Expert: Nazim Nice - 5/18/2009

Question
For me, the best way in the world to visit a fictional movie location that doesn't exist is to create it as a floorplan by studying and sketches the source. The problem is, I don't understand just how to get the distances, sizes or spaces right that one floor would line up to the floor under/above it or how to better represent on paper more architectually challenging creation. Is there a book or few points you can suggest in creating floor plans of locations I can't physically visit?

Answer
Hi William,

Interesting question. I don't know that you'll find a book specifically on this, but you will find some books on perspective drawing that could be useful.  If you learned how to draw a perspective from a floor plan and elevations of a building, then you could try to do this in reverse.  I would suggest you work off a   'vertical line of measure' adjacent to an element like a door, which is around 6'8" - 7' tall, then start figuring out the approximate sizes of other elements in the photo from elements like a door that have a known approximate size.

The way a vertical line of measure works, is that if you know something is 7' tall (like a door), you can divide that line into 7 equal parts and then using perspective, draw vanishing lines from each of these points and start trying to figure out how large other things are (by drawing vanishing grids over the drawing.    

The instructor I had in college has a good book on drawing that I believe has some techniques that may be useful.  Here is a link:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=97804700471...

So I think the key is learning how a perspective drawing works, so you can sketch over an image and figure out what is going on in plan, and the approximate sizes of things.

Hope this helps.  

Nazim Nice
Principal / Architect
http://www.motion-space.com
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