Abandoned London

#1

Here are a series of concepts of London Abandoned and overgrown.
Inspired by the film ‘I am Legend’ and the upcoming game ‘The Last of Us’, i wanted to do a local take on this theme.

Thanks to Chris Carr for the assistance in shooting the backplates.

Currently these are just in the concept stage and I am in the process of creating these highres. Comments always welcome.

All concepts and images are copyright of Lee J Rouse 2013

#2

It looks to me you have some discrepancies in your lighting. For example, you have all that cast shadow of vines on the horse rider monument in the middle image, but many of them don’t actually have vines casting the shadows, so the shadows are just there without a reason.

The bottom image looks a bit too clean. There should be a lot more growth of wild weeds I think, but I guess it depends on how many years have passed.

#3

I’d add to the above: be wary of soft brushes. They are difficult to use well, and mostly they tend to muddy an image and make it look less real. Trafalgar square looks great, but the others all suffer from the soft brush.

Also, why is the river empty? I understand artistic license, but the Thames is not a man-made river, and unless your scenario involves massive continent-shifting earthquakes (which would probably have toppled most of those buildings), nothing would stop that river from flowing.

#4

Hi
Thanks for the comments, I hear you about the shadows in the plynth, they were already there in the original photo, cast from the trees (out if frame), I can see now that this might be misleading and look inaccurate. I should and will remove them, thanks for noticing.
Or I could bring some tree detail into the far right to give the shadows context.

Do remember these are rough renditions for planning a larger more detailed photorealistic piece, they only took me an hour each to do, so any ‘soft brush’ work is a byproduct of this quick style.

The empty river in retrospect is a wrong move, I agree with you in part (I am going to fill it back up, but possibly make it swamp like, to put a concept on that, the Thames barrier could be blocking the flow leaving the tidal aspect if the river redundant.

I think I got carried away with always wanting I ‘empty’ the Thames but I doesn’t fit with this series.

Thanks for the advise guys

Lee

#5

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