BA3 - Concept Research, A Moving Castle

This probably sounds like a very strange idea, but bare with me. I once read a book by Phillip Reeve titled Mortal Engines. The book is basically about cities that move around the world "eating" other cities in order to get supplies and resources for the people on the city. I really enjoyed the book and seeing the cover again reminded me of Reeve's story line and how inspiring his idea was to me when I read it. So idea number two is for a castle... that is designed to move!





As I have stated before my main inspiration for this is Phillip Reeve's Predator Cities Quartet, beginning with the book Mortal Engines. Below you can see a fan image of London; the city followed in the book.

The entire structure has a very steampunk atmosphere to it, with the huge column of smoke and the tank tracks that carry the structure across the world. In this particular image of the traction city the structure is separated into a number of different layers of civilization, similar to an apartment building or large block of flats. The chimneys appear towards the rear of the city to expel the smoke from the engine room at the bottom of the vessel, and the landing strips for the plans and helicopters that are described in the book are shown on the very top layer. Looking at this image of the structure I'll need to take particular care of how I organise my own structure as there is much less space and more components needed for a castle that moves around the world.

Another strong influence on this particular idea is the castle from Howls Moving Castle, a Disney film released in 2004. Instead of moving on tank tracks like the moving city of Mortal Engines, Howl's castle moves on a set of legs that are much too thin and frail to support the weight of the entire structure and move with it at the speeds it does in the film. Naturally if I was to adapt such an idea into my own castle I would need to increase the overall diameter of the legs to ensure that my model is more believable to a player. Looking at the structure as a whole, it seems to follow the basic structure of a boat; the hull is shaped more aerodynamically at the front and curved along the bottom similar to a boat, there is even a sail and a mast similar to a boat. However, that is as far as the comparison can go as the turrets at the front of the castle replace the deck and the chimney's at the side and rear of the castle replace the captains cabin. Another noticeable feature of the castle is the face in the front of the hull, which helps in giving the castle a sense of identity of its own. It's clear to see that, unlike the traction city in Mortal Engines, Howl's castle has a much stronger identity of its own, and is viewed by an audience much more like a companion, a different character even in the plot of the film. Whereas the traction city of Mortal Engines is more of a location.

Another moving structure that springs to mind is from the film Up released in 2009. This is a much more colourful and child-friendly idea of a moving structure, as it is literally a house with thousands of balloons being used to lift the house into the sky. The house in question is as standard as they come, with a small porch, plumbing, bedrooms and a number of knickknacks that you will find in an elderly mans house. What makes this so different to a normal house is the way that it takes to the skies with hundreds of thousands of multicoloured balloons. I'd love to take strong influence from this as reference, however modelling all of the balloons would be incredibly time consuming