Explorer Restoration Center

[ABguy]

Also I can be useful for some textures... so here

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Hopefully this can be used for this project if not... then hopefully someone somewhere can use it

[Monkeyboy]

Wow! You've all been hard at work! I do like your building design Lontahv, I would only change the roof just so it goes along with the original idea to have it in glass, though, I suppose if the top of the building is glass in that same shape it would work. And Pappou your plan B design is a nice idea, too, though I think it might be getting too large for our original ideas, and I would rather have an inorganic design as I'm not too fond of my buildings looking like bananas. And ABguy, holy-moly! Love your concept art! If we do decide on glass hallways, that design might not be too bad to have sitting in the corners or lobby-like areas in-between galleries.

[pappou]

Hi MB
Its up to Lontahv what he wants to do with his roof, but i see no reason why he could not have his sloped roof done in glass. The big problem with the El is its incompleteness as a shape.

But my design was not a proposal for ERC, It was just to show one way that the El can be completed. There are others that you guys can work out.

No bananas, huh? How about a basket of grapes? I bet you like grapes.

[ABguy]

After reading through the post I've tried to create a world image of what the thing should look like. I didn't put in Lonhav's work but I've attempted to depict the original feel of what the age would look like.

Oriental but not too oriental.... well... ok. What I did here was throw in all kinds of ideas which I think kinda blend and work on alot of different lvls. I've included as much of the original posters ideas into this.

The glass cone... Well I thought about the original idea which had the outside a stainglass look... I decided to go with solid panes with I beam reenforcements. You still get the idea of the glass in a cone, but the structure is re enforced. You still have the cone shape but its much more ridgid and I think that modelers tend to like that.

The main building is stronger in oriental influances. I wanted to make it unique and I think I did that. The statue I thought was a nice touch, a strange representation of Yavoh inwhich when the sun reaches a certain point in the sky the hand appears to hold the sun. Well... I thought it was cool...

OH and I put in a few banzai like trees. I know that you were disscussing weather they should be red or green... In another color test that I didn't post I found that you can have a blend of green and red, where the green can fade into red. When I did it I had the tips of the leaves read and the root (the part that connects to the tree) green... It looked pretty good.

Over all I liked the image, Its in black and white but I think thats for the best given that most if not all will probably need changes in the future.

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[Jennifer_P]

Ack, my apologies for not being able to post until now--I've been busy with too much other stuff, although I've been reading everything! Let's see here...

Firstly Vagwen, good job on the pic! I notice you even added shine to the glass, heh, nice touch. And Ruvinka's right, that purple-grey color fits in really nicely.

The gist of what I'm getting from people's comments is something like an outer promenade with its outside walls made of glass. The inner wall would be solid and at the center(inside this wall) would be where the display areas are. It may be cool to have the top-most level completely encased in glass to house a local, 'natural' exhibit.

Alright then, this sounds good in terms of the exhibits not having windows to the outside on their exterior wall. I also think the local natural exhibit is a neat idea. I hope we're not thinking of having the entire building exterior be ONLY glass and metal though? ...Because here's a picture of how that looks in real life:

As you can see, you tend to get a rather bland "metal and glass" appearance which many people (myself included) find distasteful.
"GE is housed in one of the ultra-modern and extremely ugly metal and glass buildings with two sets of elevators."
"The replacements buildings, such as ABS House, on the outside are bland shiny, cubic metal and glass clad boxes."
"The Council gets all worked up about a wood deck, but continually approves ugly faddish, glass and steel buildings in the most inappropriate historical areas of the city."
"Too many of our buildings are bland old metal and glass."
"It seems that at least nowadays, beautiful architecture has been dumped by the wayside, even forgotten. Buildings are mostly designed today as just metal and glass, and it seems that most of the places that still have beautiful, intricate architecture are small towns with a historic downtown. ... Don't get me wrong, I don't think all new architecture is inferior. But I do think that the modern metal-and-glass skyscrapers and the brutal looking concrete big box stores with bare rafter ceilings are inferior to older buildings with designs like roman columns and brick/stucco exteriors or marble exeteriors with fine, delicate detail."

Not, of course, that all metal and glass buildings are plain or ugly! We just need to add elements other than metal and glass, and to avoid a flat, featurelessness appearance.

[Jennifer_P]

I imagine myself walking along the outer hall with the jungle on my left and the solid inner wall on my right. I imagine looking at the jungle after being in a dark, moody gallery and my mood being neutralized so I am ready to view a new style of art.

Ah, but does the exterior view really neutralize one's mood? It actually has a mood all of its own--which is rather cheerful, lush, expansive, and colorful. And while it would cleanse the palate after viewing a dark moody gallery, it would also leave a cheerful, lush, expansive, colorful aftertaste in the mouth that would linger when one went on to view a dark, moody gallery.

Lontahv--pappou was right, that is a good building design. It has much more visual interest than a simple pure glass exterior. The slanted roof is what gives it its main appeal for me; that's a nice touch. It still looks too boxy to me, but a little embellishment on the flat surfaces would take care of that nicely. I also think that pappou's got the right idea with adding a counterpart for the L; it looks more balanced to me with a second half there.

BUT, i have no idea at all as to how this fits into the ERC's scheme of things. It would not surprise me if they think that it is too 'architecty' -- not organic enough. If so, maybe you could turn it into a cabbage? Or maybe a banana? [I love banana and fresh coconut cream pie.]

Who says we have a scheme of things? I thought we were trying to make one up at the moment, heh. At any rate, I think if we just avoid the use of pesticides and herbicides during the building process, the building should be organic enough. And Plan C looks fine to me as well, although I'm not sure how it would improve on Plan B? I'd be curious to hear the reasoning behind that choice, pappou.

And Pappou your plan B design is a nice idea, too, though I think it might be getting too large for our original ideas, and I would rather have an inorganic design as I'm not too fond of my buildings looking like bananas.

Perhaps if we scaled the buildings in plan B down from the earlier four story plan we could avoid producing such a gargantuan building?

ABguy--Ooh, nice sculpture and painting in your first picture! Even in the rough those pieces have real personality. The one thing I would correct in that picture would be the philosophy of the gallery display--shoot more for the feel of the Kadish gallery rather for the feel of modern art galleries (blank white room with paintings and scuptures placed up around them). The reason that most galleries need to have blank walls is so that they don't clash with their ever-changing displays of paintings; by contrast, our galleries will be more-or-less permanent displays and so we can afford to do like Kadish and shape the galleries to fit the mood and theme of the art.
And your texture gets a thumbs up from me. I'm not sure where we'd put it yet, but if something appropriate comes up and somebody notices it, be sure to give a yell.

[Ruvinka]

Holy... wow.

All of the concepts look amazing!
You all make me want to retire my pencil
The last sketch by ABGuy really stole my heart. The building is just a teensie bit too stylized, but other than that I really love it. The Green house cone looks amazing! I like that it has morphed from a smooth cone to something that looks like it is right at home in the wild jungle. We can still arrange to have a center lighting/water feature comming down from the top of it. might even be enhanced by the greenhouse's unique design.

@Jennifer: About the mood... If we frosted the glass and allowed for only the most vague of shapes and filtered colour to show through would that fit in better?

I have to tell you all that this is turning out to be everything I dreamed it could be.
I hoped that the ERC would truly become a community effort. I dreamed it could be something that everyone could visit and feel a sense of ownership and pride. I wished it to have elements that everyone had helped to create so that when visited many could look around and say "there's my potted plant" "That window is framed in the texture I submitted" and not the least of which "there is the scuplture I submitted"
It's really beautiful what is happening here.
Thank you all.

[Jennifer_P]

Okay, and last post...

I do like the general form of your last picture of the ERC, ABguy. I'd even go so far to say that it's my favorite of the designs we've seen so far (Ruvinka's Japanese style buildings excluded, I still love those even if they were too oriental for our purposes); the pattern of the roofs and levels breaks up the shape so that the building is not so monolithic, and the level of embellishment suits me. I also think that it fits better into the jungle somehow, being broken up as it is. And I see that the building retains the original "L" shape. Yet it doesn't feel incomplete to me (from this perspective at least), so I guess the addition of the roofs and levels must balance it out somehow. What do you say, pappou?
I don't know about those spires though; they seem to draw an awful lot of attention to themselves without really complementing the rest of the building (if you know what I mean). The statue bugs me, to be honest; a colossus of that size would be visible from almost everywhere in the area surrounding the museum, but I think it would lose a lot of its visual appeal if it were waist deep in trees and viewed from the side so that the sun wasn't in the correct place anymore. The only other things that seemed off to me were some of the embellishments, but those are easily changed once the general shape of the building is decided on. Otherwise, /thumbsup
For the outer decorations, first let me say that the little pavilion was adorable. Cuuuuute! The inverted cone is actually quite beautiful as well, with the shape of the diamonds changing like that. I wouldn't make it so big and tall as it was, but it looks good nonetheless. We'd still want the interior cone though, I believe.

Now, the matter of the statue raises an interesting point--where is the source of illumination in all of this going to be? The ERC faces over the valley, and if the sun were down in the valley it would be in the eyes of anyone looking towards the valley. On the other hand, if the sun were placed behind the ERC, the front of the ERC would be cast into shadow. Should the sun be overhead then, or to the side?

OH and I put in a few banzai like trees. I know that you were disscussing weather they should be red or green... In another color test that I didn't post I found that you can have a blend of green and red, where the green can fade into red. When I did it I had the tips of the leaves read and the root (the part that connects to the tree) green... It looked pretty good.

Want to post that? I'd like to see what you've come up with. And I'm almost done (finally! ) with the valley panorama and so we should be having the final design vote on everybody's suggestions for the jungle colors pretty soon here...

@Jennifer: About the mood... If we frosted the glass and allowed for only the most vague of shapes and filtered colour to show through would that fit in better?

Eh, it would probably help a bit, but I don't think the affect would be worth losing the pretty view. There's not much we can do to avoid the problem of atmosphere aftertaste really; it could happen just as easily by leaving a desert themed gallery and immediately entering a winter themed gallery. So we should probably focus more on preparing people's mood just before they enter a gallery; perhaps have the room's ambience extend slightly out into the doorway and theme the door with a texture suitable for the room so that the person knows what sort of the mood to expect upon entry.

[ABguy]

First I'd like to say that IM not here to make people feel like they can't draw. If anything I would like to promote others to do more.. Thing is, that my interpretation is just that... my interpretation. All I am tring to do here is figure out in my head how others want the area to look. I was thinking that the pillars were good to offset the statue which I realize is an embelishment on my part. The building had to be bigger than the statue IMO, so thats why I did that.

Here is the deal, My ideas tend to boarder on the insane... I've come up with my own projects and to be fair most of the Blender Benders that I get to help me kinda loose their minds because the ideas are either tricky or so far outside what they know they cant figure out how to make it reality. What I think that means for you guys is to take my ideas with a big grain of salt and a bit of caution. One of the things that I have noticed is that people who make ages really center it around a feeling. Some want it to feel like home, others want to give the user a sense of exploration, some want to have an age that is awe inspiring. All I can really tell you is that Im more for the awe inspiring stuff, I enjoy things that nobody has seen before. For example your Cone is right along my alley. After a certain point I get bored with things that are always the same and then I want to do something new.

Anyways, enough about me... Here is the color test that I did, keep in mind I only make these things for me to read.

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If there are other things you want me to depict let me know, and if anyone wants help or tips with drawing/painting let me know also Im here to try and promote the community atlarge, and the more artists that are out there the more we can envision what it is we want to create.

[Ruvinka]

ABGuy I absolutely apprecite what you had to say. My saying I might retire my pencil was a good natured jab at myself and nothing beyond that. I am teaching myself little by little and gaining so much insight by watching you, Vagwen Jennifer and Papau. I really like your style in the last depiction a lot. There is a lot that draws me into it. Like Jennifer I feel as if the levels of rooftops on the L shape of the building camplete the whole without allowing itself to be predictable. The statue in front... I kind of saw that as seen from an odd perspective. Don't ask me why but... I kind of felt as if I were standing close to the statue and looking up through its arms to the ERC. The bonzai being so close to the pavillion lead me to believe the pavillion was in actuality a lantern for the walkway. The spires could go. They are absolutely awesome, but a little over the top for the ERC I think ( no pun intended... ok maybe a little intended) The cone is lovely. I really like it as you've depicted it for all the reasons I listed before and reasons that haven't made themselves entirely cognizant yet
Your colour study reminds me of a brighter version of crabapple leaves. I think we've talked about the green topside and red underside of crabapple leaves in the thread before and I still think that red and green can work together in the right values.
I think we've really got a good start. I say we sand down the edges of ABGuy's last sketch, Maintain Lontahv and Papau's L shape and take a look at Jenifer's panorama with the red/green blend in mind.

@Jennifer: We can use the more Japanese Styled buildings I drew another time to be sure
Thank you for the compliment