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The Watcher
Often referred as the outer end of the known world, the land of the Watcher is a zone comprised of hills and marshes bordering the Atlantic ocean in Europe. Located around the ruins of Düsseldorf (Germany). It bears its name in reference to the gigantic structure which can be seen as far as 80 km on clear day. The Watcher consists of an amalgamation of smaller building supporting four separate skyscrapers (three on the side and a central one) interconnected at their summit (~240m); the whole culminate in an eerie cylinder reaching around 500m.
Although the lower structure seems to house storeys of some kind, the whole building is completely devoid of interior installations, as if to spite common sense. In fact the interior consist of the main cylinder emerging from the ground and towering to the ceiling, surrounded by a forest of columns which purpose is as abstruse as the central pillar. Some have likened the arrangement to a miniature skyline of some sort of futuristic city.
Forbidden lands
The land was previously Düsseldorf suburbs, but thanks to the glaciation and several tides wiping the houses to smithereens, only a few number of walls remains, now sunken in a sea of grass. The sea level rise led to the ruins becoming a coastline. Strangely the railway pylons still stands. They are to this day the tallest man-made installations, at the exception of the Watcher, of the region as no tree seems to be able to grow. The Fauna is also scarce, with only a few species of fishes and bugs inhabiting the ponds and marshes. Birds never stop insight of the Watcher; some say they actively avoid it, but too little data is available to conclude anything.
The tower was discovered following the melting of the ice over Europe, the glaciation having prevented any settler from inhabiting the continent for the last millennium. The underlying cause of the glaciation is subject to controversy, although the heavy industrialisation and way of life of the previous era seems to be largely at fault. The first discoverers were struck in awe before the tower and spent a decade trying to live of the soil. Many if not most died of unknown diseases. The survivors fled and the land has since been completely uninhabited. Only a few scholars make pilgrimage to the Watcher, in search of knowledge from some outer world; they often came back with pictures of the place, making it common knowledge for the various communities of Europe.
Lost in the ages
More substantial analysis of the structure revealed it was principally made of polymer of carbon in an arrangement similar to old-days plastic. The columns inside the building seem to contain some sort of printed circuit, and while their purpose is still unknown, many believe it to be archives from the lost millennium.
The history of the Watcher is to this day a complete mystery, no record whatsoever is to be found in any archive of the region. Stranger is the fact that no scratch or environmental damage is to be found on it, while analysis of the synthetic material indicate that it dates several hundreds of years.
As such, many regards the Watcher as a deity of some sort - a tower out of time, keeping watch over ex-northern Germany.
Regarding the inspirations
The main concept behind the Watcher was drawn from the animated film : The Place Promised in Our Early Days, by Makoto Shinkai (Yes the one behind Your Name). I watched it as I was rather young and didn't understand one bit of it, but the image of a gigantic pillar stretching toward the sky, as if it couldn't be watched as a whole with human eyes, stuck with me. This kind of structure no one knows the purpose of, is very refreshing to one's imagination. My main struggle was the obvious 256 block limit of Minecraft and I tried to use the most out of it by playing with perspective and making the "typical skyscraper" part (lower structure) miniature-like. But truly, I would've like to have the central cylinder 10 times taller... Nonetheless I'm still pleased with the result, although the cylinder not being tall enough (~125 blocks, which is tall but not so seen from the ground) kinda drowns it into the overly complex lower structure. For the style, its a very futuristic design with some detailling that makes it looks like its a juxtaposition of smaller parts on a shaft (It may also look like it's been eroded by time, but that saddly wasn't the goal)
The lower structure was thought as a separate entity, as if someone had built a shrine for the main pillar. The style is also futuristic but in another tonality. While the pillar is eerie and very synthetic, the lower build is a Metropolis Art-Déco / early 20th century Skyscraper design, embedded in a very sci-fi black support with balconies giving it texture. The whole lower structure consists of three main parts : the jet-black mantel, growing from it is the metropolis-style building, and on the upper part of the central building is a neo-gothic reminescent style in white and pastel light blue (white concrete, but with the contrast that quartz gives, it makes its faint blue tone a bit more vivid). The joints are made to mimick building embedded in the structure and are mostly drawn from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, by Kenzo Tange
The side skyscrapers and the connection at the summit with a central building is heavily inspired by the Ziggurat design from Metropolis (2001 animated film, from studio Madhouse).
Regarding the building
By keeping the palette in sharper and colder town, the building transition from black & gray, to gray & white, to blue & white evoking the stretch toward the sky.
The complexity of those multiple styles interlacing makes it complicated to grasp the building and makes it look like a random bunch of cubes in Vanilla Minecraft, the shadows the render gives truly helps to make out the building consisting of miniature structure stretching toward the sky. As such I think a careful examination of the detailling is necessary to understand the idea mixed and how they connect (I spent a great deal of time trying to make those feel part of a greater whole...).
Regarding the interior, my concept of a skyscraper beyond human comprehension, made it hard to come up with anything classic, so I settled on a surrealist feeling, by having the central pillar be surrounded by columns towering at various height. It takes a lot of space but subtly hides the inside of the building and make for a strange skyline of miniature skycraper (I recon a city built with tons of those, sized up, could be something truly magnificent, but this would need more than 256 block of height and a lot more work). The wooden ground is made of staircase to kind of give it a very strange texture, which complements the columns best; the wood being a choice of color, since the interior would lack any warm tone.
The environment, with the hills covered in flowers and grass, gives a peaceful feeling that becomes incomfortable when coupled with the ruins and the tower. The vegetation is devoid of tree to accentuate the domination of the tower on its surrounding. The Railways were added because I thought they looked cool and were a nice addition to the ruins of an era past, its also partly drawn from illustration of The Place Promised in Our Early Days.
All and all that's my submission for this skyscraper contest and my latest building in a long long time, I had fun going back to minecraft! I hope it will live up to the time spent and the aspiration explained in those longs paragraphes.
Thank you for your time,
Arthurion98
Often referred as the outer end of the known world, the land of the Watcher is a zone comprised of hills and marshes bordering the Atlantic ocean in Europe. Located around the ruins of Düsseldorf (Germany). It bears its name in reference to the gigantic structure which can be seen as far as 80 km on clear day. The Watcher consists of an amalgamation of smaller building supporting four separate skyscrapers (three on the side and a central one) interconnected at their summit (~240m); the whole culminate in an eerie cylinder reaching around 500m.
Although the lower structure seems to house storeys of some kind, the whole building is completely devoid of interior installations, as if to spite common sense. In fact the interior consist of the main cylinder emerging from the ground and towering to the ceiling, surrounded by a forest of columns which purpose is as abstruse as the central pillar. Some have likened the arrangement to a miniature skyline of some sort of futuristic city.
Forbidden lands
The land was previously Düsseldorf suburbs, but thanks to the glaciation and several tides wiping the houses to smithereens, only a few number of walls remains, now sunken in a sea of grass. The sea level rise led to the ruins becoming a coastline. Strangely the railway pylons still stands. They are to this day the tallest man-made installations, at the exception of the Watcher, of the region as no tree seems to be able to grow. The Fauna is also scarce, with only a few species of fishes and bugs inhabiting the ponds and marshes. Birds never stop insight of the Watcher; some say they actively avoid it, but too little data is available to conclude anything.
The tower was discovered following the melting of the ice over Europe, the glaciation having prevented any settler from inhabiting the continent for the last millennium. The underlying cause of the glaciation is subject to controversy, although the heavy industrialisation and way of life of the previous era seems to be largely at fault. The first discoverers were struck in awe before the tower and spent a decade trying to live of the soil. Many if not most died of unknown diseases. The survivors fled and the land has since been completely uninhabited. Only a few scholars make pilgrimage to the Watcher, in search of knowledge from some outer world; they often came back with pictures of the place, making it common knowledge for the various communities of Europe.
Lost in the ages
More substantial analysis of the structure revealed it was principally made of polymer of carbon in an arrangement similar to old-days plastic. The columns inside the building seem to contain some sort of printed circuit, and while their purpose is still unknown, many believe it to be archives from the lost millennium.
The history of the Watcher is to this day a complete mystery, no record whatsoever is to be found in any archive of the region. Stranger is the fact that no scratch or environmental damage is to be found on it, while analysis of the synthetic material indicate that it dates several hundreds of years.
As such, many regards the Watcher as a deity of some sort - a tower out of time, keeping watch over ex-northern Germany.
Regarding the inspirations
The main concept behind the Watcher was drawn from the animated film : The Place Promised in Our Early Days, by Makoto Shinkai (Yes the one behind Your Name). I watched it as I was rather young and didn't understand one bit of it, but the image of a gigantic pillar stretching toward the sky, as if it couldn't be watched as a whole with human eyes, stuck with me. This kind of structure no one knows the purpose of, is very refreshing to one's imagination. My main struggle was the obvious 256 block limit of Minecraft and I tried to use the most out of it by playing with perspective and making the "typical skyscraper" part (lower structure) miniature-like. But truly, I would've like to have the central cylinder 10 times taller... Nonetheless I'm still pleased with the result, although the cylinder not being tall enough (~125 blocks, which is tall but not so seen from the ground) kinda drowns it into the overly complex lower structure. For the style, its a very futuristic design with some detailling that makes it looks like its a juxtaposition of smaller parts on a shaft (It may also look like it's been eroded by time, but that saddly wasn't the goal)
The lower structure was thought as a separate entity, as if someone had built a shrine for the main pillar. The style is also futuristic but in another tonality. While the pillar is eerie and very synthetic, the lower build is a Metropolis Art-Déco / early 20th century Skyscraper design, embedded in a very sci-fi black support with balconies giving it texture. The whole lower structure consists of three main parts : the jet-black mantel, growing from it is the metropolis-style building, and on the upper part of the central building is a neo-gothic reminescent style in white and pastel light blue (white concrete, but with the contrast that quartz gives, it makes its faint blue tone a bit more vivid). The joints are made to mimick building embedded in the structure and are mostly drawn from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, by Kenzo Tange
The side skyscrapers and the connection at the summit with a central building is heavily inspired by the Ziggurat design from Metropolis (2001 animated film, from studio Madhouse).
Regarding the building
By keeping the palette in sharper and colder town, the building transition from black & gray, to gray & white, to blue & white evoking the stretch toward the sky.
The complexity of those multiple styles interlacing makes it complicated to grasp the building and makes it look like a random bunch of cubes in Vanilla Minecraft, the shadows the render gives truly helps to make out the building consisting of miniature structure stretching toward the sky. As such I think a careful examination of the detailling is necessary to understand the idea mixed and how they connect (I spent a great deal of time trying to make those feel part of a greater whole...).
Regarding the interior, my concept of a skyscraper beyond human comprehension, made it hard to come up with anything classic, so I settled on a surrealist feeling, by having the central pillar be surrounded by columns towering at various height. It takes a lot of space but subtly hides the inside of the building and make for a strange skyline of miniature skycraper (I recon a city built with tons of those, sized up, could be something truly magnificent, but this would need more than 256 block of height and a lot more work). The wooden ground is made of staircase to kind of give it a very strange texture, which complements the columns best; the wood being a choice of color, since the interior would lack any warm tone.
The environment, with the hills covered in flowers and grass, gives a peaceful feeling that becomes incomfortable when coupled with the ruins and the tower. The vegetation is devoid of tree to accentuate the domination of the tower on its surrounding. The Railways were added because I thought they looked cool and were a nice addition to the ruins of an era past, its also partly drawn from illustration of The Place Promised in Our Early Days.
All and all that's my submission for this skyscraper contest and my latest building in a long long time, I had fun going back to minecraft! I hope it will live up to the time spent and the aspiration explained in those longs paragraphes.
Thank you for your time,
Arthurion98
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Render : by arthurion98 08/24/2018 5:37:29 amAug 24th, 2018
Finally managed to get landscape format render done
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