What If? Metropolis: Final Render + Thoughts

This is the final render of the city. The city is very simple in it's design, which is both a good and bad thing. Bridget Riley doesn't have complex shapes in her work. The hard to understand things in her work are usually due to a a series of lines and shapes packed closely together. It was very difficult to design the city, as the buildings should represent Riley's work and her work is quite simple, despite it's complex composition. Perhaps I should have organised the buildings in the same way as one of her pictures, but I chose to design them based on one of the thumbnails. The theatre is the building that I wanted to show the running theme in Riley's work, where there is usually a small section that is hard to see, hard to understand and very abstract. The theatre is very unique in the city as it isn't the same blocky building like all the others, which is also both a good and bad thing.

I have mixed feelings about it, in all honesty. I'm happy that it looks like my final concept pieces and that I had no big problems modelling, adding light, textures etc. so that shows that I'm improving my Maya skills. Adding and creating textures/shaders was relatively easy so that is another bonus.

As I have previously said, I struggled at first because I didn't know how to design the city. It took me more than a couple of weeks into the project when I finally started to create useful thumbnails. I knew when getting Bridget Riley as my artist that the city needed to represent her work and not just have her work as wallpapers fro the buildings. I think it may be argued that the unimportant buildings are just blocks with her style of work on, but they do match the thumbnail that I based them on. I did try to make the buildings look more Riley-esc but I found it very difficult. Her work has no structures or 3D forms so I had to create them based on 2D patterns. Her work contains simple shapes and lines that are used incredibly well, I think the city contains simple shapes that has lines used reasonably well.