Robin Sloan

The night one is spook­ier. The day one looks like an architect’s offi­cial ren­der­ing as part of the pro­posal. Which do I like bet­ter? The sec­ond one, but I don’t know the light (haha) in which you want to cast on the tower.

That’s GORGEOUS, Robin! I love the very final ver­sion. I like how you made it look a bit creepy with straight lines. I think the curved lines are too cheesy and some­how lose the fla­vor of the tour. But that bot­tom ver­sion is amazing.

How about another ver­sion dur­ing the day­time, but in red (instead of gray)? Red­ness is menacing…

I kinda want a print of this.… :)

I like the day because there is more detail, but the night view cer­tainly looks spook­ier and more foreboding

Oh, and this really makes me think I should have more of a look at Pro­cess­ing — not because I have any artis­tic tal­ents but wow… great results

I like the day one bet­ter. You can see more detail, for one thing. But also the lighter gray palette gives it a kind of quiet, Adrian Tomine effect. Or to be less high­brow, an Iron giant effect.

I agree with ToastyKen. Love the night version…but the day ver­sion needs some­thing else. I’m curi­ous about using red.

I agree with Tim– it depends on what you are going for. I per­son­ally like the 2nd one bet­ter. It feels more alive and mys­te­ri­ous. They are both won­der­ful though! Nice job :)

Bril­liant. I love the tone of the night shot, but it loses the twist­ing detail in the base columns. At any rate, both are great.

I like the night ver­sion bet­ter, too. There’s less detail to see, which makes it scarier. Plus the form itself is what’s spooky and that’s well con­veyed in both.

both good. pre­fer nocturnal.

The night one. Much spookier.

Beau­ti­ful! Both images are great. I agree with Tim that the sec­ond image is spook­ier. It looks more menacing.

I like the twisty-​​ness near the top of the tower. It gives the impres­sion of a DNA helix.

I actu­ally love the third image from the top of this post. The curves of the tower are won­der­ful and the black/​gray image is strik­ing in its sim­plic­ity. But, it looks more appro­pri­ate for an epic fan­tasy novel (as opposed to a contemporary/​urban fan­tasy novel).

Thanks! And good feed­back, all around.

@Josh: You totally artic­u­lated some­thing I was feel­ing w/​ your Tomine com­par­i­son. I like the day ver­sion because it’s… quiet. Which in a way is even spook­ier.

I think the night shot is far more dra­matic, like it’s chan­nel­ing a lit­tle sci-​​fi film noir. I par­tic­u­larly like the uplight­ing of the struc­ture. One detail I par­tic­u­larly like are the criss-​​crossed space­frame anten­nae at the top, they pop really well in the day time pic­ture, per­haps if you could light them up a bit in the night pic­ture that might pro­duce a cool effect.

Also, while i real­ize that this is a book illus­tra­tion and there­fore unlikely to be col­ored in print, what if the light­ing was red as in real-​​life antennae?

Beau­ti­ful! I like ‘em both, but the night one def­i­nitely has the edge in the creepy depart­ment. Those wide twisty legs make me think of enor­mous wave-​​guides, chan­nel­ing gigawatts of power up to those skewed horns. Thanks for shar­ing your process!

Gotta go with night. It’s the lack of detail, forc­ing the viewer to let the gaps fill with hor­rors. Just as if the hole in a jelly donut was the wrong color.

I love the day shot! I’m with some of the other posts to add another sin­gle colour. SO EXICTED to get this book. thank you so much robin!

Robin, a great twist on the Sutro Tower (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). The early scetches at the top kind of remind me a bit of Soma, the Flam­ing Lotus Girl’s sculp­ture for burn­ing Man this year (which I helped build, btw): http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​r​e​n​o​l​a​u​r​e​n​/​3​9​0​4​9​0​3​1​36/

I like both of the final pics and might sug­gest a hybrid where the tower retains some of the detail, as in the first one, and the back­ground is darker, like the second.

In any event, the stars prob­a­bly shouldn’t be in front of the tower (sec­ond pic). That’s my AVQC knee-​​jerk reac­tion that I can­not turn off, apparently.

I can’t get into the “which is bet­ter”. Each one imparts a dif­fer­ent atmos­phere. So which atmos­phere works for your spe­cific use? Maybe you could tell us a lit­tle about the scene? Ah, just phish­ing a bit.

This is awe­some. Night all the way. The hard out­lines on the day­time one feel more car­toony and less fore­bod­ing to me.

Def­i­nitely the night one. Although there are stars show­ing through the upper arm. I might want to make the top just slightly twistier, that one arm just sort of ends.

I pre­fer the dark. more sug­ges­tive and omi­nous. It reeks of hid­den rela­tion­ships… occult, if you would.

One prob­lem is the ren­der­ing options in Sketchup need tweak­ing to get rid of the lines over­shoot­ing… IMHO, anyway.

That would be under the Styles window.

They are espe­cially notice­able in the day­light ren­der, but are still there in the night render.

Maybe you could post a link to the Sketchup file so we can play around with the tower there, too?

@ac, @RB: Are you sure they’re stars? ;-)

@al: You know, I actu­ally like the look of the SketchUp over­shoots — I specif­i­cally turned them on — but yeah, def­i­nitely a ques­tion of per­sonal taste & style.

Great idea about the SketchUp file. Here it is. (I’ll put a link up in the post, as well.)

I like it Robin! (and my music in the back­ground of the video!)

You can load your google sketch into blender, you know, then ren­der it as a true 3D model and all the power that entails. I did it a cou­ple months ago, and had to find this hack that bypassed the google sketch wrap­per for­mat and get at the stan­dard 3D model for­mat (which loads into blender). Here is my 3D stuff I made using google sketch and then blender:

http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​a​p​o​4fh
http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​a​3​n​dom

for­got to say though, I actu­ally like the google sketch edges… and the night image is great.

wait. one flaw in the night image: you can see stars in FRONT of the met­alic bar near the top — either that, or that par­tic­u­lar bar is trans­par­ent, which I don’t think should be.

@Aaron: Ha ha, yes, a lit­tle Minus Kelvin music improves any image, I find :-)

AND, you need to give me a Blender tuto­r­ial some time, because I seri­ously can­not make that pro­gram do any­thing. I can barely get a sphere to appear. It makes me feel com­pletely com­puter illiterate!

I vote for the night one, but I think it is win­ning any­ways. Maybe you could add some city in the back­ground though? It kind of looks like Sutro Tower is in Tahoe or some­thing… unless the tower is a space­ship and that is part of the plot???

I basi­cally sec­ond Toasty Ken. I wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily go for straight up red, but some­thing a lit­tle less gray. Cop­pery, maybe. There’s a hint of brick red in your export movie that’s very intrigu­ing. While the Tomine note gives it a blank and hiply sar­donic air, it also makes the men­ace seem a lit­tle flat and cartoonish—more after­noon car­toon men­ace and less big novel men­ace. Manda is right. The lack of detail in the night ver­sion makes it less …climbable? The trees, weirdly, look more detailed and real in the night ver­sion. I become less aware of the lack of color, and b/​c I’m used to see­ing trees in sil­hou­ette at night, I start fill­ing in their detail, and then the whole woods around the tower are filled with men­ace and adven­ture as well.

The idea of vis­it­ing this place twice, once in the day and once at night–maybe from dif­fer­ent angles–is par­tic­u­larly intriguing–it already makes me feel a sense of move­ment and plot from this inchoate story.

Where did you get those stars? Are they real? I’m a ter­ri­ble astronomer, but care­fully ren­der­ing the stars offers all sorts of possibilities.

Great work with both of the images. It made me think of Brancusi’s Infi­nite Col­umn mixed with the refined metal­lic detail of Tour Eif­fel. I found this really awe­some clip on youtube that you might enjoy, I hope you don’t mind me post­ing it.
http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​P​l​1​L​P​X​M​H​P68

I liked so much your idea of an ever grow­ing organic crys­tal struc­ture. I couldn’t help but won­der how this tower would look like if it was made out of some­thing else than metal.

Oh woops, I see. Not stars. But I still think stars might be useful.

Pre­fer the lighter ‘day­time’ version.

The night one, def­i­nitely, because it doesn’t scream CG!!!! at me. The edge out­line effects on the day­time one pull it too obvi­ously out of the realm of what is real. The night­time one, because it hides the obvi­ously CG nature of the thing, and because its very dark­ness leaves more to the imag­i­na­tion, is def­i­nitely better.

I like the day­time ver­sion because you can see more of the details on the tower. The tower itself is really awe­some and the night ver­sion takes away from that.

I’d like a blend of both — night with more detail­ing on the tower, espe­cially the right side of it.

I dig the night one, for sheer char­ac­ter and atmos­phere — I agree that the day­time image looks more like a ren­der­ing. Not as much tone there.

Good to see my cur­rent work to learn Pro­cess­ing may be use­ful to me as a new media writer. Whew.

Though both are quite won­der­ful, I say go with the night-​​time ver­sion; it is far more eerie and epic than the day-​​time.

Amaz­ing process. I like the whole thing. Of the day or night tow­ers, though, for sheer spook­i­ness night is better.

Night is the one I’d put on my wall. Day is the one I’d want, like an inside-​​cover map, to aid in visu­al­iz­ing a climb/​chase/​fight scene up the tower (“where are they now?” flip back to the pic­ture “oh, okay, at that twist there”).
Oth­ers are right that the two ver­sions are equally well-​​rendered, but that the night ver­sion has an unmis­tak­able mood. (The day ver­sion has a mood too, but per­haps more ana­lyt­i­cal?) I love the stardust/​fog clots/​nanotech shine (that last wild guess going all *Dia­mond Age*, I know) and fog cloudi­ness being part of/​in front of/​around the tower & in the trees; gives a cohe­sive ghost­li­ness (if that’s not a paradox).

Def­i­nitely the night one.

How about a dawn/​dusk one?

I really like the day­time shot. And while I don’t know Tomine, I really agree with Josh about the Iron Giant look.

I know exactly what you mean about hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties 3D mod­el­ing. I went to an ani­ma­tion pro­gram in col­lege, and learned that I could pro­gram my desired ani­ma­tion a lot bet­ter than I could ever do by hand.

The night shot is the best one if you are look­ing for an eerie and mys­te­ri­ous feel.

–Mark

I like the night one too. Very men­ac­ing! Some blue-​​green light­ing and it’d be right at home in Half Life 2.

Night shot is more impos­ing. Blender’s learn­ing curve is an over­hang, Pro­cess­ing needs look­ing at, I like that code.

Night. Eerie.

Hya!
Well, the night one is dra­matic, but then, all night things are. a thing that spooks even in day­time– now, that’s spooky.
In day­time there are no things that go bump! behind you, are there? The drama/​scariness comes from the thing itself. This is the real deal, this is the way it is, you can­not just wait for the sun to come up and make it crum­ble to dust, make all the bad things go away. Face it, this is real­ity, it’s not afraid of the sun, it’s part of the off­fi­cial scenery post­card because it was here before you and it ain’t going nowhere.
Oh, and great work Robin!

Nice job Robin. I pre­fer the night image for two rea­sons: (1) I do like spooky and (2) I don’t think the upper sec­tion (which looks great in the long pro­file pic­ture) trans­lates well in the day shot.

the tower sleeps in day­light hours, bides its time. dreams, gath­ers poten­tial.
maybe we hear its inscrutable motors humming.

goes into full kine­sis at night, when it plays its script.

can’t choose, night and day eqully chill­ing and inter­st­ing on their own. i think you need to fig­ure out how to incor­po­rate BOTH …

and while you’re at it, can you fina­gle non-​​SF based land­marks into your story? would love to see how you’d ren­der obscure but cool creepy spots like Grif­fith Park Obser­va­tory and desert wind farms, or bet­ter still, the Paul Bun­yan mon­u­ment in Brainerd…sort of the Barad-​​dur of Minnesota.