Building Your Own City

For Thanksgiving, I traveled to the twin cities to visit my sister.  During the weekend I spent there, my sister took me to St. Anthony Park where it had a great view of the city.  I took my photographs of the cityscape as we explored the park.  I planned to use these photos as reference material for the city I'm constructing for the graphic novel later.

Developing this city where my story takes place has been a challenge because I haven't been able to put much time into that aspect of the graphic novel yet.  It is also challenging because I'm completely inventing it.  It was recommended to me during my BFA critique that I draw from what I know.  In addition to these photos, I also explored Broadway in Fargo and took pictures of the older structures there.  The city plays a big role in the story.  However, this semester I have been focusing mainly on drawing and developing my characters.  I have learned that a lot of work goes into rendering and creating characters for a story.  It has been taking me longer than expected to reach where I am with them currently.  The characters need to fit the mood of the story and the settings they are in.  The next stage of developing my graphic novel will involve more cityscape studies and more in-depth ideas for how I want it to look.  When I returned from my trip I did some quick pen studies of the city using these photographs.

 

 

 

 

I have a rough idea of how I want this city to look but nothing too specific yet.  In the story, the city is undergoing major changes and most of it is being rebuilt.  There is the new part of the city where most of the beginning characters are from and the old abandoned parts (but you later discover people still live there).  I'm going to be working with the old verses the new in my storyline.