Concept Art - Junk Drawer World

I was given an assignment by by 2D art class to design and create concept art for an enviroment. I started with an Idea I had as a kid of a world that was full of people made of things you could find in a junk drawer. In this world, although they were made of objects that once were lifeless, they were given life by a magical spider that lived within the drawer. The silk of this spider, once woven into inanimate objects, blesses those objects with life. However, overtime this blessing fades, the string losing its potency eventually causing the death of whoever it once gave life to. Some people worship the spider as a godess of sorts, building temples and shrines to her calling her by her divine name of Akrana. This was once of the original sketches I made back then:

I revisited this idea for this enviroment project because back then I didn't really have an enviroment in mind. I began making sketches to try and give myself some ideas. While I sketching, I knew I wanted there to be some kind of natural land formations. But a land filled with junk and nothing else felt too cluttered. So I altered my idea slightly. Instead of the world taking place in a mysterious junk drawer, it takes place in the pocket dimension of a wizard. This wizard, unknown to the people of this land, uses their world as his trashcan. Other than beer bottles and dirty napkins he throws spells into the dimension out of frustration. This magical energy created swirling land formations. I wanted to showcase some lore of the world in my image. So I started by sketching out different ideas. Some of these ideas include: a shrine for Akrana with broken CD that was shaped into her image, a series of popsicle-stick steps on the side of a cliffside leading to an ancient temple, and a sphere made of bottle caps. I'm not sure why, but the bottle sphere intrigued me. At first I thought of it being a spaceship, but that felt to advanced for this world. So I instead transformed it into a turret.

The turret has thick layers of popsicle sticks as a base and a bottle cap roof. A glass bottle attached to the roof acts as a shell for the canon. The bottle can be pivoted as the bottle caps are connected to eachoher using a scientifically engineered version of the magic string that acts as a substance that can bind things together, but be passed through like a gel. So the glass bottle has a long arm attached at the base which moves between the bottle caps to pivot the turret. But If there was a turret, why would it exist? Turrets mean conflict, war.

So I began thinking about creating something

He also locked his spider familiar in there when he grew tired of it. But then one day he died with his familiar still inside. Their souls seperated, the spider could not die with its master, and so it stewed in the magic of this pocket dimension, mutating, evolving into the god of the junk people.