MAP: Final
Final color + other data
This is the last post in a series of four. Here are links to the other three:
Lineart completion and color intro
The last link in that set also includes a list identifying each cell, appended here as well1.
One of the advantages of using markers to color most of my artwork is that I have a relatively limited selection, so I’m forced to challenge myself a bit2. One of the main challenges here was coloring and lighting an environment presented as very, very dark and shadowy. What I ultimately wound up doing was making the walls as light as I could, the floor as dark as possible, and coloring the rest as I went—though this description reverses the order of things:
Thus, the decision to make the floors a dark midtone—but not black—and the walls a light midtone—but not white—was made due to the black shadows and the light metal pipes, respectively.
The Ancient Cell—number 18 on the list, number one in the above gallery—is a sort of “semiotic dumping ground.” The Eldernet3 follows two contradictory algorithms—the need to depict and show props, products, or people, and the need to automate and simulate all those same objects. As various objects get replaced by their more-digital equivalents, the media that shows them loses viewers and migrates to the edges of The Eldernet. Vision is automatically calibrated now; the binoculars, telescopes, and glasses you might have ordered on Amazon now clutter these cells. Words like “libs,” “unboxing,” or “let’s play” are ridiculous when liberals, boxes, and video games don’t exist4, so they get spattered across the walls like graffiti.
The Eldernet is a very logical place, even if it doesn’t look like it at first.
The second image—number six, The Armory, in the original list—exemplifies the “recycled” backstory that informs all of Ascenkor’s cells. The table is a game board from one of the “puzzles and games” cells; the reflectors on the barrier are small versions of the ubiquitous mirrors floating all over the other cells. Ascenkor, like any real anti-tech activist, is always in the uncomfortable position of trying to hijack the thing she’s fighting for her own purposes5.
Number three—11, the surgical lab—exists to address the semiotic-biological effects of The Eldernet. Infected flesh and corrupt software are one and the same. The scene in which it first appears is partially intended as a sort of subverted, extended reference to mad science horror tropes—as in House of Wax (1953) or Re-Animator (1985), our protagonist is exposed to the mercy of a sinister doctor, only this time the protagonist isn’t a White Final Girl and the sinister doctor isn’t a man with sexual designs on his victim, but a perfectly reasonable psychological terrorist.
If you have questions about any of the other cells, please comment on this post, the comic, or DM me if you actually know me—these were just three cells I was particularly pleased with and wanted to talk about.
As an epilogue, here’s a brief look at how I developed the particular environment of the map:
These sketches date to around the Spring of 2023, when I had started drawing the first pages of ELDERNET. I had a few vague notions of what Ascenkor’s cells would look like, but just bits and pieces, from which I made some rather poor renderings of two rooms, naively thinking that if I just decided on an idea, I needn’t worry about that idea changing:
It came together when I pinned down three architectural movements I wanted to combine: Art Deco, Brutalist, and Gothic. Once I had these written down, I completed a portrait of Ascenkor in her home as a proof-of-concept6:
Once I had the colors and a few motifs—the chains, the flames, the pipes—the rest came together much more easily.
That essentially concludes all I feel like saying now on the subject. I intend to adapt the map into a poster eventually, and may complete more maps as I add more cells to The Eldernet, where we are almost at the end of Chapter Four.
Thanks for reading.
Boxes? Containers? Where did she even get all those?
Chamber 0
An ancient “blogging” cell
More supplies? Is she going somewhere?
Mapping cell
Sleeping quarters (end of Chapter 4)
Laundry machinery
Where does food come from?
“Library”
Ancient videogame cell
Storage
Water
Destroyed
For example, all my purple markers are either light pinks or very dark violets—no pastel purples or any blue tints.
You can sub in “The Internet” most of the time when I’m talking about The Eldernet, including here.
Or don’t exist in the same ways.
Admittedly, this is an issue most leftists angst over at times, but the unusual thing about tech is that technology controls the means of organizing itself. Your gas-guzzling truck is not the primary means by which you fight Big Oil, but Instagram is usually the means by which Instagram users attack Instagram—which is why this doesn’t tend to work.
I had a limited supply of good paper at the time; hence the strange texture.