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!

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 Originally made to represent his lost love (Hel) who chose to marry the master of metropolis instead and ultimately die giving birth to Freder, she will later be forced to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.

Ed Week 6: The Pleasure garden

 

As Lucy worked with the workers city, rather than start off with small sections of the area I  chose instead to look at where it would be situated before I started on designing it. It was decided that the Pleasure gardens would be in the centre of the city, enclosed on all sides by the buildings of metropolis. I did a couple of sketches of the city as well as a painting of it - above - to get a feel for the nested levels of it.

 

At this time I was also designing the buildings of metropolis themselves, these buildings would be a semi-modular way of looking at the city. Designed to be self-contained apartment buildings or offices, they would each be their own enclosed community accessible by walking or by using the public transport of the trains, trams or taxi.

initial sketches of the city and it's buildings. and the first sketch of the yoshiwara nightclub

 

 Around this time I started to design the pleasure gardens. Initially they were a large garden area with a central, more exclusive set of tiered gardens in the centre. Suspended above the city this garden would be a place to see and be seen and as such was not an especially private place though it contained several 'private' areas to sit and relax.

However it was soon decided that rather than two separate gardens it would be better to include the Yoshiwara nightclub in this area, as a popular place for the citizens to gather it would make sense for the two places to be connected. The garden structure in the centre became the nightclub.

When designing the gardens one thing we had in mind was the show of wealth that these gardens are meant to represent so a lot of the wealth is displayed in traditional understated ways; Water is heavily incorporated into the garden, paths are lined with small channels and waterfalls that are full of water that is clear and clean enough to drink. The plants around are clearly treated well and heavily cultivated as well and rich colours and metals are used everywhere.

In later sketches, quiet, clear sheet waterfalls are used as a means of sectioning off areas of spaces, further demonstrating the wealth that allows a society to waste large amounts of drinkable water.

Ed Week 5: The Cathedral and it's statues

With the cathedral mostly finished the next job was the statues of Death and the cardinal sins that feature so prominently in the chapel.

 

I wanted to continue the straight lines and minimalistic silhouettes that the clothing, patterns and architexture that upper-class metropolis has shown so far into these statues and I was influenced by statues and monuments from the soviet era from architects like Dušan Džamonja and Miodrag Živković and sculptors like Yevgeny Vuchetich.

 

 

I developed the statue of death first; the statues would all follow a central design and Death at the centre was the logical place to start. once the language of the statues garments and pose was decided with Death's design I was able to go on to designing the other smaller statues.

 

It was at this stage that it was decided to make Death and Pride the same statue.

 

 

The 'cage' helmets that all of the statues wear are meant to partially cover the contorted faces of the statues and reflect the designs of metropolis. We found that with their faces partially obscured the statues became more menacing and the helmets were made to slightly resemble a skull in their design.

 

These are the final designs of the statues and the final image of the cathedral with the statues in situ:



Ed Week 4: Beginning the Cathedral

When he realises that Maria isn't going to meet him in the cathedral, Freder finds himself in the part of the cathedral that contains statues of Death and the cardinal sins and believing that she could have found herself in danger he beseeches the concepts that the statues represent to stay away from her, keeping her safe. 

 

This week I started the environment of the cathedral, though a lot of the cathedral won’t actually be shown in the book as the scene from the film takes place in what we’re interpreting to be a large side chapel of the main structure, a showcase of the seven deadly sins and death, I started with the full floor plan of the building. Ninety per cent of the structure will not be taken beyond this stage of the concepts however it gives me an instant idea of scale and of where this sits in the fabric of the world.

Some designs got a little silly but it was an interesting exercise to imagine how people would move around the cathedral, or where they would sit to listen to the sermons. I've always been interested in the architecture of gothic cathedrals and though I found it colouring my ideas of the environment a little, it was interesting to try and construct a modern building that still held the grandeur of the gothic buildings. In the original film the cathedral is a very traditional building but we wanted to try to have a more modern construction in our concepts.

 

This is clearly the city’s main cathedral, a major place of worship and yet it has an entire area dedicated to the cardinal sins? This struck us a little odd and it was for this reason that we chose to make this area a side chapel rather than a main part of the structure. In most of the plans there is an accompanying side chapel for the cardinal virtues.

The Sins are in the chapel on the north side of the church, always bathed in shadow the north side is the perfect place for such a sinister set of statues. However it means it won’t get much light and the chapel is lit by lights from the floor, creating a close atmosphere.

Unlike the original film this is also the route that Maria takes up to the roof in our version. She runs past the statues that Freder beseeched to keep her safe as she flees her attacker by escaping onto the roof. For this reason I included the sweeping staircases in the concepts. 

 
 

 

 During whiteboxing I started to get a real feel for the scale of the room, but came to a problem with the statues and how they were placed; the original film has death to the left of centre in the ‘middle’ of the sins, with three to his right and four to his left, in order to create a more even and central focus I placed Pride at Death’s feet in the middle.

 

 

Ed Week 3: Freder

In terms of weeks, this has been a week of set-backs. Though we have sent off for our book from one company we sent off from a second for the sake of a comparison and the process of getting that book printed and sorted out has taken a very long time. Now it is finally complete however and it's such a big relief to know that I don't have to worry about it any more. It's taken up a fair portion of my week just getting that complete, but this week I've also finished off Freder and his upper-class clothing as well as beginning to put together the final book layout and actually start to include our work as opposed to placeholder images.



In the end, in the process of producing Freder's facial features I produced nearly 140 headshots.

I went back to sketching Freder after trying to use photo bashing to define his facial features. though I won't say no to using this method in the future and it did help me define his features better for these second lot of sketches, I found the process of finding relevant references for it time consuming and difficult, it was also very easy to become side tracked whilst looking. In the end it became a relevant step but a short one in the design process.

 

Over the course of designing him I did find myself becoming very fond of him, to me Freder is a character who's lack of responsibility and genuine power has left him insecure about himself despite the bluster that his sense of entitlement and the power of his father have left him with. 

Hopefully now that the setbacks of this week are done, I can get more produced next week when I should be producing my first setting for the book, either the pleasure garden or the city's cathedral.

Ed Week 2: Freder

This week I began on an actual named character. Where week one had focussed on producing a mass style that could be adapted to fit an entire population, week two was about narrowing that style into a personal image, changing it so that it would fit a single personality.

 

The character I’ve been designing this week is Freder; the son of the master of Metropolis and therefore one of the wealthiest people in the city and also one of the most idle. Though later on in the story he realises that his way of life has consequences, at the stage I've been designing he's firm in his belief that he's entitled to everything he has. He's a product of his society and his clothing reflects the wealth he has.

Practicality was of a minimal concern to this character design and instead I focussed on creating a silhouette that showed just how much the character meant in terms of his status in the city but also to himself. Growing up at the pinnacle of entitlement his self-assurance is a key part of his image He knows he’s wealthy and he knows he’s important. A good portion of his power may be derived from his father’s position but that’s not something he wants to admit and with this in mind I chose a traditionally regal silhouette of the flowing cloak.

 

The large amounts of heavy fabric in the tunic, coat and cloak give the character an imposing weight that perhaps he wishes he had a little more of. When he strips down to the workers clothes later on I wanted to make it feel like he really had lost a lot of that entitled bluster that he displays in the earlier parts of the story and I aim to show this in the physical appearance of his clothes; in the beginning his silhouette is solid and with it's triangular shape it's rooted and confident. The colours are rich and it reflects his self assurance. Later on I want to unbalance the silhouette as the character himself is shaken, making the silhouette of his working clothes more top heavy.

 

What ended up taking the most time this week was his face, starting off with sketches and moving onto photobashing before returning to the sketches helped, but it took me a long time to get anywhere. I'm still not finished with the face and some of that will be. I'll be spending some time next week finishing it off.

 

 

This week I put together a test book containing a selection of images and text. The purpose of the book is to test out how our images will look once they’ve been printed so the book actually consists of many variants of an image in order to test out Brightness, Contrast and Saturation, In order to test out how it will look in the book compared to on the computer screen.

Despite a few false starts with PDF creating and getting payment to the site that will print the book we’re expecting the copy to come through in the middle of next week.

A Culture in the Clothes: Worldbuilding

In week one I spent my time designing the clothes worn by the upper class. With no particular character in mind I wanted to create a base range of clothes that could be adapted to fit a variety of characters.



Initial designs were very distinctive

 


Later I put more emphasis on creating variations within a more standard theme.



Once thing I was particularly conscious about was showing the status of the characters and the values of the world through the clothing - These are the upper class citizens and particularly the idle elite who can be found lounging about in the pleasure gardens of the upper city. I wanted to show this.

Initially, creating the clothing of the upper class citizens was an exercise in avoiding function. I collected together a lot of reference of bulky or obstructive clothing, made with improbable materials or intense details. A sense of the world they were created in was supposed to come through in these clothes and I aimed to design them to instantly represent the values of the people who wore them. These people are the idle elite of the world, and what better way to show you have no need of doing work than to wear clothes that make working almost impossible.

However as the design process went on I turned away from this over the top philosophy for more understated wealth. There are still examples of impractical forms; the coats are loose and billowing, trapping arms or legs and capes are a genuine choice.

Speaking as someone who wears cloaks on a regular basis, they're not an ideal clothing choice if you're looking to move around indoors without sweeping a good portion of the objects on tables off onto the floor

 

One of the main reasons I turned away from the frivolous clothing to a more regimented standard cut to the clothes was to illustrate the conformity that is insisted upon in the metropolis society; in order to fuel their decadent lifestyle the elites prey upon the lower class as veritable slaves however the upper-class are still not free to do as they please. They're separated from the lower classes and encouraged to maintain the status quo of the city, they are in a cage, though it may be a luxurious, gilded one. There is little room or tolerance for deviation away from the standard of the civilization and this is reflected in the clothing that actively encourages people to fit in.

 

The clothing that you wear has a big effect on your psychology, it can boost your confidence or put you in a terrible mood for the day. On a subtler level your clothes can alienate you or amalgamate you into your surrounding society. The costumes I've designed are a uniform provided for the upper class, it's a very nice uniform made with beautiful fabrics and embellishments, but it's a uniform none the less and the wearing of it will inevitably have an effect on the psychology of the wearer, encouraging conformity and obedience by making them subconsciously think of themselves more like one of many than an individual.

A major part of illustrating this wealth is the materials used. The deep colours suggest a lot of effort has to go into making and maintaining the deep shades of red, navy and teal and the fabrics themselves are a key indicator of the wealth of the wearer – for the upper class citizens I imagine garments made of velvets and satins, anything luxurious.

The embellishments themselves are mostly metal, be they woven braids or metal filigree. It’s here that rank can be shown to its full degree in an understated and tasteful manner (even within the upper class there is varying levels of wealth after all) based on what level of craftsmanship you can afford, what metal you can afford, or indeed how much of it you can afford.

Ed Week 1: Metropolis Citizens

As the project begins, we’ve started on our first pieces of artwork as well as our initial plans and layouts of the book.

I personally worked on the upper class citizens of metropolis, creating a range of androgynous clothing with variations on a theme and style rather than one final image that can be used to create a varied range of background characters who all look like they’ve come from the same environment.

I used my usual method of working for this; starting with basic silhouettes before taking the ones we liked and developing them into variations and sketches using blocks of grayscale colour. After this I move on to photo bashing the outfits to get more of an idea of colour and texture and do even more variations.

 

One of the two sheets of silhouettes




Developing silhouettes into block sketches (This is silhouette 19 from the picture above)




Moving on to photo bashing

Because there's no 'final' hero image to this part of the project, these final coloured images created through a combination of painting and photo bashing are the examples of the range of clothing worn by our upper class citizens 
 

I’ve also created a range of page layouts that will be used to format the finished book, they’re created with placeholder images and text but they’re examples of how the pages will look once the book is complete. I created layouts for square pages as well as landscape because we’re not certain which type of book we want and we expect them to change.

 



Layout for a Landscape A4 page

 



A layout for a squarer page

 

 I'm happy with the amount of work I produced this week. As the project starts I'm really excited about the opportunity to create the feel of a wider world in the clothing of the people.

-Ed