Research: Steam/Dieselpunk

Me and Hannah started looking at some visual styles we could use for our telling of The Magicians Nephew. We didn’t want to just produce another Narnia film with a different story; we wanted to produce a film with its own take on the story. So we started researching some different styles we could incorporate into the story.

Two styles we came across were commonly used in the Science Fiction world but we could easily incorporate them into a fantasy setting.

Steampunk

Steampunk is a style of Sci-fi that is based on the period 1837-1910, focusing on the Victorian era. It uses Victorian technology and styles and places them in a sci-fi setting (also known as Neo-Victorianism). A fashion culture also branched out of this genre merging gothic, punk and rivet styles together to produce Victorian style fashion. Typical characteristics of Steampunk are gothic and punk styles mixed with materials such as polished brass, iron and wood commonly used during the Victorian era. This style could be incorporated into our design incorporating the Neo-Victorianism way of thinking into the designs e.g. characters with Victorian style futuristic clothing or mechanically driven plants and trees.

Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk is a subgenre of Cyberpunk and is based on the period around World War II (1920-1945). It is typically identified by its Pulp magazines, Serial films, Film Noir, Art Deco and Wartime Pun-ups. Films based on Dieselpunk often contain large metallic modes of transport in a wartime style. This style could also be quite easily applied to the design of the MN by incorporating large machinery and metalwork.

Another Punk style we looked at was Biopunk but we decided it was probably not suitable for our interpretation: