Showing posts with label Dark Tower. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Tower. Show all posts

3/6/10

The Dark Tower Theme Park (Revisited)

By far the most popular pages on this blog are the Blaine the Mono drawing, and the Dark Tower Theme park. I get 5 - 10 hits a day just for those drawings. Not that people are searching out these drawings in particular but rather they are searching certain key phrases for the dark tower and they eventually stumble onto these in google image search. I am not complaining Ill take traffic however I can get it.

So I did a Google search of the key phrases used to find my drawings to see how far back people had to dig, and I was pleasantly surprised.

When searching:
 - "Blaine the Mono" - The first two pages have my drawings on them
 - "Dark Tower Theme Park" - The first thing that comes up is my drawings (yay!)
 - "Stephen King Blaine the Mono" - Images in the first row
 - " Dark Tower Park" - First row or two
 - "The Dark Tower" - I have yet to find my drawings, I think I got bored after page sixteen thousand. How anyone finds my stuff from this search is beyond me... I mean they must have a ton of time to blow.

So, since I do get so many wandering dark tower fans, and since I changed the drawing to be closer to what I had originally envisioned. I feel an overwhelming urge to make sure people are seeing the better more complete version. There are a few things that still bug me, but I am never going to change them, so I am putting it behind glass and I am calling it done. Perhaps sometime in the future I'll revisit this idea, but it will have to be a completely new drawing. This version is done.

Finished Dark Tower Theme Park Drawing:

 

Old Version:





The Calla was finally added with the rivers off to the left


and the front gate was spiffed up a little bit

1/1/10

Alchemists of Art

These images (unfortunately) don't do any justice to seeing these works up close and in person. Yet driving all the way to Western to see the show is probably out of the question for most of you. The next show will be a bigger deal, this was just practice really. I think the art work is pretty good for two first year students with little to no art training. Plus I think for my first hanging of a show I did pretty good. The frames were hand made by Rachels dad Joe and myself, and Rachel painted all except one, which I ended up painting.

So here are some pics from the show.

Setting Up: In these shots you can see Huachao and Crystal helping hang the sign. This was the last Friday of the term and we started hanging this show at eleven that morning. It is somewhere around four in these pictures. We were all so tired we didn't bother to ever get out of our jammies.



 

The sign is made out of vinyl and stuck to this paper so as you peel the paper away you have to make sure that they are sticking to the wall and not being pulled away with the paper. If they don't stick and you pull one off from the paper it usually becomes a disaster to try to get that one letter back into the correct placement.

As Huachao peels away crystal watches to make sure that doesnt happen.

 


 





SUCCESS!!!!



A Walk Through: Here is what the show looks like if you walk by it. I think the curved wall is pretty cool. The wall to the right of this picture is all glass so you can easily see the show even if you are walking on the outside of the building. Which I also think is cool because it means that there is more of an opportunity to pull people inside to get a closer look.

 


 


 


 


Individual Pieces: And here are some views of the individual pieces. Sorry about the lines and color, sun was setting when I took the pictures and I couldn't really get good shots.

Blue Sky 36 x 36 oil on canvas 
Huachao Zhou
  

Colorful 18 x 24 oil on canvas
Huachao Zhou
 


Parietal Lobe 18 x 24 oil on canvas
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


 Ribbons 20 x 24 graphite on bristol
Brandon Cline-Jones
 

 Nude 1 18 x 24 graphite on bristol
Huachao Zhou
 


 Nude 2 18 x 24 graphite on bristol
Huachao Zhou
 


Nude 3 18 x 24 graphite on bristol
Huachao Zhou
 



The Dark Tower 18 x 24 graphite on bristol
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


 Blaine The Mono 18 x 24 graphite on bristol
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


Flowerfield 6 x 10 acrylic on canvas
Huachao Zhou
 


 View from the Tower 16 x 20 photograph
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


 The Myst Part 1 16 x 20 photograph
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


 The Myst Part 1 16 x 20 photograph
Brandon Cline-Jones
 


 The Artists
 

7/25/09

Theme Park Project Part 5: The Dark Tower Theme Park

CHECK OUT THE *Updated Drawing* OF THE THEME PARK!!!!!


Well here it is the last piece (if there are any critiques feel free to leave one or more if you so desire). There are a few things that were excluded and things placed where they were never intended because of time limits, but I have since gone back in and started to add the elements I wanted to put in but couldn't (ill address those as we see them). I would like to eventually color it, but I feel that is going to be further on down the road.

I did an incredible amount of research as well as used my already fairly good knowledge of the dark tower series to construct the world in such a way that it flowed, and showed all the major places from the book.

I will be adding a movie clip that shows the progress of my drawing, as well as really close up of each of the individual elements that will trace Roland and his parties progress through his world in the books as well as show you the attention payed to detail. So if I have forgotten something or linked things that dont make sense let me know so that I can add it or decide Im to lazy to add it before coloring it.

I hope you think its cool. The only last thing I guess I will say is that. I think the main thing to think about in visualizing the theme park is when you first walk through the front gate off in the far distance you can see the tower jutting up into the sky. So no matter where you are or what you are doing, you can always see it, and how you get there or which course you take is completely up to you.

It is the ultimate in theme parks, and as I mentioned before a better term would be immersion park.

The Dark Tower Theme Park Finished (in a sense)
(slightly smaller than 24x18)


Early Sketch. The Idea didnt change too much from this. The only real big thing is that It became wider so elements moved to fill in the sides.



Ok so I did blow these up to larger chunks but the video will have even closer pictures of the individual elements so I encourage you to check that out when I finally put it up.

One thing I should clarify for everyone is that, one of the elements I wanted to put in, but ended up not having time to do it all, is the idea of the Beams that hold up the dark tower. These beams were not physical beams but more like currents of electricity and each beam had an animal guardian counterpart. Each beam met at the dark tower, so two beams always had two guardians protecting it. Roland and his band of travelers traveled mostly along the beam of the Bear/Turtle (i believe it was turtle I could be wrong, its written on the drawing).

So to incorporate this idea into the theme park each beam would be an entrance into or an exit out of the theme park. What they go to or where they come from was not really thought of. However, I think there is only one Main Entrance and Exit to the Park, and that is through the Bear Door. So the other doors maybe would go to Elements of New York, Main, or whatever places Roland and his band visited outside of his world.

Enough about beams, if you dont know what they are then they are completely unimportant, and if you do know what they are then you already understand what I am talking about.


Top Left Corner: In this part of the Park you can see One of the Beams (eagle). You can see Odd Lane in the trees just to the right of the Eagle Door. Below that would be the Land of ThunderClap in it is Alja Sentiel, and Castle Discordia.





Top Middle: The Dark Tower, surrounded by the field of Roses and the stone heads. Below that you can see the final stop of Blain the Mono Topeka Kansas, and the highway system.



Top Right: The Forge of the Crimson King (town not finished and building not represented exactly the way I wanted it to be). A hole Into Todash Darkness, and the mountain for the doorway cave. You can also see that the Fish doorway is being drawn now that I have time.

This area is where the Calla will eventually be, but since the Calla is rather large it was one of hte parts that I didnt have a real good grasp on how to represent it and therefore ran out of time.

Below is another hill this is the hill that Rhea of the Coos lives on. It was placed here to take up room for the Calla and later will be moved down with the rest of hte Mejis stuff.
To the left of the coos hill you can kind of see Eyebolt Canyon.



Mid Left: Thunderclap, Blaines Mono Rails. Below that the city of Lud and the waste lands, to the right of that the giant forest, and Misty Mountain Range. You can also see the coastline and the doors from the second book.

Harder to see is the Rivers Crossing and the Circle of Stones that Susannah encounters the demon.




Mid Mid: Topeka kansas, the highway system, lud, at the bottom the weigh station.




Mid Right: Eyebolt Canyon, Coos Hill, Mejis, Susann Delgados place, and bottom is Citgo ail pumps, and a bad representation of Jericho Hill




Bottom Left: The beach and the 3 doors, lud, rivers crossing, the nazi plane, the weight station, misty mountains, the swamp and circle of stones that is first encountered, a start to the Rat door, and the corner of Tull.





Mid Bottom; Top left is the weigh station, to the right, Brown and Zoltans place, and tull




Bottom Right: Jericho Hill, Mejis, citgo, and Gilead

7/22/09

Theme Park Project Part 4: Blaine The Mono

Check Out the map of MidWorld in the Theme Park Project Part 5:
Dark Tower Map 

I have also recently updated the midworld project here is the newest version

*Updated Mid World Map*

(I have recently finished this to the point of what for now will be considered completion. It is currently in the art show so when that comes down Ill get better pictures and post the revised edition. I also added some new stuff to the Blaine the Mono drawing.)

This drawing consists of Two drawings, One an Illustration of a ride in the theme park, and an Orthographic of some important piece of equipment used in the ride.

For those of you unfamiliar with the books, Blaine the Mono is one of two trams that run from the city of Lud. Patricia (a pink Monorail) and Blaine. Patricia I believe is somehow sabotaged by Blaine (i cant remember) but Blaine is basically HAL from 2001 a space odyssey.

The machinery in Rolands world seems to be breaking down, and Blaine is no exception. The Gang escapes on Blaine as the horde of the waring "grays" and "pubes". Blaine takes them through the waste lands that lie beyond LUD, but the moment of safety is short lived, because the party finds out that Blaine intends to kill himself and everyone on board.

Their only chance of escape is to stump him with a riddle. The book ends as the party is trying to come up with a riddle to stump Blaine, but he has easily answered all the riddles thus far and the destination on the map is getting closer... it took Stephen King 5 or 6 years to finish and release the fourth book... a very very long cliff hanger indeed. So here is my rendition of what Blaine would look like.



Sketches of Blaine, the front gate, and some other structures that never made it into the finale theme park drawing.


First sketch of the Blaine the Mono ride Illistration.



The first draft of the illistration



The second Draft, you can see I moved some monsters and removed my crappy mock up of blaine the mono


My first attempt at rendering Blaine the Mono



My second Attempt at rendering Blaine the Mono




The finished illustration with the second rendered attempt on Blaine the mono. By drawing the mono on a separate sheet of paper I knew I could use a light table to transfer it (even though I find the transferring of drawings VIA light table to lack something). This would help save on erasing and the possibility of ripping the paper.



The transferred and Finale Image
You can see that the Mono came out a bit squished and flat. I will eventually go back and fix it, but due to time this is where it was left. If you enlarge this image you can see in the background the Mountains and Woods that the party first enters into in book three. These were added after the class but were always intended to be there.





And here is the Finale Orthographic of Blaine the Mono.
Think it looks pretty good. I think the only one I dislike is the Back view.

Theme Park Project Part 3: Main Street of Tull

So just like Disneyland, when you enter The Dark Tower Theme Park, you enter into a town. This town also happens to be the first town Roland (the protagonist (of sorts) of the dark tower series) enters in the books.

This drawing is basically a Plan, or Elevation drawing (just the fronts of the buildings) to show what the buildings look like, the height, etc etc.

Also because this is a systems drawing class there is no shading, color, or any of that jazz so it is hard to show how distressed and old the wood is without muddying up my drawing. So, the idea is basically its an Old West town, think of an aged Deadwood, but just as tough and rowdy as it is shown in the HBO series with the same name.


Ok so here is the left side of the street in Tull. In the background you can see the Misty Mountains off in the distance. The three buildings are a hotel, a grocer or good store of some kind, and a tavern.

(click to enlarge) (P.S. all photos on this blog should be
clicked on to truly get a sense of the piece)


Here are the close ups of the buildings

Hotel:
you will notice that there is a large blank square above the top windows. This would be the hotels name or whatever, but to include lettering would mean that I would need to include lettering everywhere and there was no time to entangle myself in that aspect of this project as well.

I do plan to go back and actually add the signs to the buildings, probably add color, maybe even do a full rendering of the whole town.



Merchant Store:




Tavern (which I can't remember if this place had a name or not):
Of the three buildings this was the only one that was even mentioned in the book, and I don't know even how much it is described, so don't get all pissey if it isn't absolutely correct.