ASS2ROID

Concept

A Borderland camp concept complete with cinematic trailer, scrappy asteroid rover, an ad campaign, and a guidebook.

ASS2ROID is a theme camp for The Borderland, a co-created festival following the Burning Man 10+1 principles. The premise: two prospectors are running a full mining operation on the fictional asteroid Korova Rock. Everything that follows is built from that premise outward, with total sincerity and absolutely no restraint.

Mission ASS2ROID started with a bicep curl and a bad joke. The project began as a collaborative creative exercise (while lifting heavy) combining a shared love of sci-fi franchises and 1980s comics. The goal was to build a complete fictional universe with lore, visual language, physical objects, and a soundtrack.

Visual Direction

Pulpy, hand-made, easter eggs

The visual language draws from 1980s comic book artists, Richard Corben and Moebius in particular. The deliberate choice was to use AI tools (Midjourney, ElevenLabs) to achieve a hand-crafted, pulpy aesthetic rather than the smooth, clean output AI usually produces. Every frame of the trailer and every poster element should feel like it is part of an alternate comic book universe.

The fictional publisher "Kroeber Institute" lends institutional legitimacy to the lore. The Latin mission motto in profundum imis ("we go deep") is stitched onto the mission emblem with full seriousness.

Deliverables

The full universe

• Cinematic trailer — comic book style, AI-generated visuals and audio
• Movie poster
• Dual ad campaigns referencing 1980s–90s visual culture
• Official Korova Rock guidebook, credited to the Kroeber Institute
• Menu concept (including references to "Milk+")
• Sticker collection with original one-liners
• Mission emblem with Latin motto
• Comic strip
• Physical rover bar — retrofitted garden cart with game consoles, tubing, speaker, and custom packaging
• Curated 1980s soundtrack

The Physical Build

Analogue art car

The physical installation is a retrofitted garden cart transformed into an asteroid mining rover. Game consoles, custom tubing, a speaker, and hand-made packaging complete the illusion. At a festival built on collective world-making, it's the object that makes the fiction feel real.