eƒ
eƒ

"eƒ" (yes, that's the title, just like that, with a ƒ character that's bound to break a search engine or two) is a steampunk-ish epic written by Joanne Reay ("GallowWalker", "Cold&Dark") that is to encompass all sorts of media venues including a series of graphic novels and a feature film. It's a hearty mix of all things industrial and gothic, with a soundtrack reminiscent of Coil and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as a heaping-helping of vampires and football. A good deal of current concept art can be found at the official website: efmovie.co.uk.

 

Status: In development.

Concept Art



Obsolete Concepts

With massive script revisions in April 2008, some concepts and designs which had been crucial to the full story became obsolete in the new, streamlined version. While some of these devices and ideas may appear in some form in the finished film and graphic novel, others have been abandoned entirely to the mists of time…

General Concepts
The story takes place in the fictional world of Red Roxeter, a place dominated by smoke-stacks and machinery relating to the refining of iron. The first painting I did here really missed the scale of the place. The three that follow that one are people and bits that have been more or less cut out of the script now.

The Occipita
This was intended as the main narritive device of the story: a steampunk machine, a cross between a zoetrope and a card catalogue, would allow the operator to shuffle glass plates (or “fenstas”) embedded with advanced nanotech that displayed 3D video information from the past - via hundreds of surveillance cameras scattered throughout the city, over the years.

Rather than sketching intricate knobs and dials for days, I put together a CG model (in Maya) that functioned well enough to give some good views of the machine.

The Original Opening
The story originally opened with a young Occipita-Operator showing up at an massive steamworks, now converted into living quarters, where he meets a strange, masked figure named “Dead Bolt.”

Dead Bolt’s still in the script, with a changed identity and reason for being, but Bibly didn’t make the cut … poor guy.

Graphic Novel-ish Stuff
Since a large part of the appeal of the project was to be an accompanying graphic novel, I put together some sample pages (much cheaper than getting a real artist, right?) for various parts of the script.

I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a graphic novel illustrator. I just don’t have the patience. But these (now 100% obsolete) pages were fun to put together nevertheless.