Abandon Interest
This was my final degree project, based on the topic of my dissertation: The Role of Generative Propaganda in Contemporary Politics. In this essay I discussed the trends of AI in political and social spaces, which inspired me to create a dystopian comic.
I was inspired by 1984 by George Orwell, my story is similar, instead of Big Brother, we have The Eye and Watchers. Artificial Intelligence is essentially in every aspect of this world. To the side, there's examples of what the original Watcher concepts were.
Above, you can see me figuring out the protagonist, Oliver Webster, a 42 year old man who lives in 2054 London. He works in the ministry, which is essentially what most men in this world do. The ministry is made up of many different factions, Oliver works in the ministry of Ownership.
The ministry is an important part of the story, and it's where Oliver spends most of his time when he's not in his room. So, I wanted to make sure the ministry was thought out well. Authoritarian regimes tend to either reject religion all-together, or heavily rely on religion to bring in a sense of community and safety. I believe that in this world the Government would try to push forward the agenda of "AI is God," which is why I have portrayed the ministry as a cathedral.
I researched modern cathedrals around the world and sensed that The Cathedral of Maringa, in Brazil, with the marvellous amounts of stained glass was perfect. In my world it looks similar, but much, much taller. I also researched into how to illustrate stained glass windows, and how I would want the inside to look like.
Then I moved onto concepts of Oliver's room, his office, the building he lives in. His room stayed almost the same, but turned more into a studio flat, with a full kitchen. The office changed drastically, as you can see below. The internal parts of the ministry are all conncected by an elevator, which isn't very efficient, but I like the design so I just went with it. The ministry has five floors in total, with the floors getting smaller as they get higher.
Then! I went onto Blender and make very basic layouts of his room, corridor and street. This really helped me with perspective and trying out different angles.
Here are two examples of what my comic looked like in the ealy stages before I fully shaded it.
And below is the full comic. The process of actually getting to the finished piece was very long. I focused on one panel at a time, usually a page would require around 10 hours of work, not including the research process. I settled on using around four specific shades of gray to create shadows, and allow for light.
