---
# System prepended metadata

title: 8 Trailers of the Epic Graphic Novel to Come
tags: [Art Direction]

---

---
###### tags: `Art Direction`
---

# 8 Trailers of the Epic Graphic Novel to Come

### Part 1: Anon's VR Pod

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 72.97297297297297%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/c31bc0c9994140cca437fb32fa822256" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

- Anon is in her bedroom.

![](https://i.imgur.com/sWF18z8.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/blxAKn0.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/pPBYzi5.jpg)

- Anon is strapped into an interface. Numerous access points into her body, each with strange corporeal reactions.

![](https://i.imgur.com/tWXqjV0.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/DRLyLTJ.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/IRS9VxL.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/JfF2drM.jpg)


- Her hand manipulating a gooey gel controller: the hand is on and in the goo, like a silicon breat implant and a jellyfish discharging electricity, hand gestures like cellphone pinch and zoom, sexy and erotic movements

![](https://i.imgur.com/DD9TKyP.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/SCA99Ii.jpg)


- Her torso is wrapped in a haptic suit that looks like a life vest, inflatable membrane that imposes the pressures of the virtual environment, squeezes and regulates breath, responsive to heart palpitations, an extension of the sympathetic nervous system that looks like a wearable waterbed, a larva sack that has consumed the body. Looks like tge Cronenberg bed from *Crimes of the Future*
    
![](https://i.imgur.com/reqbNed.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/FUQNp9f.png)
    
- A view from inside her eyes: the visual display is not a screen *in front of* or *on* the eyes but a projection that beams into the brain stem, the eyes become an interface that can be jacked into directly with light-based data, the mechanical element looks like a spider that is weaving lightbased tapestry webs, the eyes twitch and jiggle like Anon is having a seizure

![](https://i.imgur.com/XxIoJlw.jpg)

- Persperation, lots of sweat coming off the body that is captured and recycled to keep the user hydrated, descriptions of body movements that straddle the line between anxiety, nervousness, pleasure, pain. The body is suspended in a state between ecstasy and therapeutic detoxification. Hyper sexual/erotic descriptions of the body being absorbed/suspended by the machine interface.

![](https://i.imgur.com/XPWGTcC.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/brqdATK.jpg)

- Viewing her feet: flailing around, no longer grounded to a planular surface, seem to become more tentacular, like flagellum, tails, seems to defy the movements of the human skeleton, another kind of propulsion that is no longer human
    
![](https://i.imgur.com/mBHTHGu.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/3iiZ9tu.jpg)
    
- Sexual organs (might need to redact in order to keep it semi safe for work): tubes and sensors inserted into all of her orifices, looks like bluetooth vibrators, feeding tubes, sexualized dialysis, cyberpunk-style usb-like ports surgically installed all over the body that tingle with pain/pleasure, squid/octopus-like jelly filled sensors inserted into her vagina referencing Hokusai's *Dream of the Fisherman's Wife*
   
![](https://i.imgur.com/s55rnB3.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/Nq3Ufrw.jpg)

---

### Part 2: The Quadratic Lands

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 98.72029250457037%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/43ce441ac4aa40d58c76b96dcfb3e755" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

- Overall structure is a cross section of the city of the future:

![](https://i.imgur.com/zMe09HD.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/4UwU6wL.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/mldsAiM.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/wzFWD10.jpg)

Layers of the city:
- Deep underground near the core of the earth, machines are tapping into the geothermal pressures of the molten core, looks like ancient machinery. Giant plates leverage the magnetism to capture and direct energy, metallic fabrics and circuits extract the heat and route it into iron batteries, the gyrating flow of the lava churns spherical cauldrons that pump steam motion through an apparatus that resembles digestive organs, distributing the energy up into the crust through a network of cables that look like the circulatory system of some giant mythological beast (reference to Moloch).
- Upper crust: a new kind of mining that doesn't extract minerals, but uses pockets of pressure to cultivate synthetic materials like inoculating a log with mushroom spores. The minerals are extracted by slow heavily armored bots that load up mining carts to pull the materials to industrial refineries on the surface, which are full of assembly lines rolling out an infinite procession of batteries, solar panels, computer screens, and esoteric machine parts. Tubes direct steam and heat from the core to power the industrial processes. Pollution is funneled through giant seive filters that separate and extract the waste to be compressed into nutrients that feed plants on the surface, with the hot air released into the residential buildings above to warm the inhabitants (since the earth is currently undergoing near ice age conditions).
- Biosphere region: The human layer of the planet is now 100% synthetic. There is no more naturally occurring regions, since the atmosphere is no longer hospitable to life. There are still plants and animals kept within controlled environments, contained inside giant geodesic bubbles covered with reflective materials to filter and regulate the intense UV, modulate temperature and humidity, and recycle air. Nutrients are pumped in, wastes are cycled through massive closed loop aquaponic systems comprised of numerous stacked pools filled with water plants, fish, crustaceans, and other creatures. These bio bubbles generate oxygen for the residental buildings and require constant supervision by a swarm of bots overseen by human scientists wearing Cronenberg-style body augmentations to literally feel/sense the health of the ecosystem.
- City layer: cross section of the pneumatic and capillary flows of the electrical and plumbing system, materials being pumped in every direction, all different colors and consistencies. Energy, water, heat, nutrients, and global data are pumped into the living pods. Waste, stale air, biometric data, and proof of work data packets are sent out to the processing nodes of the planetary network. Humans are all presented as relatively affluent and comfortable (by contemporary standards), but a different kind of social class system reveals itself, seemingly determined by the altitude (height in the atmosphere, distance from the planet surface) of the residents: the workers that operate the industrial and life support processes are closer to the earth and considered "lower" in status than the intelligentsia/cognoscenti class of technically skilled metaverse laborers occupying the upper regions of the cityscape. 
- Cloud layer: floating above the earth is a planetary scale lattice/skein that modulates UV and protects against cosmic radiation, since there is no more ozone layer. Numerous physical tethers connect the monumental machine layer to the surface, along with seemingly infinite dishes, sensors, and delicate instruments. The lattice periodically emits energetic discharges into the atmosphere to modulate weather patterns, distributing rain over moisture vaporators and catchment systems, carefully refracted sunlight over the massive solar panels covering the city surface, and steering the barometric pressures to funnel winds over the surface to drive the turbines that maintain the pneumatic/capillary flows of the global distribution network. Above this skein, a massive amounts of satellites rotate the earth in a delicate orchestrated choreography. Drones cover everything, tinkering on the machines to maintain their operations.
- Beyond the earth: zooming out, we gaze upon the moon, mars, and other planets of the solar system to understand that humans are colonizing nearby planets with the same technology that maintains the equillibrium of the earth. This description is kept intentionally brief and low detail. Neighboring planets resemble the mechanical surface of the earth, like floating nodes of an intergalactic PoS network.


---

### Part 3: A DAO Story

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 62.5%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/124236596b7e4a0ca03316602734c76f" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

- Aesthetically references [Apple/Macintosh's *1984* commercial.](https://youtu.be/VtvjbmoDx-I)
- World is dusty, gray, dystopian; like a coal mine.
- Human workers are organized by an invisible voice representing a centralized bureaucracy that could be human or an AI. The voice sounds over a ubiquitous loudspeaker that seems to be installed over the entire landscape, echoing against the concrete walls of the labyrinthine city.
- They are directed towards the completion of a megastructure that resembles a panoptic prison or giant obelisk resembling the [Washington Monument.](https://www.nps.gov/wamo/learn/historyculture/monumentconstruction.htm)

![](https://i.imgur.com/wtbNEep.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/5mQkMRW.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/oIqmPFN.jpg)

Main image:
- Above ground: a large monolith obelisk
- Underground: a group of artist-hackers work on secret plans

---

### Part 4: The Plantary-Scale Computationally Persistent Economic Organism

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 62.5%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/8b46cf511790416782fa5f0adfbb65d4" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

- A giant machine that keeps the whole earth alive. Similar to *Part 2: Quadratic Lands* but more of a detail of the machine instead of a view of the whole planet.

![](https://i.imgur.com/rLJr8Hk.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/KWTvrdr.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/NCZ90IV.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/TUPupY8.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/hPBHtiu.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/LHmm2hW.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/ZSACvO5.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/cEbbOIb.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/yNORcIY.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/sFGPhb9.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/AdnZASK.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/MzcXRlA.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/rRtjt2b.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/GAHj5Ig.png)
![](https://i.imgur.com/vgpE8vC.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/EQf7z5D.jpg)



Notes on the layers:
- The individual mechanisms are each radically different in design from each other. Various mechanisms are described in close detail, vingettes.
- Machines composed of living tissues, like the Cronenberg game console from eXistenZ.
- Machines composed of collections of creatures working together in closed loops, like aquaponic stacks of animals and plants that generate oxygen.
- Some demonstrate self-regenerative materials, like self-repairing synthetic skin/organs.
- Some illustrate infrastructural machines that build other machines.
- Saltwater and iron batteries deep underground.
- Highly efficient and reflective solar panels and heat capture devices
- Synthetic Siphonophores: resembling larger organisms composed of numerous smaller organisms
- Mechanical coral: architectural scaffolding covered with regenerative tissues that expand and adapt the surface
- Sentient gardens: large gardens that become forests and almost scale to become "wilderness" composed of numerous machine generating materials, decomposing antiquated parts, appearing to grow off of each other like a living ecosystem.
- Subterranean synthetic mycellial networks: spread under the surface, stretching fiberoptic cables and electrical signals over great expanses, a telekinetic lattice of pure communication that adapts to the labyrinth of the material world with apparent curiosity, like a slime mold seeking the quickest path through a prime number maze (reference to Balaji's preoccupation).
- Energy harvesting fields look like fruit tree orchards.
- Canopy systems like rainforests, filtering shade and modulating in relation to different mechanical needs for distributing light, heat, and lubrication.
- Mechanical digestive systems like gut fauna/flora contain special environments for conducting the chemical compositions needed for producing fuel, recycling wastes, pressurizing and distributing gases, etc.

---

### Part 5: The Regenerative Coalition for Cybernetic Hygiene

<div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 89.55223880597015%; height: 0;"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/d48dd5d52ee043c1b0d2aff97356a2c0" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe></div>

- View into a large open building. Looks like a cathedral, monastery, or temple.

![](https://i.imgur.com/BXIgzDf.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/H9tAWJw.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/ofwtXEl.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/Q67Ahiq.jpg)


- A group of people are in VR pods, arranged in a circle. Looks like a mandala.

![](https://i.imgur.com/rGhZp8J.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/KNGYgNV.jpg)


- Rising above the center is a large quantum computer.

![](https://i.imgur.com/e1QldX7.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/AugE0zA.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/yOqhulG.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/t4RQf00.jpg)



---

### Part 6: The Pluriversal Manifold

- [Inspired by this video of an AR dystopia by Keiichi Matsuda](https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs)
- Looking as a game like Civilization, SimCity or a WoW map

![](https://i.imgur.com/NRpbSFL.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/8wUOxRp.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/0ucTYcX.jpg)

- The game content is superimposed over the face of a gamer

![](https://i.imgur.com/i5sHIhh.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/fkpJ9iv.jpg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/U0iZ3rI.jpg)



---

### Part 7: Venturing Beyond the Walled Garden