Cyberpunk Nomadic Desert Environment

For this environment I chose to fuse a low technological Nomadic Desert scene with a dystopian high technological cyberpunk habitat. I added dystopian features including an environmental weather anomaly of snow within a desert scene to juxtapose the traditional iconic image of a hot desert to add further contrast and unexpected connections within the storyline.  

My aim was to hint at a possible back story of an environmental disaster as a result of a dystopian world. To create this link with the past I included a crumbling, decaying, eroded statue of Ramesses ll. This statue figure was chosen and inspired by the poem Ozymandias written by Percy Byshee Shelley. This architectural feature is used to convey a previous dystopian totalitarian society of Ramesses ll. In Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, the nickname for Rameses II, is made to look ridiculous as he asks for the onlooker to admire the great legacy he has left behind and feel despair and awe “ look on my works ye Mighty and despair.” In fact “ye Mighty” suggests even God should have feared his achievements suggesting he thought he was even better than God. The scene discussed in the poem is desolate and Ozymandias’ achievements are made to look futile; the statue is alone, crumbling without an empire behind it “nothing beside remains.” I wanted to create this sense of loss and judgement on power to hint at characters who challenge their dystopian world. The nomadic tent containing cyberpunk supplies, which I tethered to the podium of the statue, highlights a dystopian world since Ozymandias’ ruin in which cyberpunk urbanism has been lost and replaced with temporary dwellings and a nomadic lifestyle within an anomalous physical environment. The cyberpunk world has been returned to a nomadic lifestyle Ozymandias would recognise but it is a contorted version of a changed Egyptian physical environment where the weather and nomadic lifestyle is altered. The tent tethered to the podium was also used to hint at the character’s lack of respect for the history of power and rulers. I included the cyberpunk bike, and accessories within the nomadic styled tent to hint at a storyline of a lone wanderer living this altered lifestyle in a desolate world. 
If the brief had been larger, I would have included decayed cyberpunk urban skyline in the background similar to Singapore sky rises to add a further fusion of oriental culture. 

Sketchbook:

https://sketchfab.com/guy.boxall/collections/cyberpunk-nomadic-desert