Mortal Engines is a book series written by Philip Reeve, and my design project involved taking a location from his book to turn into a feature film set. I chose the city of Airhaven to design as I was drawn to the vivid descriptions of a city that had attached air balloons and took off to the skies in a post-apocalyptic world.
I drew inspiration for my design from the cities of Amsterdam and Venice as I wanted to ground Airhaven in a real place, since inhabitants would've originally been living on the ground and would've adapted their city for life in the skies. Both Amsterdam and Venice suited well to this idea as the canals and rivers from these towns could then open out into the sky, where water once flowed.
Initial sketch model - using cardboard and basic CAD printouts, I would 'sketch' some rough ideas into CAD, print them to scale and assemble a rough version of my set.
Along with designing a main bridge area with docks, which open out into the air below where rivers and canals would’ve once been, I also created a market space where the main characters, Tom and Hester, would have to navigate panicked tourists and crowds as they are chased by Shrike.
1:50 technical drawings and white card model.
Cocnept visuals produced in Adobe Photoshop.
Storyboard sequences of Tom and Hester escaping from Shrike through my set.
