Making it Float and Water Collection

“Researchers have demonstrated a new metal matrix composite that is so light that it can float on water. A boat made of such lightweight composites will not sink despite damage to its structure.” – http://engineering.nyu.edu/press-releases/2015/05/12/metal-composite-will-literally-float-your-boat

So we found this material and it’s pretty much ideal to what we’re looking for. What we’re going to do is have this metal matrix foam line the bottom of the top layer of the city to keep it afloat. The foam’s magnesium alloy matrix composite is lined with silicone carbide hollow particles. They have a density of 0.92 grams per cubic meter meaning it will float easily on water.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering. 2016. A Metal Composite that will (Literally) Float Your Boat | NYU Tandon School of Engineering. [ONLINE] Available at: http://engineering.nyu.edu/press-releases/2015/05/12/metal-composite-will-literally-float-your-boat. [Accessed 21 February 2016].

We also plan on having a massive revolving cog around the top layer of the city which will not only propel and keep the city afloat on water, but will also collect water. As the cog rotates, the water is pulled into the center of the city, and as the water passes through hydroelectric turbines, electricity is generated; powering the city. The will also be water filters passing through every layer of the city, so clean water can be deposited to every section. Used water/waste can be flushed out while water is being pulled back in through the surface and purified again.

Sacrificial Protection – Floating City

When creating the city, we became aware that since the city is floating in water, it would be prone to rusting. I decided to look into sacrificial protection in order to prevent rusting.

Sacrificial protection would typically be used on ships. In order to prevent the ship from rusting, pieces of zinc (in this case “The Sacrificial Anodes”) are placed around the exterior of the ship. Since the zinc has a higher voltage in the water , the current is more likely to flow from it that from the propeller of your ship. The zinc plates (the sacrificial anodes) must be connected to the items they are intended to protect. In our case, the entire exterior bar the glass in our city.

 

Roman Architecture

One of the things we were dead set on in the development stages was incorporating some of Rome’s ancient architecture. We felt that the buildings are possibly one of Romes most recognizable traits, and we thought that if we incorporate some of those buildings, we’re introducing some culture into our city.

Back in the day, Roman architecture was made in a way that was structurally solid, and looks impressive. Seeing as there wasn’t too much concrete lying around back then, they would have used a volcanic stone called Tufa. Although it eventually went out of use and was replaced by a more durable type of stone named travertine. It was also a worthy substitute for marble as when it dried it was quite close to white.

Seeing as quite a few roman temples were built with lintels on top, it meant the interior space was limited in size as it was more devoted to holding its heavy weight. So speaking of lintels and travertine, here’s models of a Temple and Pantheon I made for the inside of the city.

Megan had talked to a student in our class, Gianni, who’s from Rome and he informed her on how the people of Rome would build on its past. Literally. When building, italians would draw inspiration from buildings in the past, not only for the look but for the strengths. “If it’s working don’t change it, improve it.” – Quote: Me, just now.

Elements of Roman architecture that have been carried through the centuries would be arches. Using Arches in buildings meant the structurally stable and stronger.

 

Some books I found usefull when researching the architecture were “Architectural symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages”, and “Principles of Roman Architecture” which contained pictures of the Pantheon which I used as reference when creating my model.

Reference Photo from “Principles of Roman Architecture” 

 

Architectural symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages: Smith, E. Baldwin. Architectural Symbolism Of Imperial Rome And The Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. Print.

Principles of Roman Architecture:  Wilson Jones, Mark. Principles Of Roman Architecture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Print.

Khan Academy. 2016. Roman architecture | A beginner’s guide to ancient Rome | Khan Academy. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/roman/beginners-guide-rome/a/roman-architecture. [Accessed 17 February 2016].

Second Set of Concepts

I experimented a little more with the exterior design of the city seeing as we were still undecided as of what the final design would look like. At this point we were all building up concepts so we’d be able to compare them further down the line and see what we could take from each piece. These were my contributions.

Digital Schematic

So now seeing as the rough version is finished off, I’ve made a start on the digital version. It’s just a case of copying all the information over and watching the film again for missing pieces.

I’ve been doing this piece by piece. I have asked my team about taking over and continuing it themselves but it seems to be shrugged off and I end up doing it… But it’s getting there I suppose…

I talked to Megan about creating a character’s off screen story and we decided to focus it on Marla. We decided to look at the suicidal aspects of her character and what she would go to do to fuel that drive. For example, we have her going out and stealing more clothes from washing machines, like earlier in the movie; Trading those clothes in for money, then going out and purchasing xanax from a chemist.She’s contemplating whether or not she’s going to take the pills but decides against it and tries calling the narrator. No answer… We also talked about another scene toward the end where she is on the bus leaving town only to be dragged back by Tyler’s Army. We thought maybe she could drift off to sleep on the bus and start dreaming. She would be dreaming of one of Helena Bonham Carter’s (the  actress that plays Marla) other roles in another film. She would be dreaming of being the Red Queen from Alice in wonderland. And when she is abruptly awoken she be wailing “Off with their heads!”. You’ll see it in the schematic.

I also created some graphics for the digital version which can be seen below.

These were inserted into the schematic any time a character was introduced. Again i’ve continued asking team members to continue the schematic but I seem to be the only one invested in it…  I ended up having to stay up all of monday night through to 7am making it presentable for the presentation. It still isn’t 100% complete but it’s almost there. I just hope someone from my team takes it up…

DIGITAL SCHEMATIC.

Picking our teams for the animated short

So we’re finally starting our 15 second animation assignment! Claire, Eve,  Kirstin and I are now all in a team together and are eager to get started on this! As of right now we’re unsure on what we want our animation to be. We plan on just taking it easy for now and building up our research and then seeing what we can come up with next time we meet up as the floating city deadline is closing in on us.

 

 

Artefact

So all of last week we’ve been talking and developing the idea of what the concept for our film could be. Seeing as had Fight Club, we wanted to play around with the theme of “Anti-Capitalism” and “subliminal messages” combined with the themes of Nihilism.

“Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes–epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness–have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.”

Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016. Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism/. [Accessed 11 February 2016].

When we talked about playing around with the idea of our artefact having subliminal messages, we thought we could maybe make the artefact itself subliminal. We got thinking and we thought “How would members of FightClub communicate that there is a fight club without talking about it and without exposing themselves. We then thought we could make our artefact a public art piece by hiding stickers all around belfast for people to find and see, but hind them in discreet places. From here the artefact began to take on two parts.

The physical artefact, and the subliminal artefact. The idea behind the subliminal artefact is that it’s not the stickers, but the idea that they’re actually out there for people to go around and look at. We began making the physical artefact.

 

The Physical Artefact

So for the physical artefact, we looked into recurring themes within the film. We noticed that if you look closely, you will be able to see that there is a starbucks coffee cup in near enough every shot. So started coming up with ideas based around a coffee cup. This eventually went on to inspire the idea that we could have a coffee cup, filled with coffee and broken teeth floating on the surface; suggesting the aftermath of a fight. Megan made most of the teeth, I attempted to make a few and painted them. Then she went on to make even more which were kept in a separate jar. Here’s some of the results.

After this Megan went on to photograph these and then turned them into graphics. Megan, Gianni and I all went around belfast sticking them around in subtle locations and this is what the subliminal artefact was all about. Gianni was with us for the first few then headed back to university as me and megan finished up. Below are some of the best photos of the subliminal artefact.

 

So that’s our artefact!

Megan took some photos of Gianni and I and we played around with fight club themed graphics (and i’m cringing at myself but ah well.)  After Megan took the photos I tweaked them a little in photoshop!

When creating these i looked into the style of the following artist’s pieces.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find out who created the piece above so i’ll reference the link I found it from below.

5 ways Fight Club will change how you look at the world. 2016. 5 ways Fight Club will change how you look at the world. [ONLINE] Available at: http://inktank.fi/5-ways-chuck-palahniuks-fight-club-will-change-the-way-you-look-at-the-world/. [Accessed 12 February 2016].

Gianni played around with making the starbucks coffee cup symbol woman looking more like Marla. The image on the left was gianni’s version, I tweaked it a little on the right so the arm wasn’t hovering and coloured. Just small edits to make it fit the theme because I liked his idea.

 

 

 

Rough Schematic

Once I had the notes and key events scribbled down in my sketchbook, I made a start on the rough schematic. This is something we all struggled with to begin with.

I talked to a few second years and they originally thought that a movie schematic was interpreted as being a blueprint or plan for the movie. (As did I when i first heard of it.) This was all cleared up when Conánn sent a message to a student in the class saying to look at the london underground’s map. Which we did. Here’s a map of the underground below!

Image Source: http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/11/tube-union-confirms-three-24-hour-strikes-will-go-ahead-on-london-underground-5615982/

As you can see from the image above, the first thing we noticed is how all the tracks and routes overlap and intertwine. From there we thought the schematic is used to indicate how all the plot points and characters paths cross with each others and now they influence the story. I got stuck into this right away.

I decided to base it on the main character’s journey (The Narrator). Seeing as his journey is very linear and the plot heavily follows him and the characters seem to be wrapped around all of his actions. After I had the protagonists journey plotted in chronological order. After this I went on to fill in the blanks with the other characters. And then used lines of different colours and values to link them to a character or group.

Floating City Size? Capacity?

One of the things we really needed to think about when developing our city was the fact that seeing as it’s floating on water, it would only be able to accommodate so many people before it sinks. To combat this problem, megan proposed the idea that there would be multiple cities, floating alongside each other. Each holding 200000 people max, as it would be the highest amount of people the city could hold before it sinks.

Seeing as there are roughly around 2 million people in rome, it would mean that there would be 13 cities making up rome, each holding its 200000 people.

Rome is 1285 kilometers squared. If we were to apply this to each of our cities it would mean each city is 98 kilometers squared.

First Maya Concept Test

So now that we’ve decided that our city is going to be on water, here’s some of the concepts I threw together in Maya. We kept Aequorea floating city designs in mind seeing as is where our inspiration came from, and trying to incorporate our lily pad vision.

City Surface 1

City Surface 2

Birds Eye View

Full City

Surface Still

 

What we had in mind for the city would be that it is self sustainable and uses natural resources to fuel itself. For example, around the outside are 5 spinning platforms that are used to pull water into the center of the city.  When the water passes into the center, hydroelectric turbines are triggered  and begin to generate energy, which is then converted to electricity for the city. The city’s surface is also lined with solar panels.

In terms of actually making the city a space that can be lived in, there would need to be water, food and clean air for its citizens. And it’s a city on water…  Water shouldn’t really be a problem! Water would be collected in from the surface and filtered, resulting in clean water for its citizens. Same can be said about the air, air conditioning units would be installed all over the city in order to recycle the air.  There will be farm lands and livestock on board for in order to combat the food problem, and fishing ports on the surface.

I’ll go into all this in more depth in a later post. For now, this is the first draft of our city!