M3 Frame vs Field

City of Sophronia

In Sophronia, it is formed by two-half cities: a carnival city, the permanent one, and a business city, the temporary one. The city is a cycle of rebirth and destruction. It is indispensable to live without one of them. The complete life is short and limited but treasurable.

Hand written analysis of the story.

Perspectives Design

Perspective one shows the complete Sophronia. The column separates Sophronia into two frames, left with the carnival and right with the business city. The figures indicate the activities interlude two cities. The two cities are linked by the children running from the solid city to the carnival. The woman sitting behind is watching the children running, while on the right, people are working and holding conferences.
The pink wash indicates peoples' hope for the next complete life to come again.

... a complete life can begin again.

Perspective two shows the incomplete Sophronia. People are looking at the workers dismantling the business city from the sight of the carnival city.
The yellow wash indicated the tranquillity of Sophronia after the business city was dismantled.

... Here remains the half-Sophronia...

Notations

Before starting modeling the Old Quad, I roughly sketched the picture of my text and notated the time, and indicated the cities’ changes.

Sketch notations after having the model of the city.

After modeling the Old Quad, I added the notation in Rhino. The solid and Business city with more weight lines(Red) and temporal threshold (Green), while Blue indicated the city cycle.

In Illustrator, detailed notations such as the weight of the solid city, the direction of cities transformation, and the thickness of the gaze and glance arrows are added and adjusted.

I used the transference notations to convey the cycles of the reborn and destruct Sophronia, and also for the transformation of the temporary business city to indicate the rebuild and destruction of the city. On top of that, the repeated time notation in the business city suggests the city's short lifetime. Apart from that, the business city is more solid, so I added weight fill to add weight to the city compared to the permanent carnival, a moving city. I used the dotted weight line to present the atmosphere of the carnival city.

Process

Hand-drawn analysis and draft before manipulating the Old Quad.

Draft of the Perspectives

The detail of the dismantled business city, the columns are bent, the floors are uprooted, and the debris is falling.

Columns, Details, and Bases are manipulated into a Feris wheel and bench. The Details are joined and bent to pretend the roller coaster.

The view looks from the ruined business city to the falling business city. The falling business city is kept for the perspective one.

Perspectives Process

Before changing the light direction.

Before adding figures and texture.

Before adding figures and texture.

Adding figures.

Adding figures and texture.

Adding background and black and white filter.

Adding more shadow to the figures and the background.

Final Work

Reflection

This project gives me extensive freedom of creativity and interpretation. We were assigned a short story from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and manipulated the Old Quad at the University of Melbourne after analyzing and interpreting it. Throughout the process, it allowed me to become further familiar with the four software (Rhino, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign). I enjoyed playing with this module despite finding a little hurdle in searching for high-resolution and suitable figures for my city. Thus, I spent the most time on it.

Apart from that, this module trained my sense in presenting perspectives with a story in a frame, how objects separate scenes and figures interact, and how to separate objects and figures into the foreground, middle ground, and background. On top of that, placing objects near the camera can create an extra foreground that sublines the whole story. Light and shadow help vividly describe the picture.