Researching the World: Planet Earth

This was possibly the most important part of to research for the map and environment. I re-watched the entire season of Planet Earth and screenshot all the landscape shots I could to gather a collection of images. Planet Earth is a nature documentary programme about animals living if different beautiful locations around the earth. What I found so incredible about this documentary is the sheer beauty of some of these places, how diverse they can by and how life always finds a way to survive in even the most harshest conditions. Whats most amazing about all this, is mans utter disregard  for the world he lives in.

Some of the highlights of the worlds most incredible scenery is the Cave of Swallows in Mexico, a hole in the middle of the forest, that falls 1220 feet to the cave system below underground. Or Antarctica, which doubles in size during its winter from March until September, where they half the year in darkness, and the other half in sunlight. There is so many interesting facts, such as elephant grass in India, that grows as tall as an elephant (hence the name) and trees that are 379 feet tall and sprouted before Jesus was born, and are still alive today. Or even how the Taiga forest that occupies approximately 17% of the Earths surface area,  produces approximately 25% of the worlds oxygen. It produces more oxygen and absorbs more carbon dioxide than all of the tropical rainforests combined and contains one-third of all trees on earth.

Planet Earth is an incredibly eye opening documentary full of inspirations for locations and stories. One of the most important factors is how it makes the audience realise our need for climate change. For example, the film titled 'Ice worlds' were a polar bear is filmed swimming for miles in search for food, and resorted to attacking a herd of walrus' in a desperate attempt. The reason he could not hunt, was because the ice caps he normally hunted on to catch seals, were no longer there. After the walrus injured the bear in defense, to polar bear was doomed to starve to death, unable to hunt while injured, he would die. Purely because humans are destroying his habitat, he was forced into acting against his normal nature which resulted in his death.

Watching this inspired me so much with amazing scenery and facts that I thought, is making a entire wold necessary?  Is all that design work from scratch something that we should do? I have realized watching this that we could build an amazing fantasy world based on our own (like our animal characters are fantasy but based on real animals and real times in history). This I feel would also be more ethical and reminded our audience the importance of conservation and the beauty of the natural world, and still produce and amazing fantasy setting.