After today's lecture, I took a stroll into town to pick up the text that I have been assigned to study in my next project: Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. I have started reading it, and am already quite a few pages in.

It is one of those books that is hard to put down (At least so far) as the first few chapters are very fast paced, following the eccentric Professor Lidenbrock and his assistant as he tries to solve a puzzle from an ancient Norse book. I also am lucky enough to have a copy of the 1959 film on my computer. After watching about the same amount of narrative of the film as I have read of the book, I notice quite a few differences, the main one being that the Professor in the film lives in Edinburgh, Scotland rather than Hamburg, Germany. This has made me realise I need to stick to the book's vision for my concept ideas rather than stray into the film.

It may be a bit premature, but I think I may already have a concept idea. One early passage in the book gave me this thought of creating a picture of the outside of the professor's house in Hamburg. It could come with a slight narrative as I could show the light coming from his study (and perhaps shadows in the window) The text describes his house:

"The old house listed somewhat, thrusting its paunch out at passers-by, and wore its roof cocked over its ear like a Tugenbund student's cap and the perpendicularity of its walls left much to be desired, but, for all that, it held up well thanks to the ancient elm embedded in its facade which every spring snaked budding shoots past the window panes."

This wasn't portrayed as accurately in the film was I thought it would be. The professor's house in the adaptation is a Edinburgh terrace, although it does have vines growing over the outside wall (Picture below,which I captured from the video).

I think this idea might be good to create a concept for, as it would be very different to the film version, and I would try to stick true to the book's description.