John Yorke suggests in Into the Woods that basically all our stories are all related to each other thematically. Alice in Wonderland to Toy Story to Saw, our heroes, villains and quests repeat themselves over the course of history. He states that "Storytelling has a shape. It dominates the way all stories are told and can be traced back not just to the Renaissance, but to the very beginnings of the recorded world" "a universal archetype".Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology retellings have formed a solid basis for the aesthetics of my character and spatial design. His characters have the morals and core concepts of the ancient gods, but with modern mannerisms and relationships. The modernisation of these characters makes them relatable and human, through the use of comedy and dialogue, that wasn't really present in ancient myth. We knew what the characters relationships were, but without really reading tales of their daily lives and how they interact. This perception of them has been useful to me as it allows me to draw more of their character out of this book to use in my own drawings.
Celtic Art has been useful in researching mythological symbols and their individual meanings. There's also a lot of information regarding how different cultures perceived each symbol. For example, the Norse symbol of the sun wheel was eventually adapted into the swastika of Nazi Germany. Investigating these symbols has been interesting for me as I didn't really consider the symbolism of religion and myth when starting this project, but it has been one of the most enduring and most recognisable factors of both. Moving forward I intend to keep referring back to this book to make sense of the origins of certain symbols and how they have been (and can be) adapted.
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