thecentrium

[thecentrium]

I think the best part of the babbledrogs’ translation gas as a mechanic of the setting is that any weird dialogue bits that wouldn’t normally make sense with the worldbuilding can just be considered the translation contextualizing for an earthling point of view

[thecentrium]

One thing I like to think about the Centrium setting is that there’s plenty of people there with backgrounds just as mysterious and intriguing as plot points like Mo’s origins or the transport sphere—it’s just that they’re all used to it, and at least aware of why/how they got to the Centrium specifically (plus out-of-universe the story is about the earthlings first lol)

Like I bet some of the more exotic and strange species or abilities (Preston for example?) maybe weren’t even naturally evolved, but created by other species or their own ancestors. Imagine going to the Centrium because your whole species’ existence was just the experiment of other aliens, or even of your own species!! And the setting itself is a patchwork culture full of space refugees, I bet some citizens’ personal technologies and belongings probably have totally mysterious origins or ancient backstories, and strange functions even more powerful and advanced than the usual Centrium tech.

I just really like the idea that on the Centrium, everyone has a story. Even the futuristic status quo there is decorated with a ton of little personal artifacts or mysteries that go a level even higher beyond it

[thecentrium]

What is the layout of the RV interior? (Elliott from Earth)

AKA there was no good reason for me to investigate this so deeply

Was I trying to build the RV as a house in The Sims and realized I had to actually figure out its full layout for that? Maybe, maybe not…let’s get to it though

So we can put together a pretty comprehensive layout of Elliott and Frankie’s RV just by looking at scene backgrounds, plus trying to make sure the recreated layout roughly fits the size of their type of RV. Their RV is what’s called a Class C, which can vary in size

As I tried to put together a layout “map” of the interior, the interior size it ended up reaching put the overall vehicle length at roughly 30 feet (see pic of random example 30 ft RV below)

With an interior length of about 28 feet including the overcab space, and a typical width of about 8 feet, a rough floor map ends up looking something like this:

Now most of these rooms and their furnishings are fully seen and known, since the living room and kitchen/dining area are all together (and there’s plenty of different scenes throughout that space to show it off) and there’s multiple shots of Elliott’s bunk too.

But…we have a few mysteries left. What’s the deal with the bathroom, and the (presumed) bedroom for Frankie in the back there?

Let’s start with the bathroom. In RVs, some models—usually small ones needing to save space, but Elliott and Frankie have a kinda unorthodox design with their RV, and maybe they just wanted the convenience and saved space with their RV too—have a “wet bath” for the bathroom. A wet bath is a small bathroom where the shower space and the rest of the bathroom are combined, so that basically the room itself IS the shower but it also contains other bathroom amenities.

We get only a glimpse of it just once, but enough to see it IS a wet bath:

There’s only that one very limited shot of it, but I think the rest of the room can be estimated, as you can see from the layout map I drew lol

Most wet baths, especially more room-sized ones like that, usually have a sink in one corner. We know it’s not in either of the back two corners we can see in that scene, and it can’t be mounted on the right wall surface there since that’s also the door, so that only leaves one corner where it could be.

From there it’s easy to just use process of elimination again to figure out where the toilet would be too—not visible at the back wall, can’t be against the right wall, and based on typical wet bath layout (and seeing where Mo is standing) it’s likely not on the left wall.

Other than that, looking close at the shot of the room for the other main structures of it, there’s a built-in shower shelf with bottles in it, the shower head and controls, and what seems to be a rounded corner shelf in the back

Overall, in the context of the scene it ends up something like this, with the sink and toilet out of view of the “camera” and the characters standing in front of them. Enjoy my awful drawn-over diagram it’s not pretty or perfectly accurate but it should get the point across lol

But enough looking way too closely at that. What about the other room—(seemingly) Frankie’s room? We see even less, but there’s still a bit of material to go off of: a glimpse of it through the doorway in one shot, and another view from the hole punched in its wall

It’s probably a pretty small area made for just a bed and a bit of storage space/surfaces, considering the look and placement of it within the layout here as well as just how smaller RV bedrooms are usually made. So while there’s not really enough visuals of it to extrapolate a whole layout like the bathroom, there’s probably not that much stuff in this room in the first place.

We can see what’s likely the end of a bed, and seemingly some sort of table surface with it there…

…as well as, in the other shot, a decorated wall and seemingly a shelf or table surface with a picture frame and other stuff on it (I brightened the pic for visibility but that kind of destroyed the quality)

So that gives a rough idea of it being mostly taken up by the bed, with some sort of thin table/shelf surface further in against the back wall, and maybe also an extra table surface by the footboard of the bed there near the door

With those two rooms mostly figured out, probably as best as we can from the material we’ve got, that solves the two big “mystery areas” of the RV layout and gives us a pretty much complete picture for it!

The only other note would be regarding the vehicle cab (where the driver’s seat and controls are)

I could go into more detail on why exactly I think this, but even just for simplicity’s sake it seems to me that while Elliott’s cab-over bed space was generated as part of their habitation pod on the Centrium, the actual vehicle cab part that would be below it isn’t there anymore due to not being part of the “home area” the tech recreated, and the divider wall that separated it just functions as a regular non-opening wall in the habitation pod now.

So that’s pretty much all I’ve got—most of this is honestly the combined conclusion of YEARS spent looking closely at the environments and design of the show for reference or theory reasons, so I hope you enjoyed the results of my long observations all put together!!

[thecentrium]

some day I will post more regularly on this blog and also post more than just mini-essays investigating specific character details (not my fault this platform suits those so well though). some day…

but in the meantime if you want much more regular and bite-sized EFE posts just go to the_centrium on Twitter. look I’m sorry it had to be on that app I don’t like it anymore either okay but my EFE-posting has been set up there for three years now 😭

[thecentrium]

What are the Elliott from Earth characters’ eye colors? An investigation

Another wordy investigation into minor character details, it’s the spiritual sequel to my height estimates post…

The default eye color for most EFE character renders is the same: a dark reddish purple pseudo-black (or sometimes just actual black), used generally for the lineart of features on nearly every character design. But beyond that stylization, what eye colors do they have, and where can we find a hint of it?

The best/most direct approach here is just to find and base it on some official visual source where the characters ARE shown with actual, distinctive eye colors in some way or another. And since there’s nothing that does that in the show itself, probably concept or production art.

Indeed, the only available visual that wasn't just the same usual render images using either black or that dark red-purple color, and that gave them unique individual eye colors at all, turned out to be this production art gif, a run cycle animation test with the early designs:

The eye colors there are based on unique outline colors for each character—and although it’s still a situation of matching eye and outline colors, I think these can be considered legit and not just like the stylized black pupils in the regular character renders, since

1. in this animation the eye color is something unique and different for each character rather than the same for everyone, and both eye color and lineart color are features that are often chosen to reflect or match the rest of a design (like they do there) so those features could easily go hand-in-hand and overlap like that anyway

and 2. in this case there’s actual colors for the eyes being indicated at all rather than it just being black or a purplish substitute for black, so it’s the most direct thing we’ve got for an eye color reference

So there’s a deep green for Mo (technically his earlier version Martin there, but design-wise they're similar and have the same colors), and a warm brown for Elliott. BUT, there’s one more thing. That’s not the color palette Elliott has now, so it's questionable if this should even apply to him for his eye color still!

But we can still use this—if we just adjust what we've already got here to match his current design.

The warm brown and deep green lineart/eye colors in the designs above seem to have come from the overall color palettes of the characters, since like I mentioned both those features are ones based on the rest of the design here. There’s a green used for the mostly-green Martin, and warm reddish brown used for the warm reds and yellows that define Elliott’s palette there.

So if a warm-colors palette gets a warm brown outline color, a palette with its main colors split between warm (e.g. red-orange hair) and cool (e.g. blue clothes) gets a more intermediate hue. Orange and blue in particular can even mix to make a warm (brown) or a cool (green) color…

So an intermediate outline/palette color like that is probably best matched by or interpreted as an intermediate human eye color, like hazel, a mix of warm (brown) and cool (green and gray) colors! Like these:

(Plus, a warm hazel like that is visually rather close to brown and kinda has the same overall feel to it, so even then this color is still akin to the original brown eye color we got from the gif earlier and it isn’t too drastic an “adjustment” from it)

So, with that development art as our closest official indicator of eye colors: Mo has deep green (fitting for a reptile?), Elliott has warm hazel, what about Frankie?

Although it took a few extra steps to bring things up-to-date and find our conclusion for Elliott, with him there was still some sort of source material to start from. But Frankie isn’t in that development art gif, and while maybe we could do that “based on palette colors” method again, that was really only done to follow the pattern of the designs from the gif for the characters there in it and slightly adjust it to the new palette; and besides, repeating that method for more characters might not keep working as fittingly anyway.

But that’s all really besides the point. There’s a simpler way for Frankie. Assuming she and Elliott are genetically related (which is material for a whole other post, but long story short I have my reasons and evidence to think that they are), we can just extrapolate from Elliott for her!

If Elliott has hazel eyes, it’s likely he got them from Frankie, especially considering Frankie’s warm/reddish but darker natural hair color—see below—that makes a hazel or even light brown eye color fitting for her. So it’s likely she’s also got a warm hazel, maybe even more of a light brown (the lines are kinda blurred with defining eye colors anyway).

The end! A bit of a long read for what should have been a simple question, but if you made it down here I hope you enjoyed it, I love making pointless investigation posts like this they’re so fun

[thecentrium]

okay everybody it’s “deeply investigating Epson family traits and history” time

[thecentrium]

He’s got my vote

[thecentrium]

I really need to start posting some more EFE stuff on here too so. Elliott and Frankie in Wednesday Pt 2 be upon you

[thecentrium]

Estimating the heights of the Elliott from Earth characters: a normal and useful pastime

We’re gonna start with Elliott because he’s the main character and therefore serves as the “height scale” for other things. Also, between the two human characters here and their stylization, I feel like he’s a tiny bit more typical proportions-wise.

Using an Earth object to compare and measure him with, I tried the coffee table (which are typically around 18 inches) and it seemed to scale properly, it even aligned with another option—the counter height, at 36 inches. So the coffee table checks out as our measuring unit!

So using the coffee table shot above as our standard, I stacked the table on top of itself until it was as tall as him, and it came cleanly out to about 3 tables:

Around 54 inches, or 4 foot 6 inches (about 137 cm)! That checks out as our measurement for him—it’s within the typical range for his age and species, and putting him on the shorter side.

Now things get a bit weird. Elliott’s height measured with the table made sense, but cartoon stylization means that using that same method for the other characters gets some weirdly superhuman results.

So our measurements get a little less visually literal from here…

It was kinda hard to find a good standard comparing Elliott and Frankie’s heights, there’s some slight inconsistency (usually to have them both be within the center of a shot where they’re standing together) or otherwise it’s shots where one is leaning, one is further back than the other, etc. But in general Elliott comes up to the area just below the shoulders, right around where the joint curves (the deltoid muscle area):

So how tall in total is a human who is about 4.5 feet at that deltoid shoulder curve height?

Some quick math estimated that the typical distance for an adult from the top of the head to the deltoid is about a foot, so it roughly estimated that around the 5’6” range would align with that best (visualized with a couple different height chart tools below). So a little on the taller side for her!

Now for Mo, we can’t rely on estimating through basic human proportions anymore, since he’s definitely not human, not to mention his posture can vary a lot. The good news is, he’s generally near halfway between the other two heights, so it’s easy to get a rough average from those.

The rough halfway point between the other two heights is around 5 feet (152 or so cm), maybe a little bit more (especially seeing where he aligns with the humans’ proportions). Either way that is very below average for a stegosaur but we love him for it.

Enough about earthlings—how tall does Lord Kallous stand? With purely visual estimation he seems to be just a little under double Elliott’s height, but as a number that would seem a bit tall for how he compares to the previous three heights and to the environments around him.

If we adjust it down to roughly 7 and a half feet though, it still generally lines up with all three others: Elliott’s height as tall as his waist and Mo’s height near his chest, like in the screenshot above, AND it’s now consistent with Frankie’s height compared to them too.

But what about the Hive Director there? She’s distinctly less humanoid, so now any concerns about inhuman proportions and comparison are definitely no longer a problem. It should be pretty simple now, so…

Using Elliott as our height scale (and returning to the coffee table measurement standard since we don’t have to worry about human proportions), she’s right between where the 2 and 3 foot marks would be. Around 2 foot 6 inches—fittingly little for her species and design of course!

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT! If you’ve read this far I hope you enjoyed it. This is what sixteen episodes total with no new content or official acknowledgement of the show’s existence for 3 years does to a person

[thecentrium]

am I basically two years too late to start posting on an Elliott from Earth account here

[thecentrium]

Elliott from Earth is a good show btw