The Gap

Member : Ivanhoe

Image description

Railway stations stand deserted,
Rights-of-way lie clear and cold.
What we left them, trains inherit,
Trains go on, and we grow old.

Let them cry like cheated lovers,
Let their cries find only wind.
Trains are meant for night and ruin,
We are meant for song and sin.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow


Only steam engines run across endless and dead plains, and the people below have even forgotten why they once left the surface.

Description of how this image was created

A first rough sketch of this scene was made a few hour after the theme was announces, but I did not find the time to actually start working on it until the deadline was as close as 10 days. And as my concept does not make any sense from a geological/architectural/technical point of view the main challenge was to make it look believable.

Almost all textures are procedural (lots of cell, gradient and slope pattern within heavy multi-layered textures) and except the people and the cacti all objects are pure CSG. A main inspiration for the elevator tower was a commercial mesh model I've seen seen somewhere a few months ago and I thought something in this style can be easily made with CSG but I greatly underestimated the needed afford. Well, at least I've trained my rusty CSG and trigonometric skills.
The sky was made with Terragen and the panoramic mapping including the "sun" was done with my include file I did post in the forum a few days ago. Cacti are made with Xfrog.

And as the deadline did come closer I was a bit sloppy with some textures, modeling and object arrangement but the final render was much faster than expected so I would have had more than one full day to fix some obvious flaws but now it's too late so well, it is as it is and here it is....

Credits:
Serge Marck - who inspired and kindly helped me with my first self made historical poser costume. A variation of it is used here as slightly steampunk'd Victorian style polonaise dress.
Nathan O'Brien - his Corinthian column was the starting point for the columns (where a lot of nuts and bolts are added to give them the look of being constructed of metal pieces - even if this is almost not visible from this view).

General statistics
No of ratings	:	10
Min. overall rating	:	30 (5 / 10 / 15)
Max. overall rating	:	54 (17 / 19 / 18)
Sum of rating	:	442 / 600
Date uploaded	:	2009-10-16 16:10:28

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	5 : 20 : 139 : 200
Concept	:	10 : 20 : 147 : 200
Technical	:	13 : 20 : 156 : 200
Overall	:	30 : 60 : 442 : 600

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   24-10-2009 I like the "other worldly" feel to this. SMcA 2.   23-10-2009 Lots of details, but honnestly i have problems regarding with the theme 3.   20-10-2009 [ThomdeG] Excellent. I did not expect otherwise from you. Your modelling and use of textures is really top notch. I am not entirely sure about the focal blur of the foreground though, which disturbs me a bit. The relation of the (underground) station and the landscape is also a bit uneasy. Some more visual props could help to show the level difference better. 4.   18-10-2009 The shot really suffers from the woman in the foreground being too blurred; with nothing else of important being that close and therefore that blurred, it's really irritating. The cargo items on the far side appear like model railway decoration, and the people as well to quite some degree. The architectural elements are intriguing, but they lack coherence. - C.Lipka