My Influence Map

Right, so here I have made an influence map for the invisible cities project. The first thing you may notice is that most of these places don't exist. I am sure there would be many more real places on the map if I had travelled more and experienced more cities that stand out and well.... influenced me. As far as the buildings and cities are concerned in this collage they are all from movies games and film that have stuck with me throughout the years and I thought, hey? If I still love these imaginary places now why not use them to help fuel my own work? From the top going left to right we have a picture of a night sky. This is because whenever I imagine cities it is always at dusk or at night. I personally hate how busy cities get and I know many cities don't sleep but at night a lot of the quieten down. The next picture is Minus Tirith from The Lord of the Rings. This in my opinion was one of the greatest looking CG cities ever created and I love the fact that it is half built into the mountain and half outside. I also love Erebor another city from Lord of the Rings as I think it seems like an embodiment of power and wealth however I didn't picture it here. Instead I found a picture of Rivendell, which seems like a place of serenity and peace and calm, everything I admire in a city. It is the complete opposite to the bustling Minus Tirith which is why I included it, because I proves that cities can be relaxed and calm or busy and tireless. The next four pictures, the brightly coloured ones. They are from a game called Mirror's Edge, which happens to be one of my favourite games because of the level design and the use of colour. Every zone is divided quite obviously by the use of different colours and these colours are always very vibrant and bold, which for some reason give a futuristic feel to the game in a strange way, as most of the time, when we think of the future now-a-days we think often think of a dark metallic kind of place. Going down again we have Machu Picchu. The ruins of a once great Mayan city Machu Picchu to me is a place of obscurity and mystery. All kinds of secrets could be held there and all it is, is the remains of city, which I find quite remarkable. Moving right we have a still taken from the Hunger Games of the Capitol. After reading the books I had some idea  of what the largest city in Panem would look like but when I saw the movie it was like discovering it for the first time, It is a massive sprawling city which combines a futuristic feel with a rather contemporary style. Next (going right again) is a map. This map is taken from one of my favourite books growing up which became a great series. It is Alagaesia from the Inheritance Cycle of which the first book is Eragon. In the book series Christopher Paolini the author describes many fantastical, amazing cities which the film managed to spectacularly fail in creating. Going back to the left of the influence map we have a picture based on another book series called the Mortal Engines which was an interesting book series set in the future, where all the cities are on large sets of wheels and the bigger cities travel around and eat smaller cities. It is a strange concept but whenever I think of cities this book series pops into my head. The next picture is of a Venetian mask which I just love, because I love the idea of Renaissance Italy. The new buildings and architecture that were introduced during the time period where just incredible and rather impressive. The next image is a screenshot taken from the PS2 game Ratchet and Clank 3 from the metropolis level. This game was one of my favourites growing up and this level always sticks out to me as one of my favourites. The city was inhabited despite looking abandoned and had multiple layers to it which made gameplay dynamic and fun. The middle picture on the bottom is Rata Sum, a city from the game Guild Wars 2 (It was also in the original but it looked very different). It is a floating city which has been created using a combination of science and magic. I like the almost cyber punk feel that the city has to it combined with the geometric nature patterns which have been used to give the floating city, shape. The final picture is Venice which is an obvious piece of inspiration. As stated before I love renaissance Italy, in particular Venice, I love the idea of the festivals and parties that are had there and I would love to try and incorporate, even not as a main theme, into my work, especially since all the city descriptions from invisible cities are based on Venice.