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.

Theme Park Project Part 2: The Idea Behind The Theme Park

When we presented our final project we had to give a little speech as if we were talking to a board of people who were looking to fund a theme park project and then answer any questions they might have.

I was pretty much drawing up until the point of turning it in so I had no time to prepare a speech. Which really bothers me because I really hate being unprepared, and I love to give speeches.

My speech went something like this.

The Dark Tower is my proposed theme park. It is based on the seven book series by Stephen King, that follows the last gunslinger as he ventures toward the mysterious dark tower. It blends sci-fi and western genres in a most brilliant way. The other thing that king does in these books is that he uses the lore of the dark tower to tie most of his other books to this world (Salem's lot, insomnia, IT, the stand (the list goes on)), King also ties other authors stories into these books (wizard of oz, harry potter, star wars, tons of other stuff) as well.

The books are unlike anything King has ever written, and I find myself reading them over and over again. I have always been very partial to the adventure story. As a kid I loved to read and watch movies that had these epic adventures, like the princess bride, never ending story, star wars, dark crystal, labyrinth, the hobbit (took me awhile to read lord of the rings).

And like the books this theme park would be unlike any other, and would focus on bringing the gunslingers world to life. Once you walk through the front gate you can visit anywhere in Roland's world, and all the while off in the far distance you can see the dark tower looming in the sky. Impressively tall even at the furthest distance.

This would not be a park centered around rides like Disneyland, or six flags, the idea would be to explore Roland's world, to live in his world. Now of course there will be rides, like you could get on Blaine the Mono and ride through the waste lands, riddling the computer, or escaping the slow mutants under the mountain.

But where this theme park would differ would be that you could go to any place and visit with the characters straight out of the book, because the whole staff would live in the theme park and play as their characters and carry out their daily lives. So you could visit with any character from the book. This includes Roland and his band of travelers.

Throughout the day events would take place that the park goers could go and be a part of, or just spectate. Watch or participate in the battle of Tull, or against the wolves of the Calla. Watch as the city of lud breaks into chaos as the drums from a ZZ Top song emerge from the speakers. If its in the books, its here.

There is a large portion of the books that take place in New York City. This would be planned as a sister park later on. Patricia the Mono would shuttle people from one park to the other.

All guests would take up residence in the park for as long as they wish to vacation for. All the holidays would be done in accordance to Roland's worlds rules, and travel would be by horse, or buggy, or if you wish to walk, there is also that mode of transportation, or just see the sites. Explore places only mentioned by name, or explore vistas and places never mentioned in the books.

This is the ultimate theme park, so radically different that it would not even be classified as a theme park. Instead a whole new category would be created....

I give you the first ever immersion park

The Dark Tower

Theme Park Project Part 1: The Dark Tower Theme Park

The final project is extremely large so I will need to break it up into a few posts.

For the final project we were asked to create a theme park that does not currently exist. It could be anything we could imagine as long as we were constant with the theme and were successful in producing and maintaining that theme.

For this project we were asked to do 4 drawings.
1. A map of our theme park
2. an illustration of a ride in our theme park
3. an orthographic of a component of the ride
4. a street view of the main town or main street of your theme park

Drawings 2-4 had to have height and ratio measurements.

When we first started the class we were told about this project so we could put some thought into our idea early on. We didn't know what kind of drawings we had to do, but just that we had to come up with a theme. When first presented with this task I thought perhaps I could do a theme park called "Rock Legends" or something and it would be... well I dont know... a rock theme park.

However, after drawing my robot and being presented with the theme park idea again I realized that I was going to scrap the "rock legends" theme and instead try to make a Dark Tower theme park.

I wanted to incorporate all the major places and events in my theme park so I immediately started sketching ideas and referencing the books so as to get as many places as I could down. I also had the task of trying to combine all these places into a single map.

Over the next few posts I am going to put up the drawings and sketches and then I will finally have published all of my drawing systems work.

After that I have the paintings I did over the term that I want to post. Even though my painting ability is... well not very good. I think they turned out ok for never having painted before, but there are some real issues with my paintings. You will see...

I also want to post the drawing system blog winners. So every week the professor would take the top three drawings and put them up on the blog. It was my goal to be on the blog as often as possible. It also is cool to see not only my work but my other class mates work as well.

stay tuned!

Audio Interviews and other things

I have a few audio clips that I want to upload. This is something I have wanted to do for a long while now, but haven't had the chance.

These are a few clips from the Howard Stern show:

Kevin Nealon on crank yankers.
In this clip Kevin calls a gym and is asking about a trainer. Whenever the lady on the phone tries to answer one of his questions he immediately starts talking over her. It is pretty funny and worth a listen.




Jim Breuer Interview:
Now for me I didn't know too much about Jim Breuer other then he was on SNL, and the great movie Half Baked. I didn't ever really think about Breuer or if he was funny or not. It was awhile ago that I first heard him on Howard Stern and in that interview I came away thinking he was funny but it wasnt until this interview that I realized how really great Breuer is. His impressions and stories are so awesome and mind blowing. If you do anything, at least listen to his dave chapelle stories toward the end of the interview. truly incredible! I think his Tracy Morgan impression is probably his weakest, but the others are spot on.


When downloading or streaming its the GREEN download button you want. There is an advertisement on the page that says download just above the real download. Bastards!

Download Jim Breuer Interview


Stream Jim Breuer Interview

Isometric and Orthographic

For this project we were asked to render a robot or a space ship in Isometric projection (which basically means all angels are 30 or 45 degrees, at least on the main structure). Then we were asked to create an Orthographic of a piece of that robot or spaceship.

I am sure you have all seen an orthographic detail or plan before. The idea is to show a face of the object (front, back, top, bottom, left, right) and then relate those objects by width, height, or length. In an orthographic there is no depth. And each face is rendered as if you were looking at it at eye level straight on.

This was a really fun project to work on. I have tried to draw robots in the past and they were almost always really lame. Not that this one isnt lame or lacking a nice finish but it is leaps and bounds beyond anything else I had done.

When we were assigned this assignment I was a bit worried because I was no longer dealing with structures in the real world. Which I was getting sick of doing, but I think I had it down pretty well and I knew I could draw a structure, I wasn't so sure about a robot.

After class I sat there and looked up robots, tried to think of what kind of robot to draw, did some sketches that all blew. So I was sitting there thinking, what kind of robot should I draw? 50's robot? 70's robot? A robot from the future? what inspires me? I was starting to panic a bit, when it hit me.
THE DARK TOWER!

Now The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is something that I just can never get enough of. I read through the books every few years (which drives the wife crazy) and not only is the story awesome, but the art that goes along with the hard backs is incredible.

Of course the Dark tower! So I said, I will draw a robot gunslinger. I went and downloaded some pictures of guns, pics of people dressed in the old west attire. You know the long coats, the hats, the chaps... etc etc. Then I started to draw my robot. After a quick sketch I ran into a problem. How would I draw the long coat? Why is a robot wearing a coat and a hat? should he have a hat? do the pistols come out of his legs like robocops did? Or are they built into his hands? Does he have ammo strapped across his chest?

I once again started to panic... I was out of my league. So I started to think more about the dark tower and I realized there was a robot in the books named Andy. Which the drawing in the books of Andy is not at all what I pictured the robot to look like. The head was all wrong. It looked almost apish, and I always pictured Andy to be a cross between the Tin Man from wizard of Oz and C3PO from star wars ( cant remember if stephen king describes him this way or not ).

Picture of Andy



Here is the finale drawing.


So I decided I would draw my version of Andy from the Dark Tower. I think I created a better head, however the body could be better. In the planning stage I had elaborate plans for the body, but as time closed in things began to simplify. Someday I would like to go back and redraw this and really explore more fully the legs.

My Isometric drawing was suppose to have a bit more detail but I was running out of time and had to start simplifying. But the Orthographic I think turned out pretty awesome. I chose to render the head of the robot.



The video contains some of the original sketches

Monumental Scale

In this project we were suppose to take something that is usually fairly small and then enlarge it to giant proportions.

This was probably the one drawing I wasn't very happy with, not in terms of execution, because I think it turned out fine. But I just wasn't really feeling this project for some reason, I think I was kind of burnt out with all these building drawings, and I picked an area that had basically a giant grid on the ground and I think that kind of hurt the drawing all together. Even though I thought a Yahtzee sized Monument would be pretty cool and original (seeing as how everyone was doing Ipods or flash drives in the form of buildings, fountains, or swimming pool).

I also screwed up the cup in terms of perspective It tips up instead of laying flat which is annoying to me, but I have no desire to change it.


The one shot of the work in progress


The finished Work



Closeup of the Yahtzee scorepad, dice, and massive giant fucking grid

Three Point Perspective

Here is the three point perspective I did for my drawing systems class.

I was looking at 30's skyscraper architecture, and was thinking I could draw a city scape with the empire state building as the focus. Eventually it changed from the Empire State Building to The Daily Planet.

Here is the Finale Pic




A pic of the drawing pre building that gets erased. You can see that the Daily Planet is sketched pretty skinny.





and here is the sketch of the building that gets erased.



The video has some of the pictures I used to base my buildings off of, as well as five or six of the work in progress. Which is only cool because you can see how different it was on first sketch. One building gets completely gutted even though I really liked it.

Oh Good For You! (Christian Bale voice)

Well my neighbors hit a new low. Instead of just bringing out their garbage cans four days early and taking up a whole parking space:




they now park there the rest of the week.....

fucking assholes...

I should start parking in their driveway.

Almost finished

This term is nearing completion. I am extremely tired, the tension to finish all projects by Friday is weighing down on me. I can feel the tension receding as class loads drop off, and at the same time the constriction as the hours and minutes continually tick away each moment wasted is one less I get to utilize.

Things are going as planned The beginning of last week was the most stressful, and now things are falling into place. Right now I have one major worry left and that is finishing up my drawing systems class. All term we have had to do one drawing per week, and in the last few weeks one major drawing and one minor. Now for this last week we have three major drawings due, and 3 minor ones due.

The three major drawings are to create a theme park, a picture of a ride and to show an orthographic view of a piece of the ride, and then a drawing of a few buildings.

I have decided to create my theme park based on The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The park is finished except a few pieces here and there. The ride is mostly done, and the orthographic view will be complete today. Now I just need to finish drawing some buildings. I think these drawings are pretty cool and I can hardly wait to have them finished and put them up here. That and all the other crap I have done.

I am finished with my painting of a landscape. i think it looks alright, I am getting better at painting but I still have a long way to go.

I gave my speech today and that went better then expected. People apparently liked it and as a persuasive speech apparently I was very persuasive. Who knows...

Two days left to wrap everything up. I love the pressure and hate the pressure.

Worth It!

So a few months ago when it was still cold and horrible outside, our stupid worthless furnace decided that it would stop working. Which has happened on several occasions, however this time when the people came out they said it was shot.

Luckily at the time we had just been given our tax return, otherwise it would have been hard to find a couple grand to blow on the furnace. After they installed the new one, I could hardly believe we lived with that hunk of shit for so long.

We used to turn it on, and you could hear it like some sick dying beast in the basement, coughing... ruuuhghh..... ruuughhhhgh.... ruughghghg.. click click click..rughhghg
fffrooooommm

and then heat...

Now it's always warm and quiet. I don't worry that it could blow up and kill us all, or burst into flames. In fact I hardly know its there, it makes no sound...

A very good investment, we should have done it years ago....But that's not the best part. The best part is the gift that the heating place sent me. I guess just to say "thanks" for the business.

At first when I glimpsed the giant package my mind ran wild with thoughts of what it was.

Turns out it was just the worlds largest fanny pack....



It is so huge (HHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGEEEEEEEE) they should rename these things to ... I don't know.. .maybe Beyonce pack or something.






Look at those hips I wonder if you could get her whole ass to fit into this fanny pack? If it fits then we should officially rename the fanny pack to Beyonce pack.






Yup, it fits

Two Point Perspective

I have been incredibly busy and have had zero time to do anything other than draw, study, draw, study, cry from lack of sleep, inject coffee into every orifice I can.

I have a lot of work done, some that I am proud of others that blow ass, all if which I won't probably get around to putting up until after this term is over.

This is my two point perspective I did of the dairy that is in Rickreall (is that how you spell that?). I changed how the buildings are laid out to get the two point perspective. As well as taking some liberties with how the buildings are actually constructed.


Here is the photoshopped layout of how I want the buildings to be.


and this is the finished project.




I created a video of the process if anyone cares. It is kind of lame but here it is.

What The Fuck Moment

DONT SCROLL DOWN FAST
instead slowly read each line, that way when you get to the end hopefully you will have the same WTF reaction as I did


I found this on the internet today while looking for buildings for my three point perspective project coming up. I think the search was "buildings from pop culture" or "famous comic book buildings" because I wanted to add (in my imagined city scape) "The Daily Planet" or you know stuff like that just hidden within the vast city scape.

Either way when what I am about to show you popped up my mind was blown!

So, ok here I am searching through pages of famous buildings when on page 30 (or so) amongst all these buildings and stuff is a thumbnail of a sculpture of a lady clutching a bear head, naked, doing what appears to be waiting to be mounted from behind.




at first my mind reels, wtf is this. What does this have to do with my search result?

I have to click on it.

I get taken to a blog (which in its defense) is mostly about buildings and architecture. Then I find the post with this picture, and my mind is blown again because this sculpture is of a celebrity.

ANY GUESSES?
(REMEMBER SCROLL SLOWLY!!!)

Here is the text of the post:
Daniel Edwards is a sculptor. His pieces address celebrity and popular culture in ways that have often stirred controversy.
His works include a sculpture of the disembodied head of Ted Williams, a life-sized statue of Britney Spears _____ ____(removed two words for shock value later) nude on her hands and knees on a bearskin rug, a provocative bust of Senator Hillary Clinton, and a 25 foot bust of Fidel Castro.


DID YOU SEE THAT???? LIFE SIZED BRITNEY NAKED!!!! WOW INCREDIBLE RIGHT?!?! But thats not all folks!!! theres still that blank space I removed for shock value.

Any guesses on what those two words are?





If you guessed giving birth... then you would be correct.




Here is your reward!!!



WTF!!!!!!!!!

One Point Perspective

After the Escher project we started on a one point perspective.

The rules were to take a photo of a clearly defined one point perspective. Then either work from the photo or draw on site to recreate that one point perspective. Include any organic elements, but remove all people.

I was pretty successful with this project. It took me somewhere in the neighbor hood of 10-15 hrs. The only problem with it is that its not really dark enough, and I forgot to take pictures of my progress... oh well


Here is the original image



Here is the finished project (click to enlarge)

Master Copy

So this is a master copy of one of Eschers drawings. It was the first assignment in my drawing systems class. I think I did pretty well considering I had not drawn anything since my last figure drawing class some years ago.

I started with the bell tower, and even grided the master copy so that I could more easily get proportion right.

This was the wrong way to go about it. I ended up scrapping this approach because trying to copy each square and figure out what the one and a quarter inch squares on the page meant to my two and three fourth inches on my page was just too time consuming. Plus everything was just way off, so I figured I would have better success by just doing an overall drawing and going from there.

The problem with that is that I had already done the bell tower and started working on these small details (which I've since learned to not jump into detail so quickly), and did not want to lose what I had already done. So I just took what I did, finished up the gesture realized there was no way I was going to fit everything from the Master onto my drawing. Yet my gesture was pretty close in terms of where actual lines ended up going down.

I think it turned out pretty good. It is obviously off here and there. I think after I finish putting on the shading some of that oddness will be covered up.


Here is a video of the process


and here is the finished piece (the file is pretty big so you can get a fairly good look at the detail if you click it)

I Call This An Update

I have been meaning to update the blog site for the last few days (or is it weeks now?), but have been unable to find a minute to actual sit down and write anything. School has been keeping me extremely busy. My weekends seem to be about a weeks worth of work trapped into two days. Throw the kid in on top of that and you're looking at a time management nightmare.

I Have an update about the stupid trash fiasco, but for dramatic effect I wanted to wait a bit before posting about it since the last few posts have been about those assholes.

I also have some drawings and other art crap that I have been churning out but I was wanting to wait till I could finish the shading on the first drawing piece, and darkening of some lines on the second. Which, would be cool to wait till those are finished, but its been 4 weeks in the making and in all honesty whats complete? I know I would end up spending a ton of time fixing whatever it is I want to fix, and then end up creating or finding six million other things that now bug me and need to be fixed before I could post about it. So I might as well just post what I have otherwise Ill be waiting till the end of the term before I can post anything.

I also just finished my first ever oil painting... my first painting of any kind ever (unless you count paint by numbers, in which case this would be painting 273). It was just returned to me and I could have brought it home, took a picture, and posted that but I decided to leave it at school in case I find some time to tweak the small annoying things... LOL... once again zero time to tweak so why I keep it there is beyond me.

Parking Space Whores

So last Sunday was Isaacs birthday. We had about twenty or so people here, mostly couples, so somewhere in the neighbor hood of ten or so cars. Maybe more...

Which of course sent my neighbors into a frenzy that we were taking up parking along the road and most importantly in front of their stupid piece of shit house.

So that Sunday night they decided to move their trash cans out (remember trash day is Tuesday morning and these people arent known to be proactive about anything in their sad pathetic lives) just to be fucking douche bags. Here is a picture of the cans, notice how they have their cans like eight feet from their driveway and basically take up a whole car worth of parking... what assholes


So these next pictures were from Monday night, the night every normal person puts out their cans. Notice how everyone on the left and right side of the street have their trashcans up on the curb? Yea not my dickhead neighbors... they always have to put them in the street so as to stop me or anyone from parking directly in front of their house.




This is Wednesday night, they moved two of their cans up the driveway but decided to leave the one. Thank god it was the one that was furthest from their driveway so as to continue to waste parking for everyone on the block... what parking space whores. They eventually moved it in Thursday morning.. what kind of crazy asshole do you have to be to be angry about people parking in front of your house? on a public road? on a road that only has parking on one side of the street?... what bitches

Tuesday Is Trash Day

I woke up this morning to find that my bitchy neighbors across the street had decided to put their cans in such a way so as they surrounded my car. I dont know what massive huge pole is stuck up their A holes but man what kind of Dick Head does this?!

Usually they just put one can in front of my car, and not like in the five foot space in front of the car, but like 2 inches in front of my bumper leaving the other 4' 10" empty. One morning I was on my way to work and had to move their can off my front bumper because a car had parked behind me (mind you this was like on a Thursday no reason for the fucking can to be hanging out in the street in front of my car for two days). I didnt see the smoking gargoyle sitting in the dark on the swing (you can kind of see the swing she sits on in the picture) as i moved the can, she jumped up and we got into a verbal argument at lik 5:30am, where she told me to never touch her cans again, and I explained to her that there was plenty of space for her not to put her cans inches away from my bumper and that it was a thursday morning at 5:30 and that this was a public street. I stood my ground, but worried my car tires would be flat the next morning. But it never happened.

Anyway, this is a first with the double cans, inches away from my bumper. I guess to be fair the back garbage can is a foot away from my bumper. So for me to leave without touching, moving, or hitting the cans would only take a fifty point turn (maybe more).



We have had numerous problems with these freak jobs. Once they almost ran over rachel when backing out of their driveway, and even sped up when they saw they were getting close to her.

And there have been several allegations of tire flattenings...
it has never happened to our car but I have heard tales from others.

I only wish I had the balls to put my trash cans in their driveway right behind their car. Or sometimes I want to get into my car and just pedal to the medal right over one of their cans, go around the block, then hit the other can doing sixty.

but i dont want to hurt my car. Plus im trying to sale the damn thing. I wish I could sale my neighbors.

Beach House Bitch!

We went to the coast this weekend and there was a huge storm. The hail was pounding the windows as if a whole legion of punk teenagers were standing outside shooting fully automatic pellet guns at the house non stop. The wind was also quite crazy, I saw a witch go flying off in a twister but no one believed me.

My sister Crystal stopped by to visit us since she wont be able to make it to Isaacs party next week. It is crazy that he is already turning one....

Allisa, Mark, and Jack also came down for a night and the boys got to play. I can remember as a little kid being able to play with my cousins was like the highlight of my year, usually I got to stay the night, but if I didnt then usually we would beg for five more minutes each time my parents said it was time to go. Which usually turned into like another half hour. I cant believe that Isaac will be doing stuff like that.

Anyway, here are some shots of the windy beach. Click on them they are fairly big pics.

Spring Cleaning

In preparation for the summer, and summer beers, I decided to finally take back the bottles from this winter. So I ventured downstairs to the basement to clean out my stash of bottles and cans. Well, when I saw the rows and stacks of empties I decided against taking them back and instead just bought more beer in hopes that I would formulate a good enough plan on what to do with my mountain of bottles.

So I called Jim and asked him if he wanted my bottles. Which he did!

Thank god he brought his truck!