The Library of Babel

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It's been quite a few years since we started pre-production on Syntactic Labyrinths. The film tells the story of mankind's final effort at preserving our collective knowledge for it to be found by an alien species.

Mankind uploads all of their knowledge into an unmanned spaceship they name the Library.

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The Design

We had the immense pleasure of working with designer Fraser McPhee to define the look of the Library.

Throughout the explorative process, the Library has looked quite different from its final design.

However, it has always been rooted in a brutalist ethos.

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The first series of sketches explored a the strong and heavy looking volumes for the Library. Its purpose in Syntactic Labyrinths is to withstand at least a million years of traveling through space.

The exterior of the ship is built to feel robust and protective of its precious interior. As that's where the collective knowledge of mankind is being stored.

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Before Fraser McPhee got on board to design the library there was already a pre-design concept. This was directly inspired by the requirements of the ship described in the screenplay.

The Library required shielding, solar panels and data capturing sensors. Except for that it was primarily described as being a solid building that would float through space.

It all became incredibly interesting once Fraser started landing on a final concept. The Library as you can see below is the final version of the design which makes use of negative space to create see-through areas on the ship.

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The Library was designed to create interesting shadow patterns all over the ship. This is important for the cinematography of Syntactic Labyrinths. Throughout the film the Library travels from Earth all the way to the Andromeda galaxy. The journey is filled with turns and rotations.

Having these interesting shapes and negative spaces all over the ship allows for the ship to become a dynamic element in the scene.

Something that can quickly be read as a "floating white cube through space" is now a point of interest that is ever changing throughout the film.

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Conclusion

As of right now there haven't been made many renders of the scenes including the Library. In fact the Library is currently being textured to become a high fidelity production asset.

With the texturing completed it will be great fun to start the look-dev process.

We can however leave you with a few early concept renders that we've made using the untextured Library.

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