The art of

by Samuel Johnson

baucis

Baucis descriptionAfter a seven days’ march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow falls on the foliage. There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they respect it so much they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own abscene.

Influences for baucis

first baucis thumbnails

At first the task was to create a minimum of 100 basic thumbnails for some of calvino’s cities. Above are the ones that were designed for Baucis. From this point I went onto experimenting and developing further.

First colour comps To get an idea of the ‘mood’ and ‘feel’ of Baucis on the outside I experimented with the colour green mostly. This is because I felt that Baucis would be a city that was built around nuclear power and then would therefore be a bright green colour much like radiation from uranium for example.

Developed Interior Thumbnails

After receiving some feedback on my current direction for the interior, I was advised to look into the way the residents of Baucis ate, and what they ate. This lead to thinking further into hydroponics, which is a form of growing food. A haven for growing food via hydroponics was my first interior idea, therefore I experimented with how that would look. Afterwards I ventured into looking at what a globe room would look like and would it be the main hub for the residents to look upon the ground below. I knew that when I started experimenting with this idea that there would be a main centre piece that would contain a world map.

Interior and exterior thumbnail ideas

• First of all I thought it would be a good idea to stock out the globe room a bit more, as it felt empty and needed something that made it feel a bit more enclosed.

• For the exterior I wanted to figure out and look into how the globe room would look from the outside in comparison to the rest of the city. I then decided that whilst at it I would look into what the living quarters, observatories, hydroponics and power station would look like on the outside as well.

Interior colour compsFor the globe room I felt like there should be a certain mood about it. I wanted to give a feeling that this was the only place in Baucis that was only allowed to be accessed by high priority people. Therefore I felt it would be good to not follow the idea of a ‘radiated’ feel in this shot because the idea is that this is also the only place that is pretty much untouched by the nuclear waste and doesn’t have the smoggy green shroud around it.

Building Thumbnails

Build-up to final exterior

Build-up to final exterior (Continued)

Final Exterior shot

Build-up of low angle exterior shot

Final low angle exterior shot

Build-up of interior shot

Final interior shot