World Design

We started by looking at a lot of Mayan things - temples, glyphs etc - as we had decided that it was important for us to include some of these aspects in all our planets to make

them all have something in common - and importantly, to link them all to a Mayan doomsday prophesy.

Here are the images we took inspiration from - you can probably see some of the glyphs in my world design images:

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My planet is on the verge of their Mayan apocalypse, perhaps a year or less before the 'date' of the end of their world.

Everything is chaotic - the planet itself has dried up and become a desert, and the little resources such as water that is left is becoming more and more contaminated. Everyone's relentlessly using up resources and polluting the world because they think that the world will soon end anyway. This has caused the world to become slightly radiated (seen in the green haze which surrounds the planet).

There are 3 Mayan temples on my planet and these are positioned like Orion's Belt - similar to Earth's Egyptian pyramids. This links the Mayan prophesy to 'aliens'.

Each of these temples are surrounded by structures built by the alien race in the shape of Mayan glyphs, perhaps as a sign to the aliens who are meant to come and take the Trans-humans - or rather - aliens away to a better place. They are signs of desperation.

The race on this planet have built up the largest of these temples - the center one - in a desperate attempt to reach 'heaven' or perhaps the aliens. This is similar to the biblical story of the 'Tower of Babel' where the Israelites built a temple to reach God and heaven. I think that this just shows how desperate the race is to survive.

I made my planet egg-shaped so that it kind of links to the elongated skulls of the Mayans - and perhaps my aliens will also have elongated heads... I just thought it would be a bit different to all those perfectly round planets out there!

My detail image of my planet shows the area on one side of a Mayan temple, which can be seen in the back right corner. This temple has a few of the Mayan glyphs on it, which are also seen surrounding the temples from space (shown in the above image).

I made the ground look a bit like a desert to emphasize the fact that my aliens have used up their resources and have more or less killed their planet. The sky is that horrible radiation green, which can also be seen surrounding the planet from space. I thought that perhaps they had a different coloured sky at some point, but that the radiation has changed it and made it green - a constant reminder of their harmful impact on their planet.

The landscape is covered with buildings - as it becomes closer and closer to the date of their prophesied apocalypse, more and more aliens are relocating themselves near the Mayan temples in an effort to be there when the other aliens come to seek out anyone special who will supposedly be taken to another planet where they can continue to live. This creates a very busy and chaotic place and adds to the tension of the planet and its predicament. Most of these buildings are bomb shelters of different shapes and sizes, and some are businesses who aim to exploit the scared and get their money by selling 'apocalypse gear' such as Trans-drugs (drugs that are meant to push one into another stage of development and evolution so that they are perhaps good enough to be taken to paradise by the aliens), bomb shelter supplies, post-apocalypse survivor gear etc. This is all shown on the neon-light sign.

I also thought that there'd be a large amount of mental institutions - for those who don't believe in the prophesy. If the large majority of aliens believe in the Mayan prophesy, then the few who don't would probably be seen as insane and are thus locked up.

My basic aim was to create a world that has been massively destroyed by its inhabitants, is chaotic and crazy, and shows the desperation and stress of those who live there.