I started this project a while ago. It started as a commercial project for an animated TV show and my duty was to create a concept for a small village, focusing on its central square. One of the main spots was a café where the lead characters would gather before they headed off into new adventures in each episode.
Unfortunately the project was cancelled, but I tried to make it live for a while myself. The story was changed accordingly; I went for a slightly darker atmosphere, less cartoony and set in the middle of the night. Here’s the story brief:
“On May 6th, a group of young shepherds came across the remains of a once beautiful, old, Mediterranean village. Fire and smoke were rising up into the sky and they could almost hear the screams of the people trapped beneath huge pile of rocks, but they could not find anyone, dead or alive. The sky was dark above the valley for the whole week and on the seventh day rain swept away the last clues of smoke and fire, leaving what happened on that tragic night in Saint George a mystery.”
I imagined the whole central square, with small houses, workshops, pubs, water drains etc. As an inspiration I looked to many small European cities, specifically French and Italian villages with beautiful narrow streets and architecture. After I’d gathered lots of reference photos, I did some sketches and plans that included, among many other things, the positions and sizes of the buildings, street angles … etc.
The initial sketch of the main square with the café can be seen in Fig.01. |
