Stage Design concept Lost Lands Festival
During my graduation internship for 360° Show Design (360), the company responsible for the 2023 mainstage design of Lost Lands Festival, I also drew up a concept stage design for the mainstage.
Lost Lands is the biggest Dubstep festival in the world and leans on the theme of "Prehistoric Paradox" which means the fusion between futurism with robots and lasers and the prehistoric dino era.
In late 2022 they contacted 360 for their mainstage design of the 2023 edition of the festival. The main artwork of Lost Lands 2023, as seen down below, immediatly stood out to us at the office as a source of inspiration.
I also felt really inspired by this artwork and got the freedom and opportunity to design my own concept for the mainstage. With the guidance of the head of design at 360, Pieter Truijen, I came to the following design where the main concept was: "what if this world tree of the artwork would grow in the shape of a tyrannosaurus rex head?" which led to the stage centerpiece as seen, where I tried to strike a balance of keeping the organic shapes of the intertwining roots as a base to form the shape of the head so it could believeably be grown out of the tree and shaping the head aggressively with angular lines to fit the style of Lost Lands.
Other things I kept in mind in the design aswell were how to integrate light and fx already while designing a trick Pieter thought me. For instance the choice of the eye at the top was to evoke the feeling that this was the same tree as the artwork first, but it also was designed for the oppurtunity to create a deigetic light show effect namely that a red laser could be integrated to create a laser shooting eye, something depicted in Dubstep art a lot. There would also be the added benefit of making the eye animatronic so it would be able to blink and move. Because the dinosaur head was hollow to create a skull but also the opportunity to show more of the centerpiece led visuals very central in Lost Lands stages we got the opportunity to not block the led visuals of Lost Lands and simultaniously make the T-Rex come to live. What I mean with this is that this accomodates the opportunity for led visuals with moving eyes in the hollow eye sockets or moving teeth in the hollow mouth and thus the possibility to bring the stage to live with believeable movement even more, bringing the T-Rex back to life from the prehistoric era with modern technology another slight nod to the Prehistoric Paradox theme of lost lands. Down below these and more concept effects with Light and FX thought up during the design can be seen:
Showcase of not blocking the centerpiece led visuals of lostlands with the design.
Showcase of using led visuals to bring the T-Rex to life.
Showcase of smoke effects coming out of the mouth and nose of the T-Rex and Lasers shooting out of his eyes.
Showcase of the animatronic eye movements.