden tone highlights elements that have a strong cultural influence within the world. In our reality it is taken for granted that both knowledge and money (gold) is power. Making use of this impactful concept I’m combining the two elements and give them a strong symbolic value with the use of clean and compact design choices. The golden tone has been carefully selected for it to immediately stand out and successfully deliver the message at first glance. In the compositions proposed, this chromatic choice will guide the eyes and enhance the narrative experience.
The series’ logo has been designed in correspondence with its name. Through design principles I have simplified the shape of the regular human skull and dismissed its mandible for a better text alignment on the right hand side half of the mark.
This process has also defined the final version of the project’s name. Originally titled Children of the Skull. The exclusion of the word “the” happened to facilitate the position of the letter “O” from the word “of”, which then fit right as and into the skull’s eye hole. Based on this, I have created a full hole in the left half of the skull based on the shape of the same capital letter, “O”.
To give even more depth to the world, I have also designed a language system along its narrative context and an unique alphabet inspired by minimal geometry and two of the three Japanese kana scripts, hiragana and katakana.
Page Layout
The arrangement of the illustration on the artbook pages is realized by placing the ones made on a landscape canvas reach across both pages, while the vertical artworks are accompanied by three other images on to the side that showcase zoomed in details of the image. The name of each artwork is placed next to it.
The page numbering has been placed on the vertical center of the pages at their extremities. Instead of numbers, the number names have been written down with letters, for a more unique representation, but also balance out the visual details on each page.
