World Mind Map

To develop my city further, I've chosen three main themes from my research to emphasise in order to crate a focused aesthetic and create a style that's relevant to the piece I'm working on. The three topics are:


BIRD HOUSES:
Instead of looking at nests and organic structures that birds create for themselves, I realised my designs were naturally progressing with a more man made theme running through them, complimenting the anthropomorphic qualities I've also been looking into; To design humanoid birds but have them living in the exact nests they would live in in real life could appear slightly odd, and not two visual pieces that belong together. Because of this, bird houses seemed like a good idea to look into; Homes based on man made structures, built for birds. This could convey the human and animal aspects of both the humanoid characters themselves, but also the coming together of two men and the city of birds; It shows a human influence, even though the prestige of the outside world is what Pisthetairus and Euelpides are trying to escape. This could even be a part of them realising their own human nature still prevails?


ATHENIAN ARCHITECTURE 
In order to have hints of the original play and influence coming through, I'd like to take inspiration from Athenian Architecture. I feel that even though Athenian society was what the two men were trying to escape, that would still be the only idea of architecture they would have known, so the city would naturally evolve around this style mixed in the birds own way of making things. It also gives a solid base for stylistic research and provides good historic context to the whole project.


MONUMENT VALLEY
As previously discussed, 'Monument Valley' holds a focus of a small yet detailed and aesthetically very intricate environment. Research into this game helped a lot in the decision of concentrating on a floating city, as opposed to an entire island or country, which is what I was finding myself drawing before.  The colour palettes are also something that add to the overall beautifully unique style, so looking further into this aspect of design could also assist in developing my project further.


Looking at the visual mind map I've pieced together, I can already see several connections beginning to show, e.g. prominent blues and whites, certain recurring shapes, etc. I'm glad that the overall picture at a glance isn't appearing entirely unrelated! This definitely gives me a good base to work on, and has re-inspired design ideas, where I was previously finding the aesthetic a difficult substance to grasp.