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Hello!

I'm glad I have the chance to take a part in another Maxwell for SketchUp competition. I'd like to thank Next Limit for this opportunity and wish good luck to the other participants!

The main idea of my entry comes from a news article I saw about a month ago, about a mansion built on top of Beijing apartment block. I found it quite interesting and the idea somehow stuck in my head, until along came the announcement of this competition, and I knew that I have to play something around this. Here was the source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz4FK7VFxIA

So, the scene I imagine is: the viewer is located in mid air hundreds of meters above the ground near the roof ledge of a modern skyscraper, that barely reveals a piece of personal heaven- a beautiful Victorian style house with a green garden, and it being illuminated by the last sun rays that escape through the clouds. In the background you see a wide city street stretching into infinity, packed with cars and surrounded by other high rise building only to disappear in the evening dusk and the polluted atmosphere. Not too far away you see a couple of doves flying up to the ledge to enjoy a rest.

The concept of "Out of Place" would be then realized through both architectural, and emotional contrast. In greater thought- the doves would represent the everyday man, stuck in the surrounding mundane modern city life, and in thoughts is back into the nostalgic vision of freedom of the long past days in the countryside.

From the stylistic part of view, I would like to achieve something similar to what I recently saw in the beautiful pictures of Stephen Wilkes, here: http://www.photographyblogger.net/day-t ... en-wilkes/

The main composition is going to be dictated by the strong verticals of the skyscrapers and the perspective of the street, that would stand in contrast of the chaotic garden and the sky. The unifying element being the flying doves.

The main model elements that I would have to concentrate on would be the construction of the foreground building and realistic looking steel, concrete and glass materials of it. And also the vegetation that I plan make using Maxwell's grass and proxy function for the trees. I'll probably make the rest with the SketchUp fur and ivy making plugins.

I'll be taking the design of the Victorian style house form Tim Burtons movie "Big fish", that I really loved. As for the skyscrapers- I'll probably design something for the foreground myself and use some 3dWH models for the background, as you most likely won't be able to see any detail of them anyway.

I already made some concept sketches with pen and paper, so- on to modelling now!

Hello C Black,

Your concept sounds terrific, very original. We are longing to see more. I hope you could share your sketches and the evolution of your project.

Good luck!

Dario Lanza

Didn't get to upload much from my progress. But here is the reference I used for the house:


Without revealing too much from the final image, I give you a teaser:

great teaser here!! Im looking forward to see your final submission
good luck
V

Thanks!
I'm actually quite suprised how smoothly I managed to execute my initial idea from start to finish, for at least 95% of what I wanted. Only place where I got stuck was when trying to add 3d trees to the scene, but I never really could get a decent result out of it, so I just had to substitute them with 2d ones.

Is it OK to show the final work before the submissions have been put out for voting?

Seeing as everyone else has already put up their final work, I guess I'll do the same. I hope that everything will be successfully sorted out tomorrow.

Resized jpg + wireframe

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