About Phantasma

Hello hello, 

How are you doing? I'm preparing for a short vacation to Dublin. I lived there for a year and I'm looking forward to getting back to my second home. I can't wait to rest and recharche a bit and come back with a lot of new inspiration and energy. 

But before that, I wanted to chat a little bit about this ominous project I've been working on for a few years. You might have seen some artwork for it or heard me mention it here and there. This is the basic idea/pitch:

Nature has taken over civilization, making mankind go back to a simpler way of living. Smaller tribes have settled in forests and mountains, while others made their homes in urban areas for shelter and protection. Meanwhile, supernatural forces grow stronger. Spirits that had long been forgotten wander the earth, leaving traces of lost memories wherever they haunt. Legend has it that these entities came from a time long forgotten. Once the web of lost memories became dense enough, the earth would turn back to its original state. Some people, called Collectors, are born with unusual abilities and are said to be closely connected to the spirit world. 

As they have the power to see and absorb memories, it is their destiny to collect as many as possible and prevent the death of mankind. But what if the collector notices that the memories tell a different story...

Besides that, I've been researching and working on the story and characters. I have a wiki with a bunch of stuff about culture, religion etc. etc. I've always had the idea that I had to finish the written stuff and have it bullet-proof before I could jump into the art. But now my fingers are just itching to explore this thing visually. Above all, it's a story about travel and exploration. And those places that I have in mind, are best explored visually. So that's what I'm going to do. Painting, writing, painting, writing. Until it eventually comes together. 

And if you're wondering what the hell this is supposed to be when it's done, the answer is: a book. The original plan was to make an illustrated novel (prose and a ton of illustrations), but now I'm thinking maybe there's a way to make it 100% image-based with no text to explain the story. I got very inspired by the 1FW episode with Matt Rhodes and his project Tellurion. 

As you can tell, I'm figuring this thing out as I go. And I'm glad that you are there with me while I'm doing it. But this whole thing definitely started visually, so it's a natural direction for me to take. If you're curious, I have a few Pinterest boards full of inspiration for the project. 

Here are the characters I've drawn so far:

Leigh

Seth, Hope's brother

Hope, Seth's sister

Jun

I know that I also have the tarot project, but my focus keeps coming back to this projects. All the background painting stuff I've done was mainly to get good enough to be able to work on Phantasma. So thank you for bearing with me. :]

I love you, 

Djamila