Meeting Rocky between shelves
Welcome back - it's time for the third round of my little Book Nook series!
As mentioned before, this series is intended to realize some of the novels that are very dear to me, but for one reason or another are not suitable for the realization in a large setting. Some things just work better in smaller settings. And I was particularly looking forward to this particular Book Nook, as it deals with one of my favorite novels of recent years.
This time, the setting is a classic science fiction novel, more precisely "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. The story about a lost scientist who wakes up one day on a spaceship with no memory and all alone is (at least in my humble opinion) one of the best representatives of the realistic science fiction genre and blew my socks off so much when it was published that it really was time for a little tribute of its own! I deliberately don't want to say too much about the precise plot of the story and instead urge you to read the novel for yourself. It really works best without much prior knowledge. Perhaps just this much: in the course of the story, the lone astronaut realizes that he is not as alone as he thought ;)
In terms of its setting, the novel was of course extremely well suited for a mini-scenario, as it takes place (apart from flashbacks) in just one clearly defined setting - the spaceship "Hail Mary". My own representation is therefore likewise focused on the central gangway of the spaceship with a view into the airlock, with glimpses into other rooms and out of the windows to the right and left. Finally, the heart of the scenery can be seen in the far end of the corridor: Here's our astronaut, in one of the key scenes of the story, trying to figure out who or what he's dealing with on the other side of the wall.
And without further ado, on to the gallery!
Building the Hail Mary
The dive into the science fiction genre was a first for me, and it really pushed me to the limits of my usual comfort zone, especially in terms of stylistic aspects. When it comes to creating sceneries, I usually feel more at home with lively, cluttered and somewhat muddy scenes that can be enlivened with random bits and pieces lying around. When building the Hail Mary, however, none of this was called for. Instead, the aim was to create a futuristic, clinically sterile atmosphere that was nevertheless interesting and rich in detail.
To enrich the scenery, I therefore had to concentrate largely on the design of the floor and walls. Here I used a mixture of detailed but clear geometric shapes, technical components and lighting in the floor and walls and also divided the corridor into different corridor segments, with the centerpiece of the scenery placed at the very back in the last segment: our astronaut.
In order to create a certain depth effect even in a small space, I once again used my favorite technique of "perspective distortion" for the main hallway of the "Hail Mary", without which such a long corridor could hardly be depicted at bookshelf depth. With this construction technique, the scale of the model decreases rapidly with increasing depth. The aisle thus becomes "smaller", the perspective "stretched" - and the eye is ultimately tricked. In this way, an elongated and detailed ( though uneventful) corridor foreground is created, whose central perspective leads to the central scene in the background.
Alongside the futuristic atmosphere of the spaceship itself, it was also important to me to capture a sense of the wideness of space beyond. The entire corridor scenery is therefore surrounded by a kind of outer shell, on the illuminated inside of which the infinite starry sky is depicted. Through the various windows in the walls and ceiling, you can look directly into the depths of space beyond.
Eingefasst ist das Modell wie immer von einem Stapel künstlicher Bücher (natürlich alle mit direktem Bezug auf den Roman). Unter ihnen wird Großteil des Modells und der Schalenkonstruktion verborgen, so dass nur mehr der Blick in den Hauptgang zu sehen ist.
As always, the model is enclosed by a stack of artificial books (all directly related to the novel, of course). Most of the model and the shell construction are hidden beneath them, so that only the view of the main corridor is visible.
So there we have some of the main ideas behind the construction of this cute little Nook. If you would like to delve deeper into the building process and the creation of the model, you can find more detailed building descriptions and pictures on my Blog.
And that brings us to the WIP gallery!
