What

Cartoon based on the changing building and times of Vicar Lane, Leeds.

IDEA

WASTED TIME

REVIVAL CHANCE

Why

When I was a child, I used to have a big poster illustrated by Dutch Artist Jan Van Haasteren. It was very dense and I found it endlessly entertaining and fascinating. I made some early attempts as emulating the sort of thing he did in a very basic poor way as a slightly older child but of course they were rubbish. When I was about 16, I drew an A4 street scene. It was slightly less rubbish but people liked it. I expanded it and it improved a slightly, but it still lacked proper skill and anything like proper perspective or realistic architectural proportions. 

By the mid-1990s I thought it would be good to not only make a street scene but make it:

• Based on a real street – I chose Vicar Lane in Leeds because the whole street changed at the turn of the century so there would also be some interesting history and variation.
• Based on 3D models to ensure correct perspective etc.
• Have 6 bi-monthly variants based on different decades over the course of a century with a view to it being a calendar for the year 2000.
• Full of period accurate people, vehicles and other stuff.

When

Occasionally throughout the 1990s.

Development & Progress

I part made lots of characters in period costume but one of the main problems with this was that they were largely based on source images of people photographed or illustrated at eye level. As the street view was from an elevated position these were never going to look right. Because they were just two dimensional illustrations there was no flexibility to rotate or reposition poses or adjust light direction and lots of other things. It was a wildly insane project to try and take on without the skills, artistry or tools to even vaguely do it justice.

I even spent some time working on this in California when I was there for three months in 1996.

Research material

Before the Victoria Quarter was built in 1901, Vicar Lane was narrower and there was a warren of streets with abattoirs and live animal markets in the city centre. My 3D modelling was based on street plans and photos of the area.

Reason for Abandonment

It took too long, I didn’t have enough skills or time. Also, the rudimentary 3d files I was creating in a programme called Adobe Dimensions were difficult to wok with. That was a combination of being too complicated, the programme not being ideally suited to the task ad my computer not having enough ability to process it well enough. Even so, the people were a bog, big part of the scenes and they took a long time to build up in part as vector artwork. I’d often be basing characters on things I found else where, but of course the source material was rarely based on a similar viewing angle as my street scene. And that didn’t help things.

Chances of Revival

I really would like to make something that attempted to fulfil the aim of this project, but I can’t imagine it would get very far even if I tried. If I were to do it, I’d model the buildings in Fusion 360, but the people would be a massive difficulty. Mostly due to the intensive complexities of shapes clothes have. I’d love to be able to do it, but it’s way beyond me.

Legacy

I have a bunch of reference material and a lot of digital files, some of which are shown here, but there’s nothing on-going and nothing to really show for all the slow work put into it all.

Regret

Quite a lot. It would have been very rewarding to have pulled this off. Especially if I could have made it into a calendar that I could have sold. I mostly regret the absolutely vast amount of hours that went into many aspects of this over many years, just for it to come to nothing.

The architecture had a reasonable chance of being acceptable and accurate. However, based on how bad all the people on the illustration would have been based on this trajectory, it’s probably just as well that it never got finished.