Extinction
In one of the last cities on Earth, Uptown’s security slowly falters at Downtown’s uprise for anarchy as realise the exploitation and lying promise of protection against climate change armageddon. Sewer Rat is a young orphaned miner and thief in a Downtown city who dreams of becoming an aerospace pilot. As the young protagonist comes across a spacecraft crash site, he picks up an extra-terrestrial artefact with unimaginable power. This alien artefact unleashes an unfound strength and ability to Sewer Rat. The government learns this and unleashes their most notorious bounty hunter to hunt the boy down. Sewer Rat learns he will be the face of hope or despair between Downtown and uptown. Who will he choose to fight for? And will he make the right choice? It's based of a mixed western society on the brink of climate change annihilation. While the earth's condition is dying, human civilisation resorts to technology to protect them. But as the resources to fund and build this 'safe place' is non-renewable while the demand was high, only the powerful and promising for human existence will survive. This led to this city with a strong division of the 'inferior' and 'superior' defined by technological materialism. A theme of existential precarity looms over all the characters. With the pressure of irreversible global warming, the government throws utilitarianism out of the window and back to earth's earliest tip "survival of the fittest". This world obviously lays out a dystopian class division in its environment. The affluent classes are situated in the high rise buildings. And those who can afford guaranteed safety and luxury away from the demolished earth is the one way trip to a new planet colony. The high ground is in inspired by brutalist/art deco architecture to visually communicate their authority, security and wealth above the proletariat civilians that dwell the earth's surface. The lower sphere one is situated on, the lower your security and socioeconomic status is to this brutal society. I wanted to discreetly place small tragedies in this world. The struggle to provide for your family. The struggle to climb up not for luxury but the security of your existence and your legacy to the next generations. The downtown community are seeking a revolution of their unkind government. These people are intentionally left on the crumbling earth's surface to rot.
Animatic
Character Designs
Gas Mask - Experiment 019
Gas Mask, a locked criminal and an abused government-classified human experiment, is assigned to hunt down Sewer Rat’s newfound extra-terrestrial power. The government entices their most hardened inmate with a chance for freedom if the bounty is retrieved. This brute is equipped with robotic prosthetics engineered to release toxic fumes that will asphyxiate any breathing within close parameters.
Gas Mask desires not only freedom but a promised security that his beloved family is protected from earth’s final days. However, being under their dehumanising experimentations and torture, it is unsure if there is still a fully conscientious person behind the mask anymore.
He was previously a soldier in the military, however, in one of the operations, he committed treason. Although the given sentence of treason is capital punishment, he was given the choice to live under the control of a mad scientist.
Xander - Sewer Rat
This is where Sewer Rat, our protagonist, comes in. He longs for a connection that was severed by his father from a few years ago. His father whom was sick of leading a life in the dark of the mines as well as a security guard for uptown. Now, Sewer Rat with daddy issues and ambition for greatness, he is looking for an adventure. And for a one way ticket to live in the exoplanet colony. He picks pockets, possessing a sleight of hand gift, stealing valuables and commodities to trade at barter swap markets and pawn shops to afford a secure life. However, an event that will define the cause of his future by coming across an extra-terrestrial parasite.