Last summer (summer of 2001) I thought of this idea to make the view out of our
kitchen window more interesting. Previously the view only consisted of the
backs of some tall bushes but did allow lots of sunlight to enter in the
mornings. The bushes were approximately 10 feet away which provided ample room
to be creative. Very near that time we saw a video for the song "This Isn't
Maybe" by Waldeck on Mtv2 which had a model of a city outside a balcony. The
buildings were swaying to the music... this provided an example of what such a
thing might look like.Then America had a really bad Tuesday morning in September and all of my fond memories of New York City were resurrected. The cityscape project became much more interesting and conveniently the graphics startup I was working for was soon going to lay me off which meant lots of free time.
I started looking into photos of NYC in detail.. noticing the
perspective effects on windows and rooftops of skyscrapers. Part of me
wanted to do a realistic model, but at the same time a surrealistic
(idealistic?) (stylized?) approach was attractive. Then I found "the
one" (see photo right).. a photo online of the view that I had in mind.
I wanted a view of midtown Manhattan at the 40-60th floor level. Distant
bridges and the street level would be even more difficult to simulate,
so this photo conveniently and naturally occluded these troublesome
features of the real NYC.
From here on, I had a much more concrete idea of what I wanted to create.