"a touch of technology with a pinch of antiquity and perhaps a dash of the macabre. There is humanity...and even a bit of social rebellion and transgression."
Firstly I wanted to find out a bit about where the Steampunk genre originated from. What I discovered was that it's a sub-genre of science fiction that merges with the design style of the victorian era, and was inspired by novels about steam-powered engines in a romantic in a victorian-style setting by writers such as H.G Wells and Jules Verne. The genre conveys a sense of both romance and slight horror in a fantasy world of clockwork and steam engines, and is "what the past would have looked like if the future had happened sooner".
Examples of Steampunk:
The character featured in the example on the right is wearing quite smart clothing, but has been adapted to feature the "mechanical" elements of Steampunk. His hat has been modified to feature the industrial elements of the genre as well as the side of his skull too. He's a mixture of the smartness of a Victorian outfit and the industrial, metallic style of a technological, fantasy world. The modifications to the Victorian outfit on the left is much more extreme than the reasonably subtle cogs on the top hat, but shows the variations of Steampunk and the adaptability of the style.
Both images have a specific colour scheme that do not contain any colours that particularly stand out. Each contains different shades of the same colour - The right ranging from a dark to a very light blue, and the left a range of shades of gold. This technique has created a realistic look of shading and in particularly on the left hand side has resulted in a metallic effect. The use of a lighter shade against a background of the same colour (very light blue against a much darker shade) has created a "smoke" effect, and this is used in the left hand image too. There's quite a heavy use of black and this highlights the elements of the design that are of a lighter colour.
This example of Steampunk separates what the two previous have combined - mechanics and people. The people feature are in regular clothes - significant to the Victorian era but in a style that suggests they are people that are less well off - in a location that resembles somewhere such as London. The "robot" featured takes up the majority of the image and is the main focus as well as of the darkest colour - a greyish/metallic black.
Summary of main design aspects:
- One main colour used in a variety of shades
- Heavy use of dark shades, predominantly black
- Combines people with mechanical aspects - e.g. add cogs to their arms to make them look robotic
- OR completely separates the two and almost turns them against each other (see above)
- Detailed shading, things look more realistic than they would in a Pop Art style
- Varying degrees of the "victorian" element show through. I would argue that out of the two images at the top of this point, the one on the left is less recognisable as Victorian.
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