Evolving the composition (N part 26)...

The small 500mm long cameo layout I call Paxton Road 2 has been a real revelation in the past few months. The amount of personal growth and enjoyment I have had from such a small project has surprised me and it continues to provide opportunities for continued modelling interest...

Over the past few days I've been wrestling with the composition. In my usual design process I've determined this in advance, and generally have worked through options, their pros and cons in 2D through sketches and illustration. In this case, the project has been about a rough plan to try out new techniques and ideas, and as such, with no fixed illustration to fall back on I've had the opportunity to play with ideas as it evolved. If I'm honest, although the results shown here are looking good, I could have come up with this in my usual approach with a lot less heart ache!

The silo has been forwards and backwards, but I've settled on the foreground setting - mainly because I've started to 'sketch in' other structures in the area which are giving it more of a grounded part of the story. Starting with stand-ins in paper and from the bits box (above) these have progressed to 'finished' structures (which are not yet finished) below. Another experiment on this adventure has been around scaling textures. With the silo, and oak tree, foreground they've 3D texture and detail. The back-scene however is flat and faded... Chris mentioned something in a message last week which got me thinking...

I’m always a little skeptical about printed structures for reasons like the shadows they have printed on their face aren’t aligned with the ones elsewhere in the scene and for how there’s this strange feeling of: there should be texture because I see it but there isn’t texture. That said I also wonder if it would be worth lowering their register? I like how we would mute photo backdrops both to represent the way distance makes an image appear hazy. Maybe applying a similar reduction would help prioritise three dimensional elements within the scene such that traditional models are fully-rendered in texture and colour and as those qualities are reduced the face of the model is similarly modulated?

My thoughts were, how could I use these printed textures to transition from faded flat back scene to fully rendered 3D foreground? If it was successful would it add 'depth' to the scene? I found some great photos of the office at Barnstaple and mocked these up on paper, forming the initial 'paper' place holder. Spurred on I made up a plastic core to stick these overlays over. Reflecting on Chris's thoughts I wondered if I added a 'textured' roof and 3D details such as drain pipes and such, could I fool the eye into seeing distance rather than softer detail? A roof was formed by using 10 thou stripes of styrene to suggest a slate roof. It looked good, in fact it seemed to really work. Encouraged I downloaded some Scalescenes corrugated sheeting and built the store, this time the 4mm corrugated material stands in as an asbestos roof. Finally, to frame the right of the shot a modern pre-fab building sneaks into the corner of the shot, this is proper 3D, with a textured 'concrete' wall formed in the same way as I do the roads, paint with talc applied.

The results, above, show the evolution of the composition and it's through taking photos like this that I'm effectively sketching in 3D. Yes i've had to build the structures, but if you're not someone who is comfortable with drawing, then perhaps a similar approach, taking photos of mock ups, will help you in your own design process? 

To read the full N scale, or Paxton Road journey, click on the 'labels' at the bottom of this post that group content together neatly on the blog.

Until next time, more soon...

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