[Wichat]

from which village or buildings you'd draw inspiration to create a medieval village in a fantasy world?

I've been looking at pictures of Gaudi's work and I could not avoid associating Gaudi's inspiration by nature and different shapes with the elven lifestyle.

Could be an Elven village look like something like this?











What about the real places you've seen which make you feel as you were displaced in time?

[Kudos]

Gaudi's stuff is beautiful... and so naturalistic its... well... unreal



Maybe I'm being unimaginative, but for me the Gothic & Tudor are the way to go, which I'm pretty sure Vizima was in TW.

[Thothistox]

First of all, I love Gaudi's architecture and I was very impressed with it when I visited Barcelona. I wish he was even more influential than he is.

...but Gaudi just isn't mediaeval and not the sort of thing I'd use as a model for TW3. I prefer a properly-scaled authentic environment, more like Malbork castle than Art Noveau. It should be complete with squalor and gutters for sewage. There should be plague, filth and poverty, just like in real life.

The scale is also very important to me. I prefer Flotsam to Loc Muinne, which looks exaggerated and cartoonish. IMO, one mistake designers often make is that their buildings are oversized, and appear too Disneyified.

[gab961111]

I like eastern European architecture or central Europe.

[Wichat]

I just was thinking if Gaudí or someone with his ... fanciful conception of buildigs lived in Geralt's time... wouldn't be an elven architec more than human one?


Please, if you want place one pic or two of this place... I'm curious!

[Thothistox]

Actually, I see that you were talking about fantasy in general rather than just TW3. Okay, in that case Gaudi may work just fine.

[Thothistox]

Wichat said:

I just was thinking if Gaudí or someone with his ... fanciful conception of buildigs lived in Geralt's time... wouldn't be an elven architec more than human one?


Please, if you want place one pic or two of this place... I'm curious! ›››

Actually, that would indeed be a lot better than what they had in Loc Muinne (which was built by elves).

[Wichat]

Thothistox said:

Actually, I see that you were talking about fantasy in general rather than just TW3. Okay, in that case Gaudi may work just fine. ›››

Yes, I mean, any of cultures of races which could be appear in a fantasy world like Geralt's one, keeping some realistic base, not a disneyland.

[Thothistox]

http://en.wikipedia....tle,_part_4.jpg

[Thothistox]

http://pl.wikipedia....u_Podolskim.JPG

[Kudos]

Wichat said:

What about the real places you've seen which make you feel as you were displaced in time? ›››

haha too many questions Wichat ! But all good... I just noticed this one

Newgrange is the most amazing building I've ever been in, I imagine only the Pyramids of Egypt or South America would be more, though this one is older.






Difficult to make out from the images, but there is a ramp cut around it too, creating a spiral, entirely consistent with the art on the stone.

The aesthetic sensibilities of our ancestors astounds me, but then 7o,ooo year old cave art blows my mind also.

[vivaxardas]

I don't really know too much about architectural styles. For human medieval architecture I would imagine something like castles of Wales, built for defense. threatening, with thick walls and nasty dungeons. When I think about elven architecture I always imagine high slender columns and high arches, not something built as a fortress ready to withstand a siege. I did not really like Vergen style, this kind of dwarven architecture without a clear plan feels depressing. But I liked Loch Muinne. I like ancient ruins of any kind, sets a certain mood.

For a post above - all neolithic structures, from cairns and stone circles to ancient barrows, are terrific. I have in my office pictures of a dozen of cairns and stone monuments from Ireland and Wales. This was a part of Skyrim I loved most, even if after 500+ hours it already turned into a virtual tourism simulator for me.

[Thothistox]

Perfect for dwarves:

[Wichat]

vivaxardas said:

I don't really know too much about architectural styles. For human medieval architecture I would imagine something like castles of Wales, built for defense. threatening, with thick walls and nasty dungeons. When I think about elven architecture I always imagine high slender columns and high arches, not something built as a fortress ready to withstand a siege. I did not really like Vergen style, this kind of dwarven architecture without a clear plan feels depressing. But I liked Loch Muinne. I like ancient ruins of any kind, sets a certain mood. ›››

Middle-age in Europe was the age of Cathedrals, specialy in XIII-XV centuries, so, if Elves were an Elder race I find a lack of generosity from authors of fantasy worlds about their architecture. There's a scene in the books of Spakwoski were Geralt take Ciri to a secret place... the ruins of the bigest and greast Elven city... and I imagine that were be simply amazing to see, not precisely as Loc Muinne... IMO, of course.

[Kudos]

Thothistox said:

Perfect for dwarves: ›››

or Troglodytes

That is an amazing place.

[Guy N'wah]

Another style of cliff dwelling. We don't know exactly why the Anasazi chose to live 70 feet up a sheer rock face from their source of water and their fields. Maybe because it is comfortable year-round in a land of extreme heat and cold.

"Montezuma's Castle" (Camp Verde, Arizona)

[Bloth]

Always liked Peveril castle up near Castleton, good walking country, and it's breathtaking to watch the hang-gliders taking off from nearby Mam Tor.

http://en.wikipedia..../Peveril_Castle

Speaking of Gaudi though, wasn't he the inspiration for Sigil's rather unusual design in Planescape?

[Csàszàr]

Thothistox said:

Actually, that would indeed be a lot better than what they had in Loc Muinne (which was built by elves). ›››

Loc Muinne was built by the Vran, Elves took it over.

@Guy, because who would dare attack that place.

[monotoy]

does it have to be architecture?

I was in Yakushima last summer, the "source of inspiration" for Princess Mononoke ... I felt taken back not centuries but millenia really. *so old* that forest.

[monotoy]

Guy N said:

Maybe because it is comfortable year-round in a land of extreme heat and cold. ›››

or maybe because it was very defensible, at least looks that way. I wouldn't have wanted to launch an attack against that thing ...