Sandy Vo

I chose to build the city of Isaura because I was drawn to the idea of a civilization living above a large mass of water. I thought that it would be interesting to recreate visually how the people of Isaura would utilize wells and buckets lowered down by pulleys to receive water. My general concept was having a city appear to be floating above the water. I wanted to highlight the importance of the windmill and buckets, as they are the important factors for the city of Isaura to obtain water. This lead my aesthetic to have many shiny metallics in these areas to capture the audience’s attention towards it.

Sketches and Inspirations:

My intention of my project is to recreate the city of Isaura in my own interpretation. Isaura was said that the gods lived in the buckets that were suspended down below into the water with the pulleys generated by the windmills. When I think about gods, I imagine people making offers to the gods to answer their prayers. This lead me to think about the common idea of people tossing coins into wells for their wishes to be granted. I wanted to incorporate this idea into my project. I made the windmill and buckets have a metallic texture in the color of coins and gold to show the wealth and offerings that are given to the gods. In this project I was also inspired by the Hayao Miyazaki’s film, Castle in the Sky. I wanted to have the city of Isaura appear as if it was floating. I decided to draw the background with clouds, stars, and the moon to have the dreamy effect of the city of Isaura drifting in the sky.

Some challenges I encountered was making the water appear more like water. At first, I had the water in a singular ovular shape and a matte color, but it did not quite look how I wanted it to appear. I experimented with different textures and I liked how the metallic texture allowed the water to emit a reflective appearance. I also had more ovular shapes in different levels to create a stylistic water levels in the project. Something I feel like I could improve more on is adding more interesting textures on the buildings and structures. I think the buildings lack some creative aspects that I could further delve into. The aqueducts that I tried making seem to appear more like bridges rather than aqueduct channels. I think if I took some more time to explore different textures and bend different shapes, I could make it more polished and captivating.

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