Brief six : Major Project

Through image and narrative storytelling we are going to tell the story of the four individual quests for the Holly bean.

This was the original allocation of jobs:
Air Kingdom: Pete
Fire kingdom: Sara
Water Kingdom: Chris
Earth Kingdom: Angela

It was soon clear that I would be doing ALL four of the environments. Reasons for this are that when I created my air environment, everyone liked the style and we therefore wanted some consistency to run through the images. Other members also had alot of work left to do for Coffee Republic whereas I had completed my tasks on the deadline set.

Story research and background:

Guardians:
The task of elementals, like that of the nature devas (angels), is to build up forms in the natural world, thus providing an arena in which other beings, such as human souls can evolve spiritually.
- Uriel controls the elemental of Earth
- Gabriel-Water
- Raphael-Air
- Michael- Fire.
Many identify the color green with Raphael, perhaps to associate the healing of the earth. Gold with Raphael, to draw emphasis to his divine messages, and Michael in shades of blue, to show his divine messages

The Earth kingdom

Agartha (sometimes Agartta, Agharti or Agarttha) is a legendary city that is said to reside in the Earth's core. It is related to the Hollow Earth theory and is a popular subject in Esotericism.
Garden of Eden - The original birthplace and home of humanity according to Abrahamic religions. The first humans were banished from it after disobeying God and it was destroyed in a Deluge.
Lemuria - A supposed "lost land" that was found in either the Indian or Pacific Ocean.

In Greek mythology Demeter is the Earth Mother goddess of grain and fertility, the pure. Nourisher of the youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law. She is invoked as the "bringer of seasons" in the Homeric hymn, a subtle sign that she was worshipped long before she was made one of the Olympians.
Demeter taught mankind the arts of agriculture: sowing seeds, ploughing and harvesting.

The central myth of Demeter, which is at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries, is her relationship with Persephone, her daughter and own younger self. In the Olympian pantheon, Persephone became the consort of Hades (Roman Pluto, the underworld god of wealth). Demeter had a large scope of abilities. Besides being the goddess of the harvest, she also controlled the seasons, and because of that she was capable of destroying all life on earth. In fact, her powers were able to influence Zeus into making Hades bring her daughter Persephone up from the underworld. Persephone became the goddess of the underworld when Hades abducted her from the earth and brought her into the underworld. She had been playing with some nymphs, whom Demeter later changed into the Sirens as punishment for having interfered, and the ground split and she was taken in by Hades. Life came to a standstill as the depressed Demeter searched for her lost daughter.
Finally, Zeus could not put up with the dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone by sending Hermes to retrieve her. But before she was released, Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds (the number varies in various versions; one, three, four, or even seven according to the telling), which forced her to return for six months each year. When Demeter and her daughter were together, the earth flourished with vegetation. But for six months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. Summer, autumn, and spring by comparison have heavy rainfall and mild temperatures in which plant life flourishes. It was during her trip to retrieve Persephone from the underworld that she revealed the Eleusinian Mysteries. In an alternate version, Hecate rescued Persephone. In other alternative versions, Persephone was not tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds but chose to eat them herself, or ate them accidentally, that is, not knowing the effect it would have or perhaps even recognize it for what it was. In the latter version it is claimed that Ascalaphus, one of Hades' gardners, claimed to have witnessed her do so, at the moment that she was preparing to return with Hermes. Regardless, the result is the occurrence of the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendars.

Creatures:
Centaurs - Creatures who are half-man and half-horse who appear in many mythological stories,
Giants - Huge, often violent human-like creatures that cause fear in the people who encounter them,
Gnomes - Very small human-like folks who stand just one or two feet tall,
Leprechaun - Merry little human-like creatures who live close to humans but do not like to be seen by them very often,
Ogres - Human-like folks who stand twice as tall as humans and are built very strong and heavy,
Pixie - Tiny folk who live among the countryside. They are hard workers and can help crops and flowers to grow, but they also like to play tricks on humans,
Unicorn - A horse-like creature with a horn growing out of its forehead.

Narrative:
'URIEL' the guardian of Earth is summoned leave Tartarus and embark on an epic journey to bring the four elements to mankind on a quest to create the perfect coffee bean. Throughout her journey she must overcome mythical creatures (Giants, Ogres) and travel through violent earthquakes and the evil forest to reach her destination and unite the elements to create the Holly bean. Earth is the first component and will sow and harvest the seeds.

Air Kingdom:

Balloons/ wind turbines/ Kites/ Clouds/ smoke/ mist/ hair blowing/ birds/ butterflys/ rainbow/ leaves/ sun/ hot air balloons/ planes/helicopters/ bubbles





The air Kingdom: 'Laputa' - Laputa is a fictional place from the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Laputa is a fictional flying island or rock with an adamantine base, that can be maneuvered by its inhabitants in any direction using magnetic levitation.

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt and the eagle.

Sylphs:
1 : an elemental being in the theory of Paracelsus that inhabits air
2 : a slender graceful woman or girl — sylph·like \ˈsil-ˌflīk\ adjective
Paracelsus was an alchemist, physician, astrologer, and general occultist. Paracelsus believed in the Greek concept of the four elements, but he also introduced the idea that, on another level, the cosmos was fashioned from three spiritual substances: the tria prima of Mercury, Sulfur and Salt.

Narrative:
'RAPHAEL' the guardian of air is summoned by Aether to leave Laputa and embark on an epic journey to bring the four elements to mankind on a quest to create the perfect coffee. Throughout his journey he must overcome mythical creatures (Garudas, Griffins, Harpys and Simurghs) and travel through severe storm clouds and dangerous tornados to reach his destination and unite the elements to create the Holly bean. Air will blow and spread the seeds across the land.

The Water Kingdom:

Andromeda was a woman from Greek mythology who, as divine punishment for her mother's bragging, was chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster.

In Greek mythology, Poseidon (Greek: Ποσειδῶν; Latin: Neptūnus) was the god of the sea, as well as of horses, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. He was associated with dolphins and three-pronged fish spears (tridents). He lived in a palace on the ocean floor, made of coral and gems.

Atlantis - The legendary (and almost archetypal) lost continent that was supposed to have sunk into the Atlantic Ocean; there are many differing opinions on what and where Atlantis was.
Atlantis is the name of a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias. According to Critias, the Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might own a lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it afterwards was sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean.

Sea monsters: Giant octopus, mermaids, sea serpent, Scylla & Charybdis were the two monsters in Greek mythology, sharks, whales (Moby-Dick)

Narrative:
'GABRIEL' the guardian of water is summoned to leave Atlantis and embark on an epic journey to bring the four elements to mankind on a quest to create the perfect coffee. Throughout her journey she must overcome mythical creatures (octopus, sea serpents, sharks) and travel through treacherous waters and high seas to reach her destination and unite the elements to create the Holly bean. Water will feed and nourish the beans allowing them to grow strong.

The Fire kingdom:

In Greek mythology, Hades and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed rulership over the universe ruling the underworld, sky, and sea, respectively

Hades refers to the ancient Greek underworld.
The Greek underworld is a general term used to describe the various realms of Greek mythology which were believed to lie beneath the earth or beyond the horizon. In classic Greek mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus. It is either a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades (the entire underworld) with Tartarus being the hellish component.

Phlegethon (English translation: "flaming") or Pyriphlegethon (English translation: "fire-flaming") was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, Plato describes it as "a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus.'

Creatures:
Dragon: The two most familiar interpretations of dragons are either European dragons, derived from various European folk traditions, or unrelated Oriental dragons, derived from the Chinese dragon ). The word "dragon" derives from Greek, "a serpent of huge size, a python, a dragon"
Pheonix: a mythical bird that dies in flames and is reborn from the ashes

Narrative:
'MICHAEL' the guardian of fire is summoned by to leave Tartarus and embark on an epic journey to bring the four elements to mankind on a quest to create the perfect coffee bean. Throughout his journey he must overcome mythical creatures (dragons) and travel through burning forests and flaming rivers to reach his destination and unite the elements to create the Holly bean. Fire will roast beans ready to give to mankind in order to be ground and brewed.