Variation: Historical Layers

Continuing studies in variation, I wanted to learn more about historical variation that makes a scene richer, more believable or interesting.

Vertical History Variation

The first application of historical variation that came to mind was sediment layers. Not only do they provide color variation within the same part of the color wheel with value and saturation, but it adds the dimension of time.

Next, something I wasn’t expecting to learn was how buildings and structures themselves can have vertical history variation.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/washington-monument-marble-stripe

The concept of vertical variation was also used for the minuature of the argonaths in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Coco takes this idea to another level by applying vertical, historical layers to an entire city.

For the tower at the center of the metropolitan Land of the Dead — a loud, sparkling, busy structure made up of nearly 7 million computer lights — the team wanted to reflect a micro-history of Mexico through architecture. The tower’s foundation is the Aztec temples of the city of Tenochtitlan. As you make your way up, you snake through 19th and 20th century architectural designs, up to the modern cranes and glass skyscrapers of the present day.

- Carlos Valladares, SF Chronicle

Pixar’s concept art:

Historic Variation in Cities

Coco got me interested in learning more about historical variation across entire cities. This final section is on how this concept is used in film and video games.

When looking at work from Zootopia‘s art director Matthias Lechner, he mentioned how much realism is added when building age variation is added with other forms of variation.

http://www.matthiaslechner.com/zootopia.html

This is one of the first images (below) , where I felt the city started to look believable. Some of the buildings resemble rock formations, some buildings look historic, nature is integrated in the urban environment, there is a variety of scales for the different animals - it looks like a chaotic city that feels "real".

– Matthias Lechner

Building age diversity within cities could be a mix of both historic preservation and development holdouts.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jun/09/old-v-new-architecture-pictures-incongruous-city-buildings
https://smartgrowth.org/little-misfit-buildings-make-cities-wonderful-hold-back/

The last example is shown in the concept art Paul Chadeisson created for the video game: Remember Me. It was very insightful seeing how futurism is more realistic when using building age contrast/variation.

For a more concrete look at building age distribution, look at http://io.morphocode.com/urban-layers/ and press Get Started to look at an interactive building age view of NY.

Or take an interactive look at Paris too see the organized concentration of buildings over the ages. Press Commencer
https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/BatiParis/#12/48.8589/2.3491

This short study ended up with more tangential reading than I was expecting. I started reading about the history of the Washington Monument and ended up reading about the history of urban planning on Wikipedia. I’m even more excited to continue learning about different types of variation that can richen scenes. Happy studying!