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The Train




This drawing on the top left was the basis for the Cargo train shot. I felt I needed more distorted sets, so I draw at one summer coffee break four different impressions, of street sets, with agent's shadows at night. Four of them on one sheet of office paper. The thing with this kind of distorted models is that they are much more complicated to execute. But, this was among the last shots I did, and I was little bit more relaxed (it wouldn't be such a big tragedy if I don't pull it off) so I followed my first instinct to do it (as I did with all four sets) as close as possible to the drawing. It was possible only because I already had the most demanding thing: the curvy base, fundation for tracks: it's the same one, or - to be precise - half base of the Orphanage set, originally. I've already used it for two previous street sets / shots. So, when I adjusted it in camera to match the drawing, building the rest wasn't that hard. Tracking imaginary lines in the mid-air is never simple (checking monitor wasn't that easy as it could be), also this method is complete opposite of drawing by the model. Nevertheless, I have experience in this things, so it worked well enough. It may seem I'm a unneccessary sticker for details, but in this things you can follow the design and save time later, or, you can produce simple sets and models and only then start to search for shots, camera angles and so on. That way, you can find more camera angles than you actually need, which can put you in undecisive spot, or you can find that the best angle is the one where some of the models show their unfinished side, or nothing looks good, so you have to work further to make it work... As I said, I wanted this drawing, so in a way, the simplest thing was to stick to it. And the cheapest. How so? Well, I had to make only two (and half)sides of every train car, so everything is just a facade, really. It could slide on tracks, but it's a facade at the bottom line. Also the only thing somewhat complicated was to find measures of objects, as I already mentioned - in the mid air, but there are ways to do that. Details? Contrary to the beleif, details for me are easiest to make. They are just like icing on a cake. Also, when it came time for details, that means that everything else is set, so detasils are final touch, something fun to do, a reward at he end. Well, in this case, anyway.








Another benefit of sticking to the drawing was the ability to pre-conceive the agent's shadow even before I started making actual train cars, or facades of it. But, there are always problems with lighting on such small sets. I have, maybe, pre-concieved the shadow, but I didn't check all the aspects about how is this going to affect the overall scene. In such night scenes low sources of light produce high shadows, which affect the background. I had to re-think everything, to move everything. I had to move the set further away from the background sky, and to move the camera with it, loosing already perfect position (aligned to the set from the beggining - because the set was built to fit the camera view). And the most important of all, I had to move cutouts for agent's shadows on higher positions, light for them on even higher elevation, to lower the aiming of that light...