Ed Week 8 : Pleasure Gardens continued - And the Yoshiwara nightclub

In week eight I returned to the pleasure gardens after designing the robot, Hel. After discussing the layout of the gardens with tutors I decided to look at a more fluid way of populating the gardens. Floating platforms were eventually chosen that each contained 'rooms' of miniature garden set-ups or rooms for people to occupy of set amounts of time.

I created a final whitebox for the area which will be used in the final pieces. The floating islands are whiteboxed as well. Though I've shown 4 here there are 8 in total - a recurring number in the designs of metropolis.

sketches of the floating garden 'rooms'

The islands and the nightclub in situ

 

I also looked in greater depth at combining the nightclub Yoshiwara and the design of the garden; as The Yoshiwara of Metropolis mirrors it's namesake - the district of Yoshiwara in Edo (What is Tokyo today) - as a red light district and pleasure quarter of the city. Because of this the areas of the pleasure garden with garden elements are inspired by different types and areas of Japanese style gardens.

interior and exterior views of the yoshiwara nightclub

The next week, week 9 for me was one where not a lot of work was done; I spent the week preparing for the Student Roleplaying and Wargaming Nationals that I was helping to organize.

Since I was the committee member in charge of the personnel of the event there was a lot to organize and there wasn't much time for uni work. The event was really successful though!

Lucy, Week 9 - Finalising Workers City

09/03/2015: Day 1 – Robot guards

I started to create some robot designs using Eds originals for the design of Hel. I didn’t change much to the shape as I thought the original designs had really strong silhouettes. Below is my final design with colour. After that I drew them in different poses for when I placed them into the scene.

10/03/2015: Day 2 – Finalising Wardens

After I decided on the designs for the robots, I did some further human warden designs. Below are the results.

As we descussed, a few of them looked too formal. Ed quite liked the second design in. I prefered the right hand designs the most so I went on and design a few combinations of those previous designs.

11/03/2015: Day 3 – Final Warden design, adding people.

Below is the final full colour design for the human wardens. These also utilise the geometric designs and the pre determined colour scheme.

 Now that I had these designed, I started adding life to my final scene.  I started with sketching the generic worker crowd. For now these are just silhouettes. I plan to do a more in depth design of generic worker characters when it comes to polishing time. Below is what I have so far. I feel it captures the opressive feel that is forced upon the workers.

12/03/2015: Day 4 – Colour and Lighting

Now I have everything in place I started to colour and adjust the lighting. I really feel this piece isn’t working still. I plan to do what I can with this then looking back at my earlier designs. I probably will rework on of them into a final instead of my current final.

13/03/2015: Day 5 – Revisit sketches/Residential area

I realised that I never really explored the residential areas for the workers. I looked into slums and put together some photobashes. Below are the results.

I do like these pieces but I feel they work best as sketches and studies of the world rather than a final piece.

Lucy: Week 8 - Rotwang, The Inventor

02/03/2015: Day 1 – Silhouettes and Photo-bashes

I stared with gathering reference and looking at the original character from the film. I decided to be obvious and research inventors. A lot of the images were old and black and white which ended up really fueling my designs. Below are the silhouettes I came up with.

I tried to steer clear of the ‘Einstein’ hair and long lab coat, but it crept in a little.

Day 2 – Face photo-bash’s

I find with certain characters, that the face heavily influences the overall look of the character. After doing a few silhouettes, I decided to take the face of the actor from the original film, and build on it to make a range of faces. I photo-bashed facial features and began to explore the look of my version of the inventor.

I liked the idea of facial hair so I explored different types. This lead to more unique hair styles as well as the facial hair, which created some interesting looks.

I think i’ll pick a couple and use them for clothes photo-bashes to  see which look works the best.

Day 3 – clothes photo-bash’s

I used the silhouettes I created to then photo-bash clothes over the top, to create the overall look of the character. At this stage of the project, I have a lot of reference from previous characters. So I have an example of what the clothes should resemble.

We liked both number 2 and number 3. The apron of number 3 gave me an idea for the story of the inventor character. He was once part of the elites. He would make the tech that’s used throughout metropolis, but he now resides in the workers residential area, working away on his personal projects. Below is a combination of those 2 designs.

I liked the idea behind showing his rebellion against the elites, by using their robes as rags to clean his things with.

Day 4 – tech photo-bash

Ed really liked the collar of the final photo-bash so I decided to design some collars, below is what I came up with.

I liked the headpiece of the first design, as it seemed the most interesting. I decided to work on it further and come up with some head gear designs.

I really liked the eyepiece of the second design so I decided to add that the first. To create the final look. 

Day 5 – Colour/final concept

Now I have my final design, I started to look at colour. Seeing as there is a colour scheme set in place for the elites clothing; the overalls had to stick to those colours, as that’s what they originally were. So the other colours just had to follow and work well with the apron. Mainly blues and brown tones.

Now I just need to create a final head-shot and concept pose for this character. I’m really happy that I managed to create this character within a week and still be pleased with the result. Now I can focus on the workers city environment and finally get it done.

Ed Week 7: Hel

Hel is the name of a human woman but is used here to refer to the inventors robot. Originally made to represent his lost love (Hel) who chose to marry the master of metropolis instead and ultimately die giving birth to Freder, she will later be forced to take on the face of maria to discredit her in the eyes of the workers.

 

 When designing Hel's face I started with the human before the robot. I looked at many different features to show a motherly face with the resemblance to Freder particularly in the colouring.

In the end I wanted a person who looked very much like a person. Hel doesn't look nearly so polished as Freder and has visible wrinkles, bags under her eyes and various subtle imperfections. These were important in establishing the character of the inventor through her.

A lot of these imperfections would be smoothed over or obliterated when I came to design the face of the robot. As the inventor recreates his lost love he does not create a true replica; gradually he twists it to be an idealized version of Hel and she loses a lot of the personality from her face to become more of a doll. By creating this Automaton the inventor has essentially chosen the face of this woman over the personality of the original and as such he works to an idealized vision he's creating for himself.

This subtle difference, the desire to change and 'perfect' the one he loved also shows us subtly why she picked a different man to marry in the end and allows us to see a layer of Hel and the inventor also when she was alive that we might not see in their own character designs.

 

When it came to designing the robot frame and body it was her name that provided the ultimate inspiration. Hel is also a figure from Norse mythology, the Daughter of Loki and in charge of once of the realms of the dead she's described as 'half blackened and half flesh'  this coupled with the idea that she's been built in secret largely out of scrap influenced her final look.

Part of the final image is her dressed in an approximation of maria's clothing, changed to look like Maria. She retains a portion of her original features as the underlying structure of her metal skull remain the same but she's been changed enough that most workers who are only familiar with their spokeswoman from a distance or description would mistake her for Maria. Her clothes are ever so slightly too new, too unbroken, as a reference to the inexperience with these things that the upper-class citizens who dressed her in them have.

Lucy Week 7 - Workers city continued...again

23/2/2014: Day 1 – work on entrance

After sketching over the white-box renders, I decided to continue with the entrance concept. It seemed like the most solid design for this part of the project, that I find myself struggling to form my ideas. Now I feel I have some grasp and all I need to do is to continue designing.

24/2/2014: Day 2 – guards silhouettes

I decided to take a break from environment for today and began to design the guards for the workers city. These are the people that regulate the workers and keep them in line around the different facilities between the workers homes and the machine where they work.

Below are some silhouettes

I think I’m going to go on to some photo-bashing after this. It needs to be a uniform so keeping it simple yet still ornate to pick them out of the crowd is important to their design.

25/2/2015: Day 3 – trouble with scene (entrance)

I’m really struggling with this piece I’m finding it hard to add detail as there are several layers that are all merged as one. Below is what I have so far.

I may have to work out a way to make designing this piece easier. I’m worried its taking up too much time. If I don’t manage to work it out, I may have to crap it and try another design.

 26/2/2015: Day 4 – Entrance breakthrough

I decided to go back to the beginning of this piece and separate the layers of the image by redrawing it, this took up a lot of time but its made designing it easier.

I went on to design the containment tanks that separate the entrance doorways. The needed some intricate designing so I felt designing them separately would help.

27/2/2015: Day 5 – Guards further design

After seeing the design for Hel made by Ed. I thought that I could possibly use these for the guards rather than humans as I found it was hard to design the guard by making them look threatening. So I now feel that the majority of the guards could be the robots. These are what keep the workers inline around the city network. There will still be human guards but few and far between. Their main purpose is to check up on the robots and make sure they continue to function properly. I feel having faceless robots wondering around would be a lot more intimidating.

Below are some very basic further iterations I did for the guards. And also the circled designs for the robots are the ones I’m thinking of using.

Lucy Week 6 - Workers City continued

16/2/2015: Day 1 – Sketching and White-boxing

I started the day by looking over the photo-bashes I had done and with further understanding of the city mechanics and layout, I used these sketches to start white-boxing some scenes.

Below are the sketches.

I managed to create a white-box for the track platform as well as an exterior area . I may adjust a few things as I go through the design process but I feel this is a good base to start with.

17/2/2015: Day 2 – photo reference gathering

After a lot of discussion about the structures and beginning to understand the 3D form with my first white-box I decided that gathering further reference would help inspire my designs when it came to 3D modeling.

18/2/2015: Day 3 – discussion of dining area

Today I had a discussion with a tutor regarding the workers city and the mechanics of it. We suggested really looking into how the workers are regulated and literally kept in line. One idea he suggested was a production line style way of feeding the workers. So they each had a certain amount of time to eat food. It’s very cut throat and oppressive in manor, but I can see how metropolis would be run like this I’m going to explore this idea further with some research and white-boxing.

19/2/2015: Day 4 – White-boxing

I started a new scene and began to white box. After discussing further, how the elites organize and force workers to perform efficiently. The workers time and movements are heavily regulated, traveling from place to place within the workers city. This area I’ve began to white box is the entrance from the workers residential area. This is a main hall that lead the workers into tunnels that take them to where they need to go. These areas are guarded and regulated by guards and signs, and are highly systematic. I want to show this through the linear layout and markings directing the crowd. 

20/2/2015: Day 5 – Sketching over white boxes

I created a couple more whiteboxes and began to sketch over them. below are the results

Next I plan to take a couple of these further and see i fi can begin to pick out a final for the workers city.