Thursday, May 23, 2013

Project Improvements and Post-Mortem

Click to Enlarge

References:
http://www.nmhc.org/Content/ContentList.cfm?NavID=75
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877881100524X
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/demo_maps_2010.shtml
http://www.city-data.com/nbmaps/neigh-Brooklyn-New-York.html
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/11/country-by-country-per-capita-retail.html
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=447&t=3
http://www.nationalgridus.com/non_html/shared_energyeff_groceries.pdf
http://www.touchstoneenergy.com/efficiency/bea/Documents/Retail.pdf
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm#summary

Ultimately I wasn't very satisfied with how the project turned out. I think I had a clear vision for what I wanted to do, but the execution was lacking. I did not have the technical ability with drawing, photoshop, blender, etc... to create the visualization I wanted.

Looking back, I think I would have reframed my system to better fit my ability to create visual works. I wanted to make a cityscape that simulated a viewer looking down from a skyscraper onto a city, but it turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be to actually make a convincing sketch of this visual effect. After several failed attempts, both using computer graphics and hand sketches, I decided to fall back onto my old drawing.

Ideally I would have been able to integrate much more data into the drawing to make it more engaging, but I was unable to simply because of how difficult it was for me to work with pencil and paper.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Final Visualization


Imagine you're on the top of the empire state building


Imagine all 21,000 workers and their families all lived in the same place next to the building, forming a self-sustaining community. What would you see?



 

The skyscraper is truly a monument to our ability to work together and congregate.


Friday, May 3, 2013

More Sketches

I didn't actually like the look of top-down isometric, here's an alternative view that I liked:


This is kind of loosely inspired by http://xkcd.com/1110/, xkcd's "Click and Drag".

Also, a systems diagram: