DE/EN
BUILDING METROPOLIS
In most creative processes, the time of implementation is at least as important for the result as the love to project itself. This is why also the project »Metropolis First Son« could not have been implemented on any earlier point, even though I had thought about an adaptation of the story for years and had even tried myselft on different sketches several times. But somehow, my concepts always lacked the last crucial spark, which is why the project always disappeared again in the mental drawer of immature ideas.
Finally, with the construction of «Derry» did I developed several techniques, which enabled me to give my basic idea of a divided society a concrete look:
1.) The perspectively distorted construction, by which the depth effect of an entire city could be created in a small space, as well as...
2.) ... the artificial play of light integrated into the paintwork, through which the city could be divided into its light and shadow parts (Details on both techniques are already described in Derry's WIP documentation, so I will not elaborate on them here).
What weighed much more, however, was that my move to Vienna gave the story a concrete face and thus a stylistic and creative overall plan for the first time. Many of the details used in «Metropolis First Son» are therefore actually taken from the real Viennese cityscape, or are stylistically based on it. Above all, the golden illuminated mood corresponds almost exactly with my memories of my first summer in Vienna.
This basic optic now had to be combined with the flair of Fritz Lang's «Metropolis», which I managed (apart from more concrete picture quotations) mainly by two technical tricks:
The ring-shaped arrangement of the buildings in two rows and their different colors. While the lower buildings of the front row of houses, illuminated by the sidelight, have clear neoclassical features, the buildings of the second row of houses, which tower above them, are characterized by a significantly longer, straighter construction and larger windows. In combination with their clearly colder colors and the illuminated windows, it is above all they who convey the flair of the «retro-futuristic» backdrop known from Lang's cinematic masterpiece.
Of course there would be much more to tell about the various details of the model, about the built-in allusions to other works by Wilde or the way the little swallow imperceptibly found its way into the small settings and sceneries of the model; But this would lead too far, and it would slow down your spirit of discovery. After all, the pictures in my presentation and building documentation should not only show what the viewer already knows, but also have a few surprises in store.
With this in mind we come to the pictures of the development process in the Work-In-Progress-Album: