Major Project: Early Base Thumbnails

  With the design of Four underway I decided to turn to the other key element - the base in which much of the story would take place in. To get an idea I kept to items rather than diving in and drawing rooms - chairs, tables, desks, computers, then moving on to doors and corridors.

  I was inspired by Moonbase designs of the 1970s and one inspiration that cropped up was Space 1999, A British science fiction show about a research station on the moon. Near to the end of the sketching session I came to a realisation about the moonbase shots I was looking at: They were all very clean. But they all felt a little too clean for a base that was supposed to away from Earth (the plot mentions a nuclear explosion sent the moon out into deep space); there was no clutter, no wear-and-tear, no panels kept loose for convenience, it was like the very white base was scrubbed and cleaned daily despite an omnipresence of huge panel lights.that dominated all the walls and the lack of regular supplies from Earth (The USS Voyager at least turned its cargohold into a greenhouse).

  One of the things that will occur early in the story is the viewer will receive a guided tour of the base, which could be when we see the showroom-clean version. But the base that we see throughout the story has a bit more of a lived-in look. Clutter, post-it notes, coffee stains, mugs, loose pens, whatever I can think of to give it a sense that people have stuff and that this place is their (at the very least temporary) home.