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Future Manhattan


Drakky
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Hello, this is my first post in this forum (sorry for my english).

I´m modelling a futuristic Manhattan landscape for an amateur short film.

I started searching info at google Earth. With the aerial views and a site plan of the island, I´m modelling a preview of my landscape.

C&C are welcome.

Please, some help needed!

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I don't know how realistic you are trying to be, but let me share a few thoughts.

 

First of all--consider sea levels. Does the future include a sealevel rise of a few feet? That could change the 'footprint' of Manhattan. The tides are quite evident in NYC, it is right on the ocean.

 

Also, the real island was smaller than it is today since many marshy areas and small inlets have been filled in and built on. Perhaps those natural shapes would be restored?

 

The island of manhattan is really the top of an underground granite mountain. It comes very close to the surface at the southern tip, then sinks down but comes back up again in midtown. Just look at the skyline to see where the mountain is. The tallest buildings are built where the granite footings are best.

 

Good luck with your project!

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First of all--consider sea levels. Does the future include a sealevel rise of a few feet? That could change the 'footprint' of Manhattan. The tides are quite evident in NYC, it is right on the ocean.

This is the storiline of the shortfilm:

 

In a future Earth, the global temperature will decrease and a new Glaciation Era will come. (looks like THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW movie, I know)

 

Oceans and rivers will desecate (I don’t know why, but is important for my story).

 

From the WIKIPEDIA:

 

“What glaciation means... Sea levels drop due to the presence of large volumes of water above sea level in the icecaps.”

 

Entire Earth will be a cold place. Surface cities will be abandoned, and people’ll live at underground tonws, looking for the heat of the Earth core.

 

So, we have to visualize a desert and cold NYC, with no water. We can see the botton of the surrouding sea and rivers. Manhattan will become a hill or a mountain in a snowy landscape, with futuristic hirise buildings apearing over the snow level.

 

And that’s all for now. Sorry for my english.

 

Drakky.

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Thank you again, Ernest!

 

I know the movie you say, but I haven't seen it yet, of course... Looking for stills of Fifth Element in the Internet... amazing work... That's what I was looking for.

Inspiring design!

 

Is Eric Hanson your friend?

 

This weekend I'll try to watch this movie.

For now, I want show you this videos. Previews of that project. I've posted at the top of this thread three images of the concept in a long shot. Previews shown below are medium shots of Future Manhattan project.

 

Video 01:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqU5yvUR0L4

 

Video 02:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISTLuSgnxo

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  • 2 weeks later...

About the references...:)

 

I'm looking for movies that includes a future NYC images. For now, we have... "The day after Tomorrow" and "The Fifth Element"... well...

 

In the "Minority Report", the city was Washington.

Could you help me with the future NYC references, please?

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erm how about looking at comic and anime too?

 

there was a comic called channel zero (1997ish) by Brian Wood that was set in a future NYC. Also its not NY but the anime Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka has some amazing visions of a future mega-city. Of course thinking mega-city theres the comic series 2000AD.

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  • 1 month later...

Perhaps the best movie that shows New York in a Glacial State is Steven Spielberg's 'AI'. The final scenes begin with a gorgeous CG flyover of the frozen city that is being archeologically excavated. Definitely an inspiration.

 

Not to spoil the mood, but the result of a glacier moving through Manhattan would be the buildings turning into sand. Glaciers demolish mountains; they would make short work of steel and concrete.

 

One suggestion that I have when modeling New York in the future (or any city in the future for that matter) is to try to avoid the usual trick of making every single building a futuristic one. Think about how New York is today - modern highrises next to late 19th century ones, next to early to mid 19th century brownstones. In the future, even a distant one, I would expect a certain amount of the present urban fabric to survive, barring a catastophe. I think that it would add a wonderful level of detail to your imagery to show the Woolworth Building still standing.

 

-Ian

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What about Brooklyn? and Jersey City? If the skyline of Manhattan is relatively intact, there'd certainly be skyscrapers left in those cities as well. And shouldn't we see Staten Island in the lower left of the last concept frame you posted? No towers there, but land mass...

 

Looking pretty sweet. Just the NYC metro area is a bitch of a project. ;-) And given that it's arguably the most featured city in film and television, a lot of folks know the layout.

 

Shaun

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That shot of the buildings being knocked over is pretty darn cool. See if you can get them to bend, break and crack - right now it looks like they're objects on the ground being knocked over, but those things are attached to huge underground piles and caissons and the structure is all vertical compression, so if a glacier were uprooting them all kinds of stuff would be happening to the structure, windows would fall out, etc.

 

I agree with Ian about the buildings - they build very few new buildings each year, and very, very few of the new-looking new buildings. But you've got mostly historic buildings already, so you're okay. You can do the outlying area with greebles as filler, since people from Manhattan think of the outer boroughs and Jersey as filler anyway and this is about Manhattan.

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