First, here's that time lapse I promised. It's about 2.5 hours of work compressed to 4 minutes. It's really, really fast, mostly because the early "blocking" are suppose to be fast, so you can get a quick layout that you can use to add the detailed bits later.
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Now to the nitty-gritty shit of where the hell I've been. If you want to get to the cool 3D bits, skip ahead.
Anyway, since leaving RIT and finishing the painter, I kept up a bit with my 3D, doing some work here and there, but it quickly teetered off after the Planet Express building. In the past year, I didn't drop my 3D work completely... but for all intents and purposing, yeah, I had given up.
I had decided to settle for a "normal" life. Get my associates degree in something that would most likely provide a good career, probably something IT related. Work, get married, have kids, retire.
Most people seemed to think that was a good idea. Seems reasonable right? Nothing wrong with that kind of life. I don't mean to disrespect anyone by what I've said, but for me, that meant giving up my dreams.
The wake up call came from someone I did not expect. If anything I would have thought he'd be most on board with the "responsible/practical" choice. I told him my plan, and he was the first person to call my bullshit. I don't remember exactly what he said, but what I got out of it was that he thought it would have been really sad for me to not do what I had wanted to do for so long. It would be a shame for me to give up then and never do what I loved most.
The guy who told me all of this was my Dad.
Thanks Pops :)
So here we are, over a year later. After living at my parents in Loudon for a bit, kind of figuring stuff out, I moved back down to Boston. I got my job back at Mahoney's, which isn't bad. Sure, it's not in my preferred field, but it'll do for now.
What now? I'm not really sure, still figuring some things out. One thing's for sure though, I am going to pursue my passion, video games. What part of video games? Programming? Art? Design? We'll see. For now, I'm going to keep at the art, see where that takes me. I'm not going to worry about what will look better for a portfolio; I'm going to work on what excites me, otherwise I don't think I'd get anything done.
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So! Onto the cool stuff!
First a little backstory. This next piece is a conceptual design for a major city in the universe that I've been world-building for quite a long time. By a long time I mean, the story that started it all was last saved to a floppy disk.
It slowly evolved from a derivative story of clone soldiers into a complex and (hopefully) original sci-fi universe, with a hint of fantasy. Some of you know a bit of the story.
The city belongs to a theocratic society. To put it very, very simply: the society had to leave their planet and find a new one. On this new planet after their initial settlement they erected this city as a monument to commemorate their achievements and to offer thanks to their gods (of which there are three).
Back to the design: I have always been inspired by "scale-shock." Which are buildings, sculptures, landscapes, etc that are on such a large scale it's, well, shocking. Some examples would be The Wall (Game of Thrones), the Death Star (that's no moon), and Eve Online's spaceships (home to the 18 km Titans). But I think this scene from The Fellowship of the Rings best demonstrates scale-shock.
Small disclaimer - The following images, at this stage, are extremely crude. Most are all screenshots taken directly from within Maya. It's too early for them to look pretty.
The idea started as "a city on a bridge."
Version 1.0 started as a pretty lame, giant Golden Gate Bridge, but it got the creative juices flowing.
See arrow for since of scale (those are average building heights of 5-ish stories).
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Version 2.0 - "What if the landscape (see arrow) was on the bridge!?" ... No, too big. In the middle you can see the concept for the citadel (more on that later).
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Version 3.0 - Ok, let's chill out a little. Simple and elegant. This version stuck with me for a long while.
This version would span across three peninsulas or across a bay with an island in the middle.
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Version 4.wtf - I was really just spit balling with this one... don't ask. What it did do for me was bringing my brain way from the traditional two sided, symmetrical bridge.
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First an idea of the scale. The tower in the center, the citadel, is about 4000ft tall. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, is 2722 ft. Surrounding it, clustered in the center would be the taller skyscrapers, the rest of the buildings getting smaller the further out they are.
Remember the three gods? Yeah, three arms, three gods... bam.
To get a better sense of street layout and block sizes I quickly created the model below. Each block is roughly the size of an average Manhattan city block.
So, where's it going to sit? For a while, the landscape would have several rivers converging at a giant sink hole that the city would sprawl across. Shown here, in a super crude, cartoony illustration (I'm no concept artist).
At the end of the rivers (light blue) would be large, beautiful waterfalls.
With the sink-hole idea, there was one major problem... where does the water go? There could be a massive cave system I guess. I worked out some lore-friendly explanations... but in the end, it wouldn't work. Plus wouldn't it be better if there was access to the ocean?
Yes, yes it would.
Tada! Ocean access.
Next a simple 3D representation. The city expands beyond the bridge (all the green).
Ok, that'll do for now. I wanted to add a lot more, but this post is long enough as is. Plus it's 1:30 am.
Tomorrow I'll have lot's more! Including the most exciting part: highway interchanges! Oh yeah, interchanges baby.
