Final Reflective Statement - Invisible Cities

This was my first time jumping into creating concept art and bringing worlds to life. As diving into the deep end and creating something only from my imagination seems wild to start with we were given excerpts by Italo Calvino from his novel, Invisible Cities to take inspiration from. We had to draw 100 thumbnails, creating what we see when reading these excerpts and choose our favourite city to pursue for the rest of the project. 

We had to create 3 concept images from different particular shots which were, Exterior Establishing Shot, Exterior Low Angle Shot and Interior Establishing Shot. This was a little bit of a struggle to start with as I have never really drawn cities before, let alone practice different perspectives consistently enough to know what I am doing. After a while, I figured out the perspectives I wanted to use by doing my thumbnails and sketching the cities. After scribbling a lot, it just turned out to look much better than I thought it would. 

For the period of time we had, I am genuinely pleased with my outcome of this project. I will admit there were some struggles along the way, even with just settling into University and into my classes but I worked as hard as I could and am proud of how I tackled this project. 

At the start I was torn between the city of Sophronia and Esmeralda City. After some contemplating, I finally chose Esmeralda City. The process took lots of trial and error because I feel a little bit like a perfectionist when it comes to bringing what I see in my head to life on the page. After practicing I found a theme that I enjoyed creating and stuck with it. 

Taking inspiration from Italy's Venice Canals and Amsterdam Canals, I added in my swooping canal features through each street. I enjoyed choosing pastel colours for the buildings as I feel it gives the city a unique look and really portrays that the inhabitants are living an exciting life as they don't have to live everyday as a repeat of the last, due to their multiple ways of travelling, as mentioned in the excerpt.

Although, I wish I could have had extra time to practice more so that I could learn new techniques to add more detail to my images and make them look more realistic. I'm sure once time passes I will learn to improve my skills and bring my imagination to life. I am excited to document my progress as the future comes into play.

Overall, I enjoyed doing this project and putting my skills to the test as it was something new and because I am absolutely not used to drawing cities and am more used to drawing characters. I am proud of what I have been able to create over a short period of time as I have ever sat down and only drawn scenes/streets/villages/cities before and I hope to continue my practice and gradually learn new techniques along the way and improve at drawing cities so that one day I can bring the worlds in my head to life and create suitable characters to inhabit them.