INVISIBLE CITIES - FINAL CRIT PRESENTATION

Invisible Cities - Creative Partnership Archive

Invisible Cities - Moriana Research

INVISIBLE CITIES - FINAL 3 CONCEPT PAINTINGS

Exterior Establishing Shot

Exterior Low Angle Shot

Interior Establishing Shot

Invisible Cities - DVD Cover

Tiny text at the bottom of things makes it seem legit.

Invisible Cities - Moriana Final Compositions (Before Colour!)

2 of the roughs for my final 3-Piece. Really trying to push scale! Thoughts???

Perspective Exercises

These double as perspective excersizes as well as rough ideas for my final images! Unfortunately, the FOV (Yay, something games taught me!) is way too narrow/zoomed in and probably won't show enough information about Moriana that I would like. I want to be able to use perspective as a rough guide so that my drawings don't look mechanical. Focusing on lineart was not the focus, moreso getting bulky forms down. - Paint was going straight over the top of it anyway!

Invisible Cities - Moriana Inside Compositions 2

 

 

More inside shots, this time a darker take from an average home rather than one that's slightly more privileged.

 

 

Doing this on a higher saturated screen and then looking at it on another makes it look very de-saturated.  That's kinda annoying!

Invisible Cities - Moriana Inside Composition Perspective fix

 

I talked with Jordan about the piece I did yesterday. For one of my final shots I'll keep the same idea as this with the beam obstructing the view slightly, but fix perspective issues. On this piece the beams were slightly lower than they should be, making the overall scale of it look off.

Invisible Cities - Moriana Inside Composition

Inside atmosphere piece! Also wanted to see if I could get the right atmosphere inside the individual houses. A very childish house.

I think my scaling might be off.

Invisible Cities - Moriana Colour Compositions 3

Some more comps, this time with ~*civillian interaction*~ 

Not entirely sure that these fit the mood, the left might but the right has the wrong feeling. I wanted to try and see if the contrast of a very warm climate with sand for miles mixed with a focal point of Moriana itself could work. - Though I'm not so sure now.

Invisible Cities - Moriana Research + Influences

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR THE TERRIBLE JOKE I MADE

viva la rocks shaped like stars

Anyway, I've been looking at some more visual references rather than basing my concepts off "feeling" as I think you need both combined to make something successful! Violently looking for inspirational impressionists, too. Did some research into different rocks that could be found in my city and learnt the specific name of "Howlite". It comes in white too! But I was going off the memory of being a child and having that one pet fish, they'd always sell garishly multicolored rocks for the bottom of the bowl.

Invisible Cities - Moriana - Colour Compositions 2

Experiments with using colour dodge! I think if it's overused it can make something look overly digital, which I want to stay away from. There is a very specific glare you get from the sun when it hits water, and as Moriana is in a giant fish bowl to say, I imagine it would reflect light sometimes rather strongly. But the bottom of the city would still be extremely dark and dusty with slight glimmers from the sun.

I feel like I need more specific references and inspirations to work from to add some believably in the city, at the moment. 

Invisible Cities - Moriana - Colour Compositions

Some colour comps for the second to lowest level of Moriana. Looking above the houses are supposed to look towering as they are raised massively off the ground. There are endless paths on the base level where civilians walk to get around, but a lot of these paths also lead to many of the stops for the water current tube system. (I should probably come up with a name for that..) "Dead houses" are ones that have sunken down into the depths below. The stalks that the higher houses are raised upon eventually fall down. 

Invisible Cities - Moriana coloured sketch

Coloured this, finally. Took a while. The building in the middle looks like a face and now I can't unsee it. Been trying to use more impressionist techniques but aahdfjkddakljfgkjgf it's hard to keep form at the same time. It has at the very least given me a good view on what colours do and do not work.

Invisible Cities - Moriana houses + sketches

I want to colour these tomorrow as I've been thinking of adding some vibrant yellows to contrast the blue. I'm using the description of a "hidden face" to add physical layers to this city as well. Very organic "cluster" shapes. Similar to a coral reef you would find on an ocean bed.

Invisible Cities - Moriana Concepts

After drawing the main picture I realized the scale is wrong. The city needs to be a lot bigger and spread out. Usually the biggest building is sent to the back of the city but I think it's important for the idea of "Moriana's hidden face" to be concealed by this large "government type" building. Everything infront of it looks polished and perfect, whereas behind it the city is in disarray.

 

As for the bottom image, (which I had to draw fish people to describe how it worked!!) the city's transport is made up of high speed water currents that carry the civilians to their destinations. It's the water-based version of the Underground. Tubes everywhere, literally. In order to get out of the tubes you have to grab onto railings. There are officers at all the openings to the currents so that they do not get congested.  

Invisible Cities - Mission Statement for Moriana

I had originally wanted to progress further with Baucis as it had a strong narrative from the start. Piercing white light that instead of making things live would kill anything in it’s path. People were desperate to stay away from the beams. The only thing I struggled with was how the city would  have properly been supported, as it was raised in the air.

“I imagine a clustered city sitting ontop of a cloud, but it is so silent and still it seems dead. Underneath it, life, plants and living activity. People on the cloud live in the houses and constantly fight the cloud deteriorating. When a hole is created in the cloud a mysterious force shoots beams of light downwards to "cover" the hole but ironically will deteriorate anything else it touches. Number 15 and 16 are what I deem the most successful because they show a sense of scale so removed from normality it makes me think "Just how many people are living there and are they okay?"”

Continuing on with my thumbnails I’d made smaller narratives throughout, but nothing clicked as much. When I got to Moriana it stood out mainly because of the strong themes. – Or opposing themes throughout, rather. Samurai and Fish. - An odd mix! Usually I tend to swing more towards land-based cities. Grass, trees, rocks. It’s a lot easier to layer up elements.  So I just had to do the opposite! It reminds of when you are younger and you get four elements “Fire, Water, Earth and Air” and you try desperately to relate to one.

I want Moriana to have a certain amount of comical value to it! Which means exaggerating and being playful with it. I’d thought of pomegranates and bubbles. But so dense it has the strength of concrete. As the city is contained in a massive fish bowl; the culture should be too. Childish graffiti and bright coloured painted walls. Tekkonkinkreet style. Even though it is a water-based city, blue, there would still be red. As of writing this I’m not too certain if lineart would aide my city or if I should keep it painterly. Just because it’s primarily water I do not want it to be free and wishy-washy. Those are the qualities of water that annoy me. Besides, it’s been done before! One of the key words for my version of Moriana is “contained”.

The state of a city seems like an important part to discuss. Moriana will not be derelict, though it will be not kept pristine. Just like any other city. It will be grimy but with the elements of childish playfulness should hopefully counter that! The inhabitants of Moriana are fish people, who apart from being Fish do not have much else going for them. There is a Fish Prince, whose existence does seem to cement the city into a deeper narrative. Whilst this project is a landscape based one, you cannot have a city without people, and as this isn’t an abandoned city they are a major contributing factor to it.

Going back to the water of my city, it’d be great to think of outsiders who come into the city. (If they somehow get past the samurai fish at the main gate, though that’s probably not too hard) Once they were in the city for long, they can only stay in there for a short period of time before starting to become a fish-person too! The city has a lot of commitment. Once you’ve become a fish-person you can’t get back out, though the prince always wishes he could, just once.

I hope to capture the essence of captive beauty masked by naïve childishness. The city will look great from the outside, and maybe once you’re in it will look even more joyous, but underneath it has a darker oblivious undertone.

-          “Moriana’s hidden face”

 

 

 

(Thought I'd upload this separate to the OGR for better reading purposes!)

Invisible Cities - MORIANA | Key Thumbnails + Influence Maps

When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddently find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers. If this is not your first journey, you already know that cities like this have an obverse: you have only to walk a semi-circle and you will come into view of Moriana’s hidden face, an expanse of rusting sheet metal, sackcloths, planks bristling with spikes, pipes black with soot, piles of tins, behind walls with fading signs, frames of staved-in straw chairs, ropes good only for hanging oneself from a rotten beam. From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying its repretory of images: but instead it has no thickness, it consists only of a face and an obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side, which can neither be seperated nor look at each other. 

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The city I chose to go into further development with! I found myself creating new narratives based off the extracts for each city. I've highlighted (bolded) the keywords that inspired me to recreate this city!

To describe the recreated narrative:

"A massive fish tank city with a tiny gate guarded by faux Samurai Fish people! - A tiny gate they truly do believe will cover up the city. Fish never did have the biggest brains."

Furthermore, the tiny gates cover up a massive fish bowl which is densely populated with civilians ruled over by a Fish Prince smack in the middle of it. He lives in the only house shaped noticeably like a fish. (Darn those protagonists!)
Even though the fish people do not need their glass helmets, they wear them anyway. I'm sure they think they're fooling everyone that they're normal. Y'know, with their gills.

Invisible Cities - 18 - 20

Certainly getting a lot faster at all of these! Fun, fun.

Time to pick the city I shall move on with.
I will not apologize to the Pumas for purposely drawing them as strange as possible.