Trago aqui uma parte de uma entrevista deste Sr. Gary Wu.
Poderia responder as pergunta que aqui foram feitas, mas não consegui mostrar a dedicação que este Sr. tem. Para ficarem a conhecer o trabalho dele, nada melhor do que pelas palavras do mesmo. Aqui fica de onde surgiu a ideia deste projecto e como foi realizado.
(...) "Inspiration of the Floating Island
This layout is an idea from a Japanese cartoon movie “Laputa”. The story describes a future beyond our age, in a time where people rely on technology but the whole civil, technology and natural world are collapsed. A few hundred years passes with nature recovered but people are still struggling living in a new environment on a floating island. There are traces of civil and technological items but no one knows where it came from and how to use it. The floating island is a very high-tech castle centered around a big tree. There is a robot at the castle that acts as a sentry to protect the nature environment contained within the castle. I found this to be a very interesting topic, something similar to the hottest motion picture movie “Avatar”. I do not know whether its director drew inspiration from Mr. Hayao Miyazaki’s movie and cartoon series since this cartoon first launch in 1986, but there is a strong view of environmental concern.
The title of this aquascape is “Beyond the Nature”. It was selected to describe the same theme as “Laputa” with something that we don’t know and we cannot control but with inherently very close to nature’s touch.
While the floating island is not easy present in this layout, I did use a visual illusion to mount a grid on the back glass so as the plant grows out, the whole grid is masked by the plant. It is like the castle is masked by the tree in the movie.
Bringing an Idea to Life
I usually start my layout without a concrete arrangement, beginning with theme or visual idea, like my “Waterfall”, and “Glacier Valley” aquascapes. I started with my selected them and began a search for a reference photo. Usually I will draw stretches after referencing to a number of photos, but it is not the planting plan; it is simply a draft of the potential landscape. Once the layout is confirmed, I will map specific plants, rocks, wood to present each element contained in my final stretch.
In this layout, the foreground presenting the top of a slope, and the background is the floating island in the sky. I made the foreground slightly curve from front to the back to replicate a fish eye effect through a lens. The middle of the backside foreground is covered with sand to present a far end, so all the proportions should be small. If I were to do it again, I would like to improve the mid-ground Blyxa japonica planting on the right. At first, I want to use some plant to balance the floating island, but that destroy the perspective and proportion of the layout.
The floating island is based on the grid described earlier. The base is cover with a thin layer of substrate and small rocks with moss insert between them. Staurogyne sp. are planted on the thin layer of substrate. As this plant grew out, I have to adjust the grow rates of the specific plant sections since some grew faster and slower than other areas, especially on the bottom of the island. Fortunately, I had a backlighting setup on my tank, so I use the additional backlighting to them grow. As the aquatic plants, the began to form a dense layout molded from my initial design." (...)
Fonte http://www.aquascapingworld.com