A Savage Garden - A rekindling of my love for mythology and folklore "Isla, I know that you are nervous but now the time has come to tackle your fears. You can't hide here forever now can you? Can you? ...... Isla? ....... What am I meant to tell the Woodfarers who will risk freezing to death when the cold comes? Am I meant to tell them it is okay for them to suffer because a spoiled Grazer princess, who says that she is not a princess, but acts like a princess was too afraid to try and find out who she truly is? Am I meant to tell this tale to the same children who ventured from their homes to this grotto just to bring clothing so that in your moment of need you had something? Even if that is not the kind of clothing you have become accustomed too, they still brought those things here for you. Now come on, I will be with you every step of the way, even if I should come to regret promising you that" Hans - A Savage Garden Excerpt A Savage Garden came as a strange accident during 2024, I wanted to tell a smaller format story but a story that tapped back into the folklore and mythology elements that somewhere over the last two years I feel I had largely lost. Evelyn of course originally filled this role but with the work that I had been doing on Islands, the folklore element of her had drifted away a little and Scorpio's world isn't quite the soft and light hearted feel I wanted back. I took some time thinking and testing a few ideas for a story but I also wanted to incorporate some of the strange nostalgia that I find in 1980's films. Films like Never Ending Story, stuff like that, films that more than likely would never be produced now as they would upset way too many people and/or for just being to Non PC. At the same time I also didn't want to be pushing myself to model huge masses of landscape for this story, so I decided that the story would feature tiny characters, kind of like The Borrowers or The Secret World Of Arrietty. I probably spent around 4-6 weeks passively playing around with different ideas for the story. Aiming for it to be a blend of voyage of self discovery fused with a story that hinged around the idea of natural magic and the wonders of the nature. Once I had the idea roughly worked out I decided that I wanted to create an almost angelic or goddess like kind of being. A character almost so aesthetically beautiful that they were more like a deity than a living being but with a twist, I wanted to incorporate some of the lost magic of 1980's films into the character. After a few less than successful attempts to create this character, finally in the middle of April, I found the perfect balance and Isla came into being and once she did, the entire story concept began to fall into place. Shortly after creating Isla I started to create the accomplice for the story, Hans, a slightly Germanic feeling character, who stumbles across Isla in peril and guides her to safety. I have been working on many things for this world, including Isla's staff, though I'm not quite happy with it as it feels a bit too? Clinical? So that I will be making again. As for the story itself I have roughly half of the narrative laid out in some form but plan to work quite heavily on it during 2025, I guess I needed time to get my mind back into the more fantastical side of the world compared to Scorpio's quite unpleasant architecture. A Savage Garden of course is still relatively new, so I'm still testing as I work on the narrative, but you will see more of it during 2025.