Market Graphics

Blisterman

Been scratching my head here over how to convey this in the drawings. Thought I'd ask here for some opinions.

Preparing some architectural plans for college at about 1:200. My current project is a market. A general kind of sell everything bazaar.

Still working on the design. But will need to put the plans together soon.

So anyway, I don't want to leave the plans empty. After all a market is full of colour and life. The problem I'm thinking is how to convey this in the plans. It would look fairly cluttered to literally put in tiny clothes, furniture etc in the plans.

So I'm trying to think of a good way of conveying this motley collection of stuff in the stalls in plan from above, without getting too literal and intricate. It's more about creating an atmosphere.

I'll be using photoshop to overlay AutoCAD drawings.

Hope this isn't too vague. Haven't got the plans finished in CAD yet to show, but for an example, here's a previous project.

(Warning: 5MB)
http://api.ning.com/files/EJ5eqQwWfdIm4UHuwXMIAEHy0oJpEGtnu-4u3A1*L2rhpGl2l7u1NMbypXwafO8CUZPSRJ1QnEW9onJfhNhaC7TjK4juLASH/HighPlan1to100medres.jpg

Any suggestions at all, however vague would be appreciated.

looksee

Could you create a kind of 'wallpaper' design - same as is used for woodland etc - where you put a scatter of a small item (little sweater shape, for example) maybe in a darker shade on a lighter shade background or vice versa, then fill each area with the appropriate wallpaper. Keep all the colours to the same tone palette so it doesn't look spotty.

Blisterman

Interesting idea, something I'd try in a schematic plan. But what I'm trying to do here is evoke the feeling of what it's like to be inside a room surrounded by hundreds of items of varying colours, ephemeral, constantly changing. It's tough to get right. Don't want to be too literal.

For an example of what I tried before for an earlier sketch plan. I used watercolours to draw random shapes in different colours to give a kind of blurry, out of focus effect. Ended up looking a little messy though.

looksee

I think you may have a bit of a conflict between 'inside a room and surrounded' with 'seen from above'.

However, another thought, find a good clear photograph of a market and clip tiny bits out of it so you might get a barely identifiable section of, say, apples, clothing, crockery, etc. Take it all from the same/similar photo so there is a coherence (of image quality) between the various patches, but no actual identifiable objects.

Danbo!

What kind of size is the Market, as in, how many stalls? Are all stalls equal in size or are they modularised to be multiples of a certain size?

Without making things too busy, I would give each stall/table a quite opaque wooden texture. This should be almost colourless so it isn't taking over the entire drawing, but gives a sense to the reader that it is wood. Maybe search for a bump map of wood (these are black and White and exaggerate the profile of materials.) If you intended a different material, replace wood with whatever material you have in mind.

Then I'd do circles, squares etc on the tables. Within these shapes, I would put a rubbish texture. Sounds weird but a good rubbish texture is a great way to get a bunch of random shapes and sizes and colours into a texture without really specifying what it is. You can blur it/pixelate it if it's obvious it's rubbish.
Here's an example of a texture you could copy a square out of ( http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_files/individual_files/original_82372_ZZhbsHqXHmWJiHmNHYFKRKTEI.jpg ) - searching for rubbish or trash texture on google images should give you similar.

Id also get a few fruit textures ( http://www.elements4health.com/images/stories/food/apples.jpg ) and scatter these about within the shapes.

Do up a few stalls differently (maybe 1/5th of the overall number) and use these as blocks. Scatter them about into position around the Market. Take a step back, if you notice a pattern or if it doesn't look too random, mix it up a bit more or create more unique blocks to add in.

I hope all of this makes sense. Gimme a shout if you need any particular textures, I've got a somewhat decent library I use with 3ds max.