Town Plan for Second Life

Alright folks, here's a big ambitious one in progress: This is a commercial town center or town plan I'm doing as a commission for two young beautiful ladies on the other side of the planet from me! The name of the town is "The Clove," and there is a spice theme running throughout the town. They commissioned me to design an entire town center with hmmm maybe 30 or more shops, cafes, a few bigger stores, and a grocery store, for Second Life. It's based primarily on the hill towns of Tuscany, with minor influences also from Southern France, Spain, American Spanish Colonial Architecture (especially projecting second floor balconies,) and cute European storefronts in general.

They provided the initial concept sketch (near the bottom) and we both contributed some photo ideas. I took it from there, re-drew the town center, and started to number the groups of buildings and draw them each in detail. Group One is farthest along as you can see. They, in turn, are doing the 3D modeling to eventually turn this into a town for Second Life. As we go along, they throw ideas at me, and I try to interpret them as best as I can. Meanwhile, I am giving them a tutorial in so many ways in architectural design, including learning about porches, walls, columns, beams, roof designs, shutters, and lots more. There are numerous details to model so this is, of course, extremely ambitious! We are looking at one month, maybe two of designing the town, if all goes well, which I typically do some work on every morning right now. Yes, it's a major commission! Thank you ladies for the opportunity to serve you, I hope you are pleased with the end result!

Viewers and watchers, feel free to throw a few more ideas at us. If you are participating in Second Life, then maybe you will be able to visit this some time next year. Major design concepts we are using so far include the idea of informal, organic, sinuous streets and plazas with courtyards, arches, etc to divide them, elevation changes similar to a real hill town, one grand entrance (not designed yet,) names for the plazas based on spices, as well as color choices, and plenty of plants, landscaping, lamp posts, a few monuments, lots of steps, fountains, a couple of small streams through the town, foot bridges, and more. Thanks for viewing! The link for the "owners" of this town: suetabulous.deviantart.com/

Technique: as usual, all these drawings are completely hand-drawn in small scale. I do the perspective scenes free hand and the elevations and plans are hand drawn on slightly transparent vellum over graph paper, usually in scale 1/16"=one foot, details are bigger scales. I scan the plans and "tweak" the color to sepia tone, and then I clean them and label them.

Individual Storefront Groups: