Playful Cities

I've been trying to think what I could make our online piece since I already know that I want it to be an animated comic. The animation would only be on one panel so the rest of it is yet to be designed.

I decided that to show the lack of imagination and excitement in todays age would be to directly compare it to 1960 when futurism was booming and the moon landing was still fresh in people's minds. My idea was to have some panels showing things that were happening in the 60's that show people's excitement towards the future. Then showing the distinct lack of that in this time period. 

For the animated panel we figured it could be simply us going through the ten years. Since animating a whole city would be ridiculously hard for my animation skills, we decided to have it work like one of those video's where people take a picture every day and then layer them together. So we are doing an image for each year passing. Rosie is concentrating on her character design for this and experimenting with the changes in clothing/hair and how to make the characters look like their ageing believably. I'm drawing out the city, I've set on the rough shape I want it to be set out in. I thought maybe instead of showing ground the city can sit on top of a oval of colour so that it works as a kind of floating spot image.  It's been hard trying to think of all the changes that could happen within the city, I'm not sure how similar to have each stage either. I think this will be something I do by drawing the first one and then tracing a rough outline and changing it slightly, so that they work as a more congruous sequence.

Rosie showed me this book called 'have you seen my dragon?' by Steve Light. The buildings in it really inspired me. The lines are slightly scrawly and the angles are skewed, it gives the whole image charm. It seems naive and friendly, I think this is something we want to achieve. One of the reasons I chose Rosie as a Partner was because I liked the charm in her work. Also our vision for how the future could change in the next ten years is very naive. We've taken giant leaps in technology that would take decades to perfect and  we've slapped them in. The whole concept is kind of naive, but I think it's battling against the cynicism that has become the norm in todays society.

My first try at a city, this one is represent this year that we're in now. I coloured in blocks of colour first and then worked on top with ink and I think it worked really well. I was worried that colouring the city would get too crowded because there's so many surfaces and different parts but by just doing a sweep of colour over the entire building it makes it all sit together. I think I'll use this kind of technique for the final city colouring because its a lot more time efficient than colouring in every detail. Also it's simplicity adds to the naive and playful aesthetic. 

Things to remember in city design:
Skewed angles
Decorative roof/border panelling
Line as texture
Sweeping colour washes

Push the playfulness!