Invisible Cities: Art of Esmerelda

Art of Esmerelda

Invisible Cities Crit: Esmerelda

Invisible Cities Crit

Esmerelda: Invisible Cities Low Exterior Shot

Esmerelda: Invisible Cities Interior Shot

I found this piece extremely difficult when first trying to go about the shapes and the perspective. To help me out with this I used Maya to make a simple layout of what I wanted the interior to look like and then used this as a basis to paint over.

Esmerelda: Invisible Cities High Angle Shot

Invisible Cities: Thumbnails

I have been working on some more in depth thumbnails trying to use the different skills and techniques that we have learned in our digital painting classes. I still struggle with trying to get the digital paintings to look realistic but I am going to work on this and try to improve on my overall skill for the final pieces.

Invisible Cities - Online Greenlight Review

Invisible Cities - OGR

Invisible cities 65 - 94

Thumbnail 65 is a shot of Zirma trying to convey the girl walking the puma but I found trying to draw the animal rather difficult. Thumbnail 66 is of Moriana and the girls dancing under the chandelier. thumbnails 67 - 69 are of Esmerelda, 67 is showing if you arrive to the city by boat. Image 68 is a above shot of the city and 69 is showing a gondola going down the canals. Thumbnail 70 is of a suspension bridge in Phyllis.

Thumbnails 71 - 73 are of Phyllis showing the different bridges and the use of barges. Thumbnail 74 is an interior shot of Esmeralda and looking out onto the canal through a window. Thumbnails 75 and 76 are trying to convey the bamboo and zinc houses of Zenobia.

Thumbnails 77 and 78 are of Argia. I found it difficult to try and convey the presence of dirt everywhere. Image 79 is of a statue in Diomira. Thumbnail 80 is an interior shot of Octavia with the hammocks. 81 and 82 are two different imagery I could visualize when thinking of the secret garden pool in Anastasia.

Thumbnails 83 - 84 are of Despina, one approaching the city wall from the sand and the other from a boat. Images 85 and 86 are of Thekla trying to show all the scaffolding outside a building and then a shot of an empty building with tools in it. Images 87 and 88 are one way in which I visualized the houses in Octavia to look like.

Thumbnail 89 is of Esmeralda showing the bridges of the different levels. Thumbnail 90 is another shot of Anastasia secret garden and pool. Thumbnail 91 is a shot of a skyscraper in Zenobia but from the bottom of the building. Thumbnail 92 is another shot of Esmeralda with the bridges going from different levels of the city. Images 93 - 94 are long shots of Octavia showing the huts attached to the spider webb like structure.

Invisible cities thumbnails 35 - 64

 When producing these thumbnails I realised that painting in colour, although making the images more appealing, is a lot more time consuming as I am spending a lot of time trying to decide what colour should be used for what. If I continued like this I would have been in a bad place as I would be very behind I believe. I still feel as if I need to improve my skills both drawing and digital painting but I do believe I am slowly improving.

Images 35 and 36 are of Zirma, one of the cobblestone street and the other of a lunatic internal shot. Image 37 is an internal shot looking out the window of Ersilla. 38 - 39 are of Zenobia with the houses on bamboo stilts. And thumbnail 40 is of Tamara.

Images 41 - 42 are of Leonia, I was trying to represent the plastic coating over the side walk and all new items in a bathroom but I did find this a bit difficult and think the thumbnails are a bit unclear. Thumbnails 43 - 44 are of Thekla trying to show the scaffolding and construction taking place past the plank fence. 45 -46 are of Diomera with 46 an attempt at an internal shot but I have found internal shots rather difficult to convey.

Image of Tamara, I have found it rather difficult trying to portray this city, it is supposed to be a front shot of a store with the scale sign above it. Image 48 is of Armila trying to show the porcelain bathtubs and sinks left behind. Thumbnails 49 and 50 are of Ovtavia showing the bridges and beams from the mountain supporting the city. Images 51 and 52 are of Moriana showing the serpentine encrusted columns and also behind the big rusting metal wall.

Image 53 is a shot of houses along the canal in Anastasia. Images 54 - 56 are of Phyllis, I particularly like this city as there are so many different possibilities with the bridges. Image 57 is of Ersilla looking down from the mountains onto the city and image 58 is a thumbnail of looking down one of the winding streets in Esmerelda

Thumbnails 59 - 60 are internal shots of Fedora inside the building which is a 'museum of orbs'. Images 61- 62 are of Isura, the city of wells. Image 63 is an internal shot of Sophronia, trying to show the two different halfs of the city. Thumbnail 64 is  of Esmerelda, showing a bridge at the end of the street crossing a canal.

Invisible Cities: Images 17 - 34

Images 17 - 18 are of Isaura, the city of wells. Images 19 - 20 are of Phyllis. Images 21 -22 are of Armilla

Images 23 - 24 are of Baucis, with image 23 being a long shot of the city on stilts and image 24 being an internal shot looking down to the earth. Images 25 - 26 are of Ersilla.

Images 27 and 30 are of Sophronia. Images 28 - 29 are of Argia with 29 being an internal shot of the stairs filled with dirt.

Images 31 - 33 are of Fedora with 32 being an internal shot of the crystal globe. Image 34 is Moriana with the light hitting the transparent gate.

Invisible cities 7-16

Numbers 7 - 9 are of Octavia in black and white digital paintings. Number 10 is a rural shot of Anastasia in colour.

Images 11 and 12 are of Diomira. One long shot of the city and then an up close of one of the domes.  13 to 15 are of Despina. 13 is an aerial shot of the city while 14 is a shot from sea and 15 from camel. 16 is a aerial shot of Esmerelda.

Overall I feel as if I am slowly improving with my digital paintings and I am beginning to feel more comfortable working within Photoshop and with my overall drawing skills and techniques.

Concept Artist Who's Who?

Concept Artist Whos Who

Invisible City Thumbnails 1-6

These are my first 6 thumbnails for the invisible cities project. Thumbnails 1-4 are of Anastasia, thumbnail 5 is of Armilla and 6 of Baucis. I'm not happy with my thumbnails. I have found it difficult trying to portray the idea I have of the cities in the thumbnails. I think this is due to a lack of my drawing skills and I have also found getting used to the graphics tablet within Photoshop fairly difficult. 

With the thumbnails I tried to do the first four as simple quick black and white sketches, but from is it made all of the buildings appear as towers which is not how I imagined it. I then decided to try and to move into colour to see if that would help me convey my ideas clearer. Unfortunately with this I found myself trying to focus on the colours too much and spent most of my time worrying about that. I am going to keep working on my drawing skills and Photoshop skills and will be drawing thumbnails every day.

Influence Map

              

Here are two influence maps from Italo Calvino's descriptions of the cities within 'Invisible Cities'. The aim of this influence map is to convey my initial ideas for what I think some of the cities will look like. There are certain aspects of some of these images that really stand out to me as something that could be straight from the book. The main two cities that stood out to me while creating this was Anastasia and Diomera. I found these two cities easily visualised and they reminded me of real life places and objects that immediately came to mind when reading through the text.