Major Project 14 - City Model

So after I gave Bach the brief of what I wanted from the city, he got to work very quickly. Starting first with a board of a few options. I wanted the cage idea to be irregular just like the drone body is. However it was rather tricky to strike the balance between keeping it in the same world as the city while also not making the city too intimidating as it is supposed to be a place to aspire to.

We eventually came to a design that we both really liked and so he started a detailed version. I gave him the background plate that the city would be placed into so he could match the lighting.

I really love the design he came back with, however when I was compositing it, I found that something about it was just not sitting right with me. Either it felt too flat, or the lighting wasn't realistic enough. 

After some discussion with Bach, I decided that it would be best to create the city in maya as this would allow me much more freedom to manipulate the lighting and depth using lenses in maya. These kind of things would take considerably more work from Bach if he were to do it 2D still, so doing it 3D is definitely more efficient. 

The model came along rather slowly, however I am pretty pleased with how it is developing, the buildings are taking a longer time as I keep deciding they feel too big in relation to the city. I want the city to feel really big and dense, so I keep scaling all the buildings down to add many more. I modelled a few buildings and then copied them, giving them a selection of different shaders. 

Creating the shield effect in after effects should be a fun experience as it will be the main moving interest in the shot, but I am going to finish working on all drone shots before I work more on the city shots.