The Desert/City Element Part 1

This next section in the title sequence will use the taxi, seen exiting the temple, as a link. The taxi will then drive through the open desert and end up linking to the city at the end of the road.
I wanted the camera work in this section to mimic that if the wide helicopter shots that have become associated with large, open desert planes. This will mean that I will have to set up enough geometry or a matte painting that appears to go off to a horizon.
The inspiration for the design of the desert road came from the DVD box for 'The Fifth Element'. I liked the way the checked pattern gives a sense of distance and speed and scale.
I've decided to try and avoid having to use matte paintings for these shots, so the sand is a wide repeating pattern and I'm using camera positions to try and disguise the face that there is no sky.

When it came to composing the shots, I decided that Shots 10 and 11 provided too much variation to the already complex journey. This is why I have changed them to be more of an overhead shots.

The city is intended to be the second stage of the title sequence. I originally planned  to have several 'helicopter' style flyover shots of the city. However, the time frame of this project dictated that the amount of buildings and size of the city needed to be as minimal as possible.

I started with the glass/text buildings which were the focal point of the shot. These used a slight glow and a metallic mental ray texture to really direct the viewers attention to them. The design of the other buildings in the city was a mixture of inspiration from buildings seen in the film itself and the intention of making them duller than the 'text buildings'.
One of the main buildings that made up the city was the octagonal buildings with the vertical subway carts.
This building will be key to make the city look active throughout the sequence as, apart from them the only other animation is the taxis moving.

These buildings were inspired from the subway buildings that added to the unique design of the city in the film. I decided to use the vertical motion of the tram to flow from the horizontal tracking of the taxi.

Unfortunately, this the presentation day is tomorrow so I am going to have to compile what shots I have got completed in order to present for crit and analysis from the rest of the group. The city is still only half finished so I will render out a short scene to give an idea of how it is going to look.