How Much Do You Visualize?
Within the writing blog circles on various occasions I’ve heard mention of people picking actors to use as a model for characters, even using their pictures to inspire them. While I have done a little of this, I thought I might ask if anyone has done this for their settings?
I’m a voracious collector of futuristic architecture photographs. Not just because my story takes place in the future, but because I also just find futurism in all aspects, fascinating. Especially when you consider the types of buildings and communities we might see a hundred or two hundred years from now.
Do you collect location reference images?
The other crazy idea I had, was since I work in the video game industry and I’m already familiar with tools of the trade like Maya and 3D Studio MAX, I could very easily build prototypes of my environments and render images out of them. It would require a bit of time investment, but I think it is worthwhile in the same way that movies find it worthwhile to have someone storyboard the scenes. In other words, I could certainly do some 3D storyboarding if I wanted.
Has anyone else done this? How much of your story do you visualize? And what tools or resources do you use to aid in that visualization?
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September 28th, 2006 at 10:52 am
I spend quite a bit of time visualising setting. I’ve tried playing with bryce and maya, but I’m nowhere near as competent with those packages as I’d like to be.
September 28th, 2006 at 11:49 am
Whenever I find a place that utterly fascinates me, I try to work it into my story (not neccessarily the place the characteristics, mood, feeling of the place.)
Digital Blasphemy is a site where people greate computer generated images. I was a member for a while–I did it just to get some images of cities people had created. They’re a mix of present and future…they’re awesome (in my opinion). If you’d like I can send you the few I have. They’re set as my wall paper on my home computer, my laptop and my work computer :) Hey I’m an architect…things like that interest me.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Jennifer,
I’d love to see some of those pics.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I totally need to visually every aspect of my story, from setting, to characters, to rooms, to scenes. I even try to go as far as to visualize my character from the inside - in terms of thought.
I love collecting pictures for setting, because I find it easier to add inconspicuous references when I have a complete picture. However, it does take time to find the right picture, because it has to match what is in my head.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
3-D storyboarding smacks of genius–if you could figure out how to get that platform going, I think it’d do bang up business because we all have to visualize first before we can render it into words.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
I don’t visualize in the sense that I base characters on mental pictures (of actors, etc). My character visualizations are almost always internal views. I don’t really care much about the physicality of my characters.
What si this person really about. What drives them. I see, then enslave them to the story.
September 29th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
I’m a bit of a cinematographer, in that my stories are built in my mind’s eye, a scene at a time, to form a movie version of my story before I ever commit to writing down a single word.
And yes, I shamelessly use several reference sources for visualizing places and characters, whether photos or stuff chopped out of various magazines.
I’m banned from several hairdressing salons for my addiction.
September 30th, 2006 at 4:24 am
http://www.conceptart.org - Might be a useful reference for us. Found this the other day.
What do you think?
Re: Alexandra and Mr. Shaw. You are now blogrolled.
September 30th, 2006 at 5:48 am
Thanks for rolling us. Alexandra is one of my favorite bloggers.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
I like to find pictures of my characters and the places they might be in … it’s always so exciting to finally find them looking back at me! (I just found one of my main characters for my NaNo novel, so I’m stoked.)
Just found this blog of your and I love it so far.
October 14th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Thanks Patty, glad you like the blog. So you’re a NaNo-er too? Should get you added to the writing buddies!
October 15th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
I’m kalima on the forums.
October 15th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Added you!