“The Castorp syndrome” – Sci-fi TV concept (2014).

Designing a sci-fi TV show concept:

“The Castorp syndrome” is a working project created by Martín Barandalla Roncal, a veteran of USA, UK and Spanish TV fiction industry. The overall series concept takes place in a near future where humankind is starting to spread through and colonizing Solar System in ring shaped colony spaceships.

The main references in this project were other sci-fi shows that are near to a realistic side of the genre in their designs like “Alien” (1979), “Battlestar Galactica” (2004-2009), “Firefly” (2002), “2001” (1968), “Solaris” (1972), “Moon” (2009) and “Star Trek, the motion picture” (1979).

In that way, we finally opted for a fully functional semi industrial look, where almost all elements should look like prefabricated serial components, avoiding over stylized designs so frequent in sci-fi genre shows. The external ship shapes and sizes are designed  in the very same way, using realistic measures and following to physical logic.

I worked in this project alongside my partner Christian Suárez Páramo. I designed and drawed the overall inner ship designs while Christian applied his color magic to them and drew the characters on the storyboard frames.

The outer photorealistic design of the show´s main ship was designed by both of us in collaboration. First, we dicussed and sketched some ship rough aproximations, defining general shapes and sizes. After customer´s feedback, I created a 3D basic model. Then, Christian painted a ship sketch over the render defining some general details and tones. Finally, I came up with a detailed version and some major changes.

Storyboard:

We also storyboarded the most epic scene from the pilot episode screenplay.