Invisible Cities - Colour Schemes/ theory

Colour is very important to me. It's the most powerful element that any visual artist has full control of, in my opinion. So I've been spending today testing out 18 different colour schemes that I had in mind for my city. I took the same simple  thumbnail image and changed the colour, lighting and sky to create all sorts of different moods. Some I evidently spent more time trying to get right than others. I'm very pleased with what I got, and would have no issues using any of these pallettes for my final product.

Which one(s) do you all like best?

(Oh and sorry, I didn't number them, feel like a total muppet for only just realising I forgot to do this now.)

Thumbnails 1-53 + Tamara inspo map

Another thing I'm way behind on, I know. I figured I'd upload the first 53 of my thumbnails, as well as the inspiration map for Tamara, since I have them on me right now. Just to prove I've done something.

 

 

Maya - Eggcup tutorial (Very late, I know)

Yeah, I'm considerably late with this, as I am with pretty much all my work, sorry. Regardless, here is an Eggcup created using the polygonal method. And an Egg, in its rightful habitat.

Maya - Spider mech

Since I was tasked with creating a model with Maya using the tutorials provided by Alan, I decided to make a model entirely using simple methods that most beginners really should know. No complex trickery here. Still didn't stop me from trying to make it the greatest looking spider mech you've ever seen! Still, theoretically, implying they've watched the first few of Alan's tutorials, a total newbie could make this.

...No pressure, tho.

 

The model took me roughly three hours.
Here are some making-of screenshots:

Review: Fritz Lang's Metropolis

 

Director - Fritz Lang
Screenplay - Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang
Producer - Erich Pommer
Score - Gottfried Huppertz
Distributed by - UFA and Paramount Pictures

Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) is a Weimar-German film made and released in the midst of a time where the country was suffering from huge inflation within its economy. Despite this, it was the most expensive movie of it's time, clocking at a budget of over five million Reichsmarks. And it shows, as the sets, props, and other elements look like they were built with a costly professionalism uncommon in other movies in the medium's early years. No doubt, Metropolis helped pave the way for what we know today as the "Hollywood Blockbuster", for better or worse.

[Figure 1]

  One of the film's most prominent elements of course, is the titular Metropolis itself. The upper city, reserved for the wealthy upper class, is an art-deco paradise where all the sky-scrapers, bridges and other structures fit together like a neat jigsaw. It's image had set the standard for how a lot of cities in science fiction would look. Even some cities in real life seem to have taken a little bit of influence from it's architecture and layout of buildings.
  The worker's city, in contrast, is a cramped display of same-looking lifeless buildings and grime. And thus, it serves it's job perfectly. Though the film is in black and white, it is hard to imagine such a place with any contrast at all, even if the film were to have been shot in colour.
  The look of the film's setting is an infamous piece of the movie, and is familiar to even a large portion of people who haven't even seen the film. Likewise is the case for the "Maschinenmensch" (or "Machine-man"), as played in both machine and "human" form by Brigitte Helm. Being the first humanoid robot ever depicted in cinema, this character was featured predominantly in the advertising for the movie. It had influenced a how a lot of androids in sci-fi have looked, most notably C-3PO from the Star Wars series. It has since become an iconic part of pop-culture.

[Figure 2]

  The film opens with an insight into how the working class of Metropolis live, as they march slowly, grimly, but orderly from one workstation to the other. These opening shots set the mood effectively, and convey that the working men are an oppressed group of people expected to live like slaves, without even needing to show any of them doing work.

  Meanwhile on the surface, our protagonist - Freder Fredersen (as played by Gustav Fröhlich), the wealthy son of Metropolis' leader, is enjoying the spoiled life in the gardens with some lucky ladies. They are soon interrupted by the beautiful Maria (Brigitte Helm) who is snooping in on them to show the less well-to-do children how the privileged people live. After she and the children are escorted away, Freder is left curious, and goes down to the worker's city to chase after her, only to discover how the working class really live.

  When he goes to see his father, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel) for an explanation, the master of Metropolis dismisses his son's concerns and thinks the workers are "where they belong". Shocked at his father's ruthlessness, Freder returns to the worker's city in an attempt to put things right, becoming the "mediator" to link the two societies.

  Metropolis' plot in general is serviceable, though it should be noted that it was very simplistic, even at the time, considering the complexity of other sci-fi works, mostly in literature. Author H.G. Wells even criticises that "It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own." and "I do not think there is a single new idea, a single instance of artistic creation or even intelligent anticipation" [1].

  The film also creates various plot-threads that go nowhere. For instance, in the first act, Freder swaps places with a worker, who he then tells to wait at another location to meet up later, implying Freder had a plan for him. However, the worker betrays his trust and uses Freder's status to loose himself to gambling among the rich. This is never brought up again, nor seems to have any real consequences.

[Figure 3]

  The story has a very obvious pseudo-Marxist moral, which a lot of critics, both today and at the time, felt was too naive and unsubtle. Interestingly, despite this, Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels was a considerable admirer of this film, as well as Fritz Lang's filmmaking skills in general, and even offered him the position of head of the UFA, Germany's leading film studio. Lang refused.

  Metropolis ends with an upbeat message and positive view of the future, as representatives of the two factions link hands, implying a prosperous union is about to take place. It could be said that it was the kind of attitude and message the film's country of origin, as well as the world, needed right about then, in it's between-war state.

Illustration sources:
Header image: http://terrymalloyspigeoncoop.com/2013/07/15/what-dya-mean-you-havent-seen-metropolis/

[Figure 1]: http://www.gearfuse.com/making-metropolis/

[Figure 2]: http://www.gearfuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/07_metropolis_miniatures1-e1293072033333.jpg

[Figure 3]: http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2010/05/fritz-langs-metropolis-the-best-film-of-this-or-any-other-year/

Quotes:
[1]: http://erkelzaar.tsudao.com/reviews/H.G.Wells_on_Metropolis%201927.htm

Panic

Bad bad news. I was making some final additions to my 101 drawings in Photoshop. At 5 in the morning, yeah, it's not like I sleep much anyway. Then Photoshop crashed upon hitting save, on the second of two pages of my 101. My only copy of said file, no backups. Now the .psd file is presumably corrupted, refuses to open, and all the work on it is kaput. I then spent the next 15 minutes in confused, furious silence, cursing myself in my head about not having any backups when I know PS has crashed like this on me before (on very rare occasions), or not finishing the work earlier, or not fragmenting the file into smaller pages instead of having them on two big ones.
The point is: yes, I feel like a gigantic fool. One who possibly would've spent 10 minutes straight shamelessly screaming at his PC if he had no family to wake up.

I am also aware that this sounds like a big cliché excuse for not having my work done by induction day, and that's only frustrating me even more. Seriously, to hell with the kind of people who lie about this stuff, it's already rage-worthy enough as it is. So I get that this is going to cause disbelief.

oh and needless to say, I just made a backup of page one.

I'm not sure what to do now but wait for the repercussions, and prepare to spend all free time I have the next couple of days re-doing the work. Damn it.

In case it wasn't clear before, I'm pretty damn angry about this.

Blog makeover

I'd urge you all to take a gander at my blog, as I just redesigned it a bit. Before, I didn't think my blog looked all that professional.

However, the background looks really off. The page seems to have compressed it for whatever reason (the size is just the right fit for the screen, it's not like the image was significantly stretched or shrunk). I know it's a problem on Blogger's end, since I'm looking at the image out of my own computer files, and it looks fine. Regardless, the subtle little texture effect I put on the image has been replaced with ugly compressed-looking mush. Oh well, I'll get back to the drawing board when I have more free time.

It still looks at lot better than what it formerly looked like.

Before:

After:

Summer project stuff will be up when it's done.

Ey everyone. My name is Tyler, and this is my first post.

Nice to meet you all! Looking forward to getting aquainted in person. Already bricking it after seeing how half the other verified first years are more skilled at art than me. G-g-good job, guys...

If you'd like, you can browse through the blog I used for my college work throughout the previous two years:
http://tylermga.tumblr.com/

Don't have much to say about myself. My favorite colour is lime-green, my favorite animals are fish, and my hobbies include being a handsome average looking man, and staying at home all day being a useless NEET.

I'm sure we'll be good chums.

Oh, and as a peacekeeping offer, here's a crappy drawing I did in a couple of minutes. Enjoy.