Okay - well, that's a very elaborate back-story for your character - the upshot of which is that the Princess is a sort of neutral 'gatekeeper' in a hostile world, right? The issue with this in terms of designing her 'lair' is that really the two things are quite separate - the character and the environment - in other words the environment cannot reflect her character, because she is 'not' of the world but rather a stranger within it. The danger here then, is that you create a suitably 'volcanic' background that tells us nothing about the princess - it's basically a back-drop. I'm going to suggest that you seek to entwine your components more intrinsically - so that the character gives you the lair; some ideas to think about: your princess as being an actual 'fire diety'
My point is by thinking in a more integrated way about your 2 components, you'll get to some more interesting places, that will give you much more research potential, much more developmental potential, and more wriggle room when it comes to the design of the lair and the hero prop; for example, if your Princess was formed from Obsidian (a volcanic rock) then instead of just looking at more images of fire and lava, your research could go towards the symbolic meaning of Obsidian etc.
You need to work a bit harder, Rhys at actually changing things up a bit and going beyond the literal and the generic. Don't misunderstand me - your current backstory for your character is a creative thing in its own right, my point is that it's not going to help you design an innovative and original 'secret lair'. Onwards!
OGR 07/11/2013
ReplyDeleteHey Rhys,
Okay - well, that's a very elaborate back-story for your character - the upshot of which is that the Princess is a sort of neutral 'gatekeeper' in a hostile world, right? The issue with this in terms of designing her 'lair' is that really the two things are quite separate - the character and the environment - in other words the environment cannot reflect her character, because she is 'not' of the world but rather a stranger within it. The danger here then, is that you create a suitably 'volcanic' background that tells us nothing about the princess - it's basically a back-drop. I'm going to suggest that you seek to entwine your components more intrinsically - so that the character gives you the lair; some ideas to think about: your princess as being an actual 'fire diety'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fire_goddesses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_worship
Your princess being made from volcanic rock (i.e. born from a volcanic eruption)
http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/Volcanoes/Science-Ideas-and-Concepts/Types-of-volcanic-rock
My point is by thinking in a more integrated way about your 2 components, you'll get to some more interesting places, that will give you much more research potential, much more developmental potential, and more wriggle room when it comes to the design of the lair and the hero prop; for example, if your Princess was formed from Obsidian (a volcanic rock) then instead of just looking at more images of fire and lava, your research could go towards the symbolic meaning of Obsidian etc.
You need to work a bit harder, Rhys at actually changing things up a bit and going beyond the literal and the generic. Don't misunderstand me - your current backstory for your character is a creative thing in its own right, my point is that it's not going to help you design an innovative and original 'secret lair'. Onwards!