Space and Environment

Secret Lairs OGR 2 – Venusian Sorceress

Will Huntley

20/11/2013

Character Profile

Hortaga is the last remaining Sorceress of the planet Venus. After losing all of her family in a battle against an

alien race she remains as queen on the planet trying to spread the way of sorcery across other species that

lurk on the planet.

The 214 year old sorceress has spent decades developing and creating spells using the planets resources. The

460°C average temperature of Venus has proved very useful in the creation of these spells, including craters

spewing molten liquid that would boil anything in a fraction of an Earth second. Due to these craters only being

found underground, Hortaga has created her habitat beneath the planets surface.

Hortaga spends the majority of her life underground in the throne room left behind from her family. She sits

upon her floating thrown whilst many other inhabitants of the planet visit her with gifts and requests. Hortaga

occasionally spends a short time exploring the space around the planet for space junk that could be useful in

the production of her sorcery. Due to the fact that a Venus length of day is 116 Earth days, Hortaga has plenty of

time to scour the planet for other species to use in her experiments.

Hortaga’s motivation behind remaining on the planet is her lust for power. Nothing is said against this almighty

sorceress and nothing ever will. Everyday she becomes ever more powerful with new spells always being

created. The other species of the planet now rely on the sorceress queen as without her the planet would be a

barren wasteland.

Visual Concept The main visual concept behind my scene is to show a very powerful and royal throne room but still capture the

ruggedness of the planet. For this I’ve decided to create a throne room that has been carved out of a cave

beneath the surface of the planet. I intend to use lot of cracks and light holes in the lair to not only to show that

the room is very old due to it being left by Hortaga’s family but to also to let other colours of Venus to flood

into the room. I would also like the room to be quite dimly lit with maybe a few candles; this would then let the

light holes to really take effect on the lair. To show that the room is royal I am going to include banners hanging

from the ceiling and the family crest engraved into the floor.

I have used inspiration from the throne room used in the Game of Thrones series in order to get a sense of

scale and also loneliness. The throne room shows a single chair in an enormous hall giving the scene a very

lonely, isolated atmosphere. This is something I want to achieve in my lair to show that Hortaga is in fact alone,

with no family left.

Other films that I have taken reference from is Watchmen and Prometheus. The scene in Watchmen shows Dr.

Manhattan creating an enormous crystalline clockwork ship from the surface of Mars. This scene would be

helpful to look at because of the colours and lighting used to create the landscape, and also to look at other

planets surfaces. Prometheus was also useful to look at for alien planets such as looking at the clouds of

smoke/mist being produced from the surface of the planet.

Hero Prop For my hero prop I have decided to use a hover throne with its own orbit/magnetic field that allows Hortaga to

keep her most prized possessions always at arms length away.

At first I looked at the staffs used for the wizards in The Lord of the Rings but started to think they were typical

wizard/sorcerer props and would preferably like to go down a different route for my hero prop. So with ideas

from colleagues and tutors I decided to go for a hover throne. To start with I looked at modern chairs used

today such as the egg chair. From this design I could form the basis of my hero prop. I also looked at hover

chairs used in films to get a sense of design and other attributes such as how far the chair floats above the

ground. The films I looked at for this were Star Wars for Yoda’s chair and the chairs used in Wall-E. Professor X

in the Marvel comics was also helpful to look at in terms of hover chair.

After designing the main body of the chair I went about creating the orbit/ magnetic field. For this I researched

into the solar system and into asteroid belts and how they’re formed. After researching this I thought I couldn’t

just have other floating objects around the chair so I thought into adding colour an orbital ring. Some

inspiration for this came from Supernovas. Interpretations of a star exploding often shows a brightly coloured

ring being emitted from the middle of the explosion. This ring gave me a lot of inspiration for the

orbit/magnetic field revolving around the main hover throne.

Links

Blog -

http://wahuntley.blogspot.co.uk/