12Final

Project Overview “Contrast”

Category: Concept, Final, Lighting, Milestones, Modeling, Postwork, Seasons, Summer, Texturing, Winter
Posted on: December 22nd by

Well I finished the images and thought it would be good to show a project overview from concept to final images.

The concept was this;

For me Citylife is Contrast. Having visited a number of large cities the last couple of years I found contrast to be the most apparent element during my stay; architecture, people, culture, neighbourhoods, etc. Having recently visited the States and a couple of large cities (LA/Vegas/San Francisco), and with the current economic downturn, the biggest difference for me was between the have’s and have not’s. The wealthy and the poor. For example seeing a luxurious bakery/patisserie with $7 cupcakes (they were lovely btw…) whilst right outside there is a guy begging for a $1. I want to highlight this contrast and the indifference the metropolis creates*.

Thinking of a setting for the scene it reminded me of a picture I took of two buildings in NY, with a gap between them of about 1,5m to 2m. Another odd contrast, 10+ story buildings in one of the most densely populated cities yet “wasting” precious m2 between them. The question it generated for me is how can we utilise wasted space in cities to give the homeless a slightly better life.

The concept I came to was to create a shanty skyscraper between these two buildings, giving the opportunity to the homeless to build their own place out of discarded scaffolding and panelling. Thereby improving their Citylife, whilst also highlighting the contrast in an architectural way.

*The Metropolis and Mental Life. Georg Simmel.

The selection of images are for each milestone.

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DeanMoran 11 pts

Hey Brodie,

Thanks for the comments. Can see your point with regards to the concept and the contrast being stronger. Would be interesting to make a more extreme version to see how that ends up, shouldn't be too much extra work with everything else present. I created the image to be as real as possible (haven't been doing this long so just getting it decent was a challenge) and with that in mind I created the shanty town in a "real" way. The structure is reasonably realistic (without going into precise engineering). I like that it somewhat merges with the rest and is more subtle because of it. But I tend to design that way in my dayjob aswell, I always like noticing stuff once you look a bit longer and finding more depth that way. I could imagine walking on this street and only noticing the homeless guy and feeling that something is off but not sure what....and then realise this shanty tower all of a sudden. But placing more weight on the concept it could have been more visible, I agree.

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brodiegeers 12 pts

DeanMoran Very well stated. You've obviously got a very good grasp on where the image is at and what you were doing with it. I certainly agree that the realism factor is there and well thought out both in terms of rendering and construction. In the end I can't say which version would be better, but it'd be an interesting experiment later on down the road. Good job on the comp :)

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brodiegeers 12 pts

great job with the overview here. you did a superb job of being consistent throughout which really seems to have helped you spend time on all the quality elements you produced rather than on changes and such. I like the postwork you did on the daytime shot a lot. The car reflections looked better and the streetlight popped out a bit more which was nice.

One thing that might have been interesting is had you played the 'contrast' theme a bit further. As is, the 'shanty' sections almost totally blends in with the outside buildings and the colors overall are quite uniform. At a glance it just looks like a well done street render as it's easy to miss the shanty section. To this end, the original image actually did a pretty good job. There's (quite literal) contrast with the buildings, and then the rubble is a completely different color and quite obvious. The rubble also contains all sorts of slanted lines which draw your attention from the uniformity of the buildings - a feature your images didn't end up with. So while I really like the concept and I really like the images I wonder if there could have been a better connection between the two.

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