Little Big City

A splendid example of a Model city. If one looks at the overall effect, given the scale. its quite astounding.

From Wired.com

After the Hiatus

Theres been a small glitch in my plans regarding the City, to do with RW time constraints. Hopefully, I will overcome these for the weekend and be able to get things off the ground to some degree.
I sort of jumped in feet first, like Alice, following that rabbit. The rabbit seemed like a very good idea, but I sort of went tearing after it, rather than thinking about it in a sensible fashion, fetching my rifle and shooting the little shit.
I need to get some structure into this project, or its going to wind up like the time my friend decided to see if the mystery object we found embedded in the ground on a military range was a landmine, by hitting it repeatedly with a treebranch. The answer was no. but it’s still not a good way to go about things.

Personal protection

Leibowitz contemplates the advert, speed printed through the box this morning because he’s frightened of Dataminers, especially seeing as a group had got Franklin just this last Wednesday.
Franklin was a data sink for some company down In the bay and that was why he’d been targeted. He was a big guy, regularly exercised and had once boasted about how he had mylomar implants throughout his musculature, to make his tennis serve better. He, like everyone else, was security minded, so it must have taken some degree of professionalism for his attackers to intercept the order for shopping and deceive the house security.
Upon opening the door, rather than being faced with the week’s groceries, Franklin had found himself on the receiving end of an airhypo filled with synthesised Platypus toxin. His Dr.Knowitall™ had mistakenly taken the results as a heart seizure and instantly sedated him, laying him out in his hall. The attackers just hammered the probe straight into his head, taken a snapshot of the carbon datafilaments in his brain and taken off. Franklin died from shock where he’d fallen, the Dr. Knowitall™ continually trying to dope him out of the massive pain he was in.
Leibowitz had told him it wasn’t worth going for a cheap mediplant, but it seemed a shame to be right about it.
Of course the owners of the advert know about this, his house has been targeted for adverts regarding defence against datamining since the incident, but despite the ire he feels at the having had his faxbox hacked, resulting in this 3 second print, he finds himself interested. For $3000, Homewar inc. promise to hard encode an airborne Ebola variant into the data in his head, disguised as a prototype for a hydrogen cell. Put in a basemaker, it should do a good, if not messy job of sorting out anyone who decides to dig him. Of course, the pattern will get recognised within time, and the Dataminers will adapt accordingly, but there’ll be offers of upgrades, or pattern revisions. It’s a small price to pay. If you can’t get justice, you can always have vengeance.

Bringing your ideals in

People are free to bring anything they want into THE CITY, as long as its architectural, Each person to submit one Room, one building. You don’t have to do both. But what I was hoping to make clear is, when it comes to the structure, both of the Building and the room
A) They don’t have to relate
B) There is no set styling, what you put in, is upto you.
This lead me to thing about a guide as to what people are free to interpret, so I drew up a little guide, as to how I’ve been thinking about buildings. This applies to the rooms as well, in how its thought through, only the end result is, well, inside out.

Feel. how does this this building feel to you, is it sobering, happy, inspiring? Terrifying? Euphoric?
What is the buildings basic category skyscraper? tenement? business? homestead?
What would people have intended your building to be used for? Corporate offices? Small business? living in? Services? parking space?
Locationally, If you building belonged somewhere, where would that be? This means in visual aspect? for instance whitewash and tiled, mediterranian, Steel and glass Singaporean corporate, Retro Skyscraper ala NewYork, Bostonian Townhouse.
What era is it from? does it belong in a particular time frame? Art Deco, Rennaisance baroque? Futurist ala 1920s? Sci fi?
What are its features? Filagree fretwork? Gargoyles? search lights? Mirrored glass? external lifts?
What is its state of repair? disused? pristine? wrecked? bombed out?
What is it currently used for? Is the carpark now a tenement, is the arcology a zombie factory or arts installation?

This isn’t a rulebook, just an idea of how I’m going about things, if anyone else isn’t sure what the goalposts are.

A word on creative copyright and THE CITY

It occured to me that one immediate issue with an idea like THE CITY is that I hope to get the input of lots of people, whilst making the final output myself. This process probably raises the question, who owns this?
I’m hoping we all do, but in realistic terms, what I aim to do, is make sure that everyone takes credit for whatever they do. Original Ideas, Concepts, Sketches, Models and textures, if people go so far, will be highlighted in the case of each structure and that persons input will be retained by them. If people have input that they later withdraw for any reason. I would honour that. If I have trouble getting people to trust me on this, thats fair enough, It’d feel like a kick in the shins for what I see as a “community” project, but people have the right to protect their own investments. If this is deemed as an issue at any point, I will draft an agreement that basically states that whilst this thing is my Idea, everything that anyone puts in remains theres, and we’ll probably have to work on that as we go along. Soon, Submission guidelines.

An aside.

Spent yesterday busying about, clearing my workspace and getting the Mule up and running. The Mule is a smallform PC which holds my “Artsy” programmes. Photoshop, Painter, 3DSMax and Maya. I’ve decided to ressurrect it as a work platform, as it gives me extra leeway to do other things, and frees my Other PC to do other things. The Mules Job is Modelling and Rendering, in its spare time it offers Ports to people in Storms.

First Steps.

This is the beginning. Where I hope to record the progress of my return to the real world, by means of constructing an imaginary one. Currently, this wordpress blog is acting home to a number of aspects of a project I am embarking upon. This project is probably of little or no consequence to anyone other than myself. I’m hoping it will act as a catalyst, a means by which I can rediscover my affinity for art and creativity and move myself forward, as I should be, rather than being dragged along, somewhat grudgingly by a life I rather lazily wandered into.

So, Part of this blog will be the inevitable senseless commentaries, Snippets of Art and Design, and writings. Its the rest I’m excited about, The rest being THE CITY. What the City is, and where you come into it, is what I hope to write about next.

Currently, I’m around 20 minutes into WordPress, so I dare say that the appearance of this place will alter somewhat frequently, until I get the structure how I want it.