Siddharth Parsons

Half-Cities

The city I picked from the book was Sophronia. I picked this because I found the concept of a city with two very different halves interesting. My main goal in modeling the city was to properly showcase the stark differences between each side.

My intention with this work was to make the two halves of the city be different in a meaningful way. Instead of just having two different looking sides, I wanted each side to represent something about the city. On the theme park half of the city there are four attractions: A hotel, a roller coaster, a tower ride, and a ramp. These are all unique and eye-catching places, meant to increase the appeal of traveling to this side of the city. This visual style is also meant to contrast the monotone design and look of the other half of the city, which is just made up of differently sized buildings with the same texture. I decided to use the same texture for all the buildings in order to emphasize how unappealing and basic that half of the city is. When I initially read the text, I interpreted the two halves of the city as showing the strong disconnect between the parts of our lives where we work and the parts where we relax. I liked how there was a half of the city which was not centered around work, since it allowed me to represent the idea that life is not just work and it is important to relax. I based my model off of that concept, adding elements such as the river in-between both halves, which further emphasizes the divide between the two sides. I also drew inspiration from real life places in order to add realism to the theme park side of the city. I do think my work could be improved by refining the textures and adding more structures to the theme park side, since it was challenging to find ones that could be modeled well.