Saturday, September 18, 2010

Co-op City of the Dead



This is an entry for a concept art contest, which is held each week on the DeviantArt interest group of "ConceptWorld." Each week has a theme which entries must follow. This week's theme is "City of the Dead." I created and deleted a couple of earlier concepts, which were more conventionally "horror" or "creepy." Then I thought of the scariest city I know, "Co-op City" in the Bronx borough of New York. This teeming Corbusier nightmare of a high rise cluster houses over 50,000 people. I drive by it every time I go north to New England.

Inspired by "Co-op City" I created a modern City of the Dead where thousands of ghosts live in Highrise Hades, devoid of color, taste, and pleasure. They march in files out to do their ghostly work and return to watch their ghostly TVs or dead computers where there is nothing but re-runs of the miseries of their past.

"City of the Dead" is done in Photoshop CS4, 15" x 9" or 4500 x 2700 pixels. About 5 hours worth of work, September 17-18, 2010. Click picture for somewhat larger image.

3 comments:

Mike (Altus) said...

Excellent work. I like how the ghosts look, and love the texture of the clouds.

Tristan Alexander said...

Clearly a country loving artists veiw of cities! I agree totally that most or many cities are bland and souless!

emikk said...

It's kinda a buzz kill for me!...not really!..keep up the good work!