ART OF: PHYLLIS

Sky
24.10.15

THE BRIEF
For our first project we were asked to produce concept art of one
of Italo Calvinos fantastical cities in Invisible Cities. Italo Calvino
was an Italian writer of short stories and various novels. Invisible
Cities published in 1972, was one of his most notable books.

In his book, Calvino describes a number of imaginary cities, each

very distinctive to the other. Our task was to read short passages
describing each city and produce a minimum of 100 thumbnails,
exploring all of the cities. Finally, we chose a city that interested us
the most and proceeded to create three pieces of digital concept
art. We were asked to visualise our chosen city in three dierent
types of shot: exterior establishing shot, exterior low angle shot and
finally an interior establishing shot.

CHOSEN CITY
Upon successfully completing 100 thumbnails exploring all of
Calvinos cities, I decided to choose Phyllis as my final city of
choice. Phyllis is described as an idealistic, classic, Romantic
city - with a lot of charm. I picked this city out of all the
potential cities because I thought I could really work with it
and produce something very atmospheric. To me, the city of
Phyllis sounded like a cross between a Mediterranean and
Middle Eastern city, with its great big, onion domes, canals,
temples and, traditional markets.

My

main
influences for
Phyllis came
from Middle
Eastern and
Mediterranean
countries like
A n c i e n t
Greece, Italy,
Tu r ke y a n d
Persia.

INFLUENCES

THUMBNAILS OF PHYLLIS

DEVELOPING THE EXTERIOR

As I started to ESTABLISHING SHOT
think about
developing my
exterior shot, I
started
experimenting
with dierent
colours and
compositions. I
started research
into
impressionism
and in
particular
Thomas
Morans
paintings.

I selected key colours to use in my own

paintings by colour picking from
Morans impressionist paintings.

FINAL EXTERIOR
ESTABLISHING SHOT

DEVELOPING THE EXTERIOR

LOW ANGLE SHOT

I started looking into images of

traditional bazaars as I wanted
to paint a market scene for my
exterior low angle shot of
Phyllis. This is because Phyllis is
renowned for its delicious,
exotic fruits.

Close up of exterior low angle shot. I tried to make the city

look alive by adding people, animals and an old bike propped
up against a wall.

FINAL EXTERIOR LOW

ANGLE SHOT

DEVELOPING THE INTERIOR

SHOT

FINAL INTERIOR SHOT

Close up images of the interior shot.

Here I have painted the bronze statues
of three queens in the Golden Temple.
The queens each represent dierent
values, for example Love, Compassion
and Wisdom. The people of Phyllis
visit the Golden Temple to pray to the
statues and seek guidance in their lives.