Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol. The purpose of the novel was to demonstrate the flaws and faults of the Russian mentality and character. Gogol masterfully portrayed those defects through Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov (the main character) and the people whom he encounters in his endeavours. These people are typical of the Russian middle-class of the time. Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death.
This mapping installation takes us through the city of "NN" and all of its key characters.
Here are concepts and render scenes.
Still shots and work in progress
Below is workflow from a calligraphy scene.
The basic forms were taken from Russian historical alphabet Ustav and slightly modified: the task was to create calligraphy pattern. Letter patterns are mostly unreadable, following examples can be read: that was achieved by accenting Cyrillic ascender elements, breaking the baseline and tightening interletter space. Then the following lettering was brought into Photoshop document with a huge amount of layers.
The final animated sequence was done in After Effects by following motion guidelines.
The final animated sequence was done in After Effects by following motion guidelines.
