I am quite interested in the historical empire of Axum. This was in the land of modern day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. I think the combination of rather obscure and little-known historical settings with avant-garde and sometimes limited artstyles creates a really cool and intriguing combination. I find the psychology of the two mesh well together. I love palette 1 of the CGA.

I had to be speculative with this. I added an Arabian style awning because Axum was steeped in trade with Arabia (and even ruled over southern Arabia for some time too,) and based the buildings off of a whole swath of pictures that I kept in a Google Doc. I also tried to find facts about ancient Axum that would be relevant.

Here is the only reference that significantly individually influenced this.

https://br.pinterest.com/pin/629237379182573749/

If necessary I can share my whole Google Doc of references, however the rest of them were primarily for reference on patterns and general aspects of their architecture philosophy.

I'd like to use this art in a graphic parser adventure one day.

This work took around 25 hours or more total to make. It was a lot of fun to do after getting back home from work.