The Piper's Alley Artbook

THE

PIPER’S ALLEY

illustation

- Clint Rodrigues -

“Cities are stinking places,” “Full of the sour smell of human bodies and wastes.If I had to live within walls I would sicken.”

Gloria Skurzynski

Introduction Fairy tales and Fantasy art interests me a lot, so I decided to recreate a scene from my favourite legend “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”.

Fantasy Art is massive subject, so first, I had to divide my work into segment and decide what I really wanted to get out of this project.

I created a mind map for myself to plot out famous and interesting artists and their respective works. This was done to look for artists of styles similar to mine. I found a number of amazing artworks that piqued my interest.

One in particular was this polish Artist “Tomek Baginski”, director of various short films (Fallen Art, Cathedral, and The Kinematograph). The Kinematograph has a unique style that is reminiscent to Tim Burton’s films and more or less fit the style I was looking for. With the style being set, I had to plan out how I would I go about creating this artwork.

The Story It was the year 1284 when a strange and wondrous figure arrived in Hameln. He was attired in a coat of many colours and was taken to be a rat catcher, as he promised to free the town of a plague of rats and mice for a fixed sum of money. The citizens pledged to pay him his fee, so the visitor produced a pipe and began to play. Soon all the rats and mice came running out of the houses and gathered around the Pied Piper in a teeming mass. Once convinced that each and every one followed, he went out of the town straight into the River Weser where the vermin plunged after him and drowned.

The townspeople, however, now freed of the plague, regretted their promise and refused to pay the Piper, who left Hameln in a bitter mood. On the 26th of June in that year he returned, this time dressed as a huntsman, wearing a grim countenance and a wondrous red hat. While the townsfolk were assembled in the church, he again sounded his pipe in the streets. But it was not rats and mice who came out this time, but children! A great many

boys and girls older than four came running and were led through the Ostertor gate into the very heart of a hill where they all disappeared. Only two children returned because they could not keep up: one was blind and could not show where the others had gone, the other dumb and not able to tell the secret.

A last little boy had come back to fetch his coat and so escaped the calamity. Some tell that the children were led into a great cavern and reappeared in Transylvania. A total of 130 children were lost.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Robert Browning

Research I did a fair bit of study on architecture and based my entire street on two books. “Invisible Cities”

by Italo Calvino provided the wireframe for my entire street. The philosophical aspects of the book helped me a lot and opened more option to further venture into. The other book was more visual based, “The Snickelways of York” by Mark W. Jones. This particular book or I should be calling it a guide really, explained in detailed, how the Snickelway of York was laid out. The depth of the book was magnificent and I based a lot of my architectural ideas and concepts from this book alone.

Snickelways of York

Mark W. Jones

Concept This made my project and I believe this was by far the most improved aspect I gained from this course.

I had to go about UV unwrapping the models before I began texturing and used the UV tiling method to create high quality looking textures with minimum resolution sizes. Once the texturing process was more or less complete I had to begin rendering After the modelling process was complete, I did a flat basic material render, took it up to Photoshop and did a basic colour wash to help me with colours and texturing.

I gathered information from various sources online. I read a couple of books and magazines on architecture and colour study. Colour was key and would decide how the image would look. Tomek’s film “The Kinematograph� was my inspiration. I studied his color script thoroughly and finally creating compelling concept that fit my style.

Application I decided to create the image in 3D (Maya) and create something I was more comfortable with, i.e. Environments. I have been doing environments for a while now, though at a much smaller scale. The image I had in mind had to be massive, this was for my own personal reasons and I wanted to show I can create something vast in a short span of time. After a couple of months of research and experimenting with my minor project I decided to create an entire street tagged “Alley” and tiled my project accordingly “The Piper’s Alley”. Creating the street was a lot of hard blood sweating work but it was equally fun and eventful. I knew I had to shift gears early on to get going with this ginormous project. I built my proxy street and one house for the minor to better understand what I could and could not achieve. Since most of my pre-production work was done in my minor, I knew I could achieve a result by the end of the program.

Fantasy, Art, Literature I had started my project with an extensive research on Fantasy Art, Literature and Films and made a mind map to reflect my idea on what I really wanted to achieve.

The Fantastic genre is a daunting task on its own, but a fairly interesting one too. I divided my mind map into three different segments. Art, Literature and Films and started off from there. Fantastic Literature helped me a lot in basing my idea and finally narrowing down to something that really interested me. From George MacDonald to J. R. R. Tolkien to G. R. R. Martin to finally C. S. Lewis. Hans Christian Anderson, one of my favourite authors and all-time favourite children’s book novelist helped frame my idea even more. Juvenile Literature interested me a fair bit and most of them have been adult contemporized. My favourite’s Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Groove, Sleeping Beauty and so on and so fourth . Most of them are brilliantly structured when an essence of eerie nature weaved in. Illustrations were plenty during this time of literature.

Colour Script Colour was key and would decide how the image would look. Tomek’s film “The Kinematograph” was my inspiration. I studied his color script thoroughly and finally creating compelling concept that fit my style. I gathered information on several types of bricks and textures to help me with my texturing process. Information had to gather about various architectural styles, measurements etc. I did a brief study on Victorian Architecture and types alike. Edwardian architecture is also a subject I surfaced through. I watched several movies based on fantasy and those that provided images on neo-classical and gothic architecture.

Colours and shapes on houses will vary depending on the magnitude of the piper mystical force. Characteristics of houses are metaphorical identities directly on in-directly related to the town’s children or the families residing there. The more warped or skewed a particular structure is, the more that family or person has committed a false act directly related to the crime or in this instant refusal to pay the Piper.

Rendering This is probably my best project I have worked on till date, studying the Victorian Era, from Victorian architecture to the Food, the way the middle class and the working class people survived, to famous alleyways in different countries in Europe and various other continents. My research Blog has an in-depth research on Alleyways and the Victorian Architecture. I got to learn the V-Ray render engine, and good gracious it’s a wonderful render engine, miles ahead of the dated but still impressive Mental Ray, mind you this is not slating Mental ray in any shape or form just asking for it to be updated.

Rendering and lighting were probably the hardest bit to get right in the entire production process.

V-ray is great and I highly recommend this render engine to everyone. Beats mental ray by a stretch but then again it’s just a tool, you need to stick to the principles of Art & Design.

Conclusion I set out with an ambitious project with a lot of potential, and after spending months working on the major project I achieved more than I ever expected. I far exceeded what I set forth on my minor.

I learned a lot about Victorian architecture, Victorian fashion, how architecture and a street should be planned out and recreated.

I realised the potential of this project further down the pipeline. I learnt a new style I never knew I could produce, well but that’s how you learn new things. I had never undertaken a massive project before, I would always play it safe, always quality over quantity. But since I had a bit of experience in this field, I was confident I would be able to undertake this project with not too much difficulty. Well the production process wasn’t too difficult, it was more tedious than anything else.

Arien, Eddie, Chevy and Trajano were of great help. They helped me develop my story and without Eddie’s insight I would not have been able to achieve what I set out to do. My classmates were of great help, especially Maxim, Saumitra, Dylan, Sagar and Richard. Their inputs were invaluable and they helped me achieve my goal.

“Memory is redundant it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.�

CALVINO

Diffuse

Raw GI

Raw Light

Raw Light

Reflection

Final Colour Corrected Image

Refraction

Specular

Shadow

References Schafer, T. (2014, January 14). Broken Age - Double Fine Productions. Broken Age. Retrieved July 14, 2014, from http://www.brokenagegame.com/ Stylized - Dictionary Definition. (n.d.). Vocabulary.com. Retrieved July 14, 2014, from http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/stylized Helquist, B. (n.d.). Helquist Portfolio. Helquist: portfolio index. Retrieved July 15, 2014, from http://www.bretthelquist.com Yamada, R. (n.d.). 3D Environment Artist. environment artist. Retrieved July 15, 2014, from http://rachelyamada.blogspot.co.nz/ Alexander, C. (1979). The timeless way of building. New York: Oxford University Press.

Birn, J. (n.d.). Jeremy Birn. Jeremy Birn. Retrieved June 15, 2014, from http://3drender.com/jbirn/ Birn, J. (2000). [Digital] lighting & rendering. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders.

Jones, M. W. (1983). A walk around the snickelways of York. York: M. Jones.

Mayer, M., & Browning, R. (1987). The Pied Piper of Hamelin. New York: Macmillan ;.

Barta, J. (Director). (1986). Krysar, le joueur de flûte de Hamelin : Les Films du Paradoxe.

Hall, M. (Director). (1980). The Pied Piper of Hamelin - Stop Motion England: .

Borsch, S. J. (2005). The Black Death in Egypt and England a comparative study. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Pied Piper of Hamelin. (2014, May 7). Wikipedia. Retrieved June 17, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_Piper_of_Hamelin Mieder, W. (2007). The pied piper: a handbook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Cuervo, M. J. (2010, June 1). Features: Articles. The Lost Children of Hamelin. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3805/ the_lost_children_of_hamelin.html Browning, R. (n.d.). Robert Browning: the Pied Piper of Hamelin: Title Page. Robert Browning: the Pied Piper of Hamelin: Title Page. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/etext/piper/

“Folks who put me in a passion... may find me pipe after another fashion!”

PIED PIPER