The Exodus from Days Before

The world of Red Circuitry is actually a fairly old one.  It has existed in 2 distinct versions prior to the world we are building specifically for this project.  The first dates back to my senior year of high school and an independent study course where I did research on building flash games.  The world I built with my friend Mike Maxson was a simplistic science fiction world, and we learned a great deal about vector graphics, and world design.  Full disclosure, there is no remaining content from that version of the world in the current comic or any materials we are building at this point, but I have to give that high school creative sprint credit, because credit is due.

The second version of the world blossomed during my sophomore year of college when I decided I wanted to try to break into the wild wondrous world of RPG development.  The other Mike in my social circuit, Mike Clinton and I spent roughly two years hacking out a functional role playing game and doing a lot of world building with me.  The game focused on humanity's drive to leave a ravaged Terra and make their way into the farthest reaches of space. Instead of being set after that leap was complete (as so many science fiction stories are) we decided to focus on the time period right before that leap was really possible and tell stories about how humanity was coping (or not really coping) with that transition.

We ran a playtest chronicle and got a lot of feedback from our friends, including my partner in crime from the early days.  I used the skills I developed in that independent study and put together a character creation program in flash that included a full equipment database, and the ability to store and retrieve multiple characters.  I am still incredibly proud of the work we did on that game and the world that would eventually become Red Circuitry.  We created some amazing characters, narratives, and built a game that we gleaned a lot of enjoyment out of, but to be honest we never got anywhere near a finished product that was ready for the world.

All of that said I found a couple pieces of art from that old role playing project that I thought would be worth sharing.  This isn't exactly the world of Red Circuitry, as the original game was set on Terra as opposed to Mars, and life is very different back on the home front.  You never know though.  Some of what you see here might make another appearance if we ever get far enough into the story to re-visit the Terran system.

Early cityscape design with a basic character using an implant weapon.

A rendition of what a bio modified human might look like with grown scale armor.

Both of these pieces are early work by the ever brilliant Lydia Burris.  They are shared here with her permission, and I encourage everyone to go check out the amazing work she is doing now.  It definitely has a very different flare, but is completely worth the investigation.  http://www.lydiaburris.com/