Back on course

This is a big one...

Since my last post I went through and got up to date with my final scene well got it as far as my time machine scene was, so a nice line drawing.









Also over the last few days I've watched a few films recommended to me by my tutor, to give me some guidance and a bit of direction for my Altered Reality scene.

The first film I watched was '1984',
I cant believe I hadn't seen this before as it was like a foretelling of the 'big brother' type world were entering now apart from far more extreme than our current society, as in the film people are supposed to be selfless and only think of the party. The film is set in a war time period which in actual fact is suggested to just be a hoax to keep control of the population and combined with the dirty, run down cityscape the film comes across as dystopian setting the film is rather



I then went and watched THX-1138 which also is all about control of the masses, lack of freedom and being a mechanism in a larger machine as such. The population is drugged up on sedatives the whole time and robot cop’s police the place and if you step out of line they either execute you or place you in a mental initiation. The look of the piece is very clean with lots of whites and the film has a very sterile look to it.


This is a pretty kool poster I found someone’s draw using the movie for reference but I couldn’t find out the artist who did it but thought I’d put it up anyway



Next I watched 12 Monkeys I’d seen bits of it before but sitting down and watching it was kool. The people of the future are living underground in a dirty dingy environment as a virus has killed off the majority of the world and the protagonist Bruce Willis goes back in time to try and find the virus in its purest form so it can be reengineered as a vaccine.




Then these are a couple of shots of the time machine (sorry about the small picture size couldn’t find any bigger ones)







Then a few days ago I went and talked to my tutor and he suggested a few slight changes to my work such as add more strange plant life to my jungle scene as well as more of a technological aspect to the floating pathway so it’s more grounded in logic.

Next with regards to time machine scene he advised me to look into things like the Hadron collider and industrial things like that to ground the line drawing I’d drawn up more.

And then with the final altered reality scene I was told it might be a better idea to take a recognisable place somewhere kind of iconic and famous then take it and turn it into that altered reality as it would give audience an idea of the shift taking place between the way the world was and now is in this twisted reality.

Then I went away and I’ve done some digging hunting for visual inspiration firstly into strange plants which could have been about and would make my jungle a little more alien in comparison to what we recognise today.

I followed that with looking through at images of the Hadron collider and some generators in power stations with which I could take inspiration from for the time machine.

So I went away and started researching around the various areas and found a range of weird and wonderful plants I could incorporate into my jungle however a lot of these plants would have evolved later but adding them would give the jungle a more strange and intriguing appearance.













































With regards to my Altered reality scene and a recognisable place I was thinking of two potential places first the New York city skyline however keeping the twin towers present as they are someone symbolic of New York despite the atrocity connected with them of 9/11.


This was quite interesting as so I thought I’d give it a little mention, I found a before and after of New York City from the 1930’s


However after consideration of the above option and discussing it with my tutor I decided that the Time Square would fit my project far better. As I could use the commercialisation with all the bright lights billboards and various theatres etc and alter it to take a 1894 style spin on that it.

I was also considering possibly using London and the view across the Thames of the Millennium Eye, Big Ben or the area around Tower Bridge, possibly but decided to revert back to the US as that’s where the author Ray Bradbury was from and Time Square seemed to fit much more coherently with the portrayal of this altered reality.





















Then Finally I went in search of mechanical mayhem



























Then this morning I went and watched Alice in Wonderland at a staff preview (I work at my local cinema) as it's released Friday. The film was good and watching it in 3D was equally awesome as I just love how immersive 3D films are. At one point in the film Alice is shrunk down to miniature size and is walking through a jungle (I won’t give the plot away for anyone who doesn’t know it) this scene hit me like a brick in the face and I suddenly understood what one of my tutors was talking about when he meant my jungle wasn’t big enough!

So with this in mind I did a few more thumbnail sketches as well as a little sketch to work out what the device making the path float would look like.
With Avatar having such a big impact on me when I watched it I think it’s fairly obvious where the inspiration of the floating path came from as I didn’t want to make the technology to over the top so that it would distract from everything else in the scene.


These are the thumbnail sketches I did for the slightly more prehistoric massive jungle










I like the final thumbnail by far the most and I feel it give that massive scale needed, so I’m now going to go though and create a line drawing for it before doing the same for Time square then I’ll upload my progress and get on with getting the concepts finished.

Then start modelling!